Bringing EDC’s expertise to faraway places comes naturally to Daniel Light, an Ohio native who has lived, worked, and traveled around the globe, including venturing close to both the North and South Poles.
“My parents loved travel and natural history,” says Light. “We went to Antarctica to see the penguins and walruses, and to Churchill, Manitoba, to see the polar bears migrate into the ocean.”
Light taught English in Spain for two years, then he went on to earn master’s degrees in international affairs and sociology/historical studies and a doctorate in sociology. Prior to joining EDC, he conducted research for the New York City Board of Education.
“It’s rewarding to collaborate with researchers from other countries—to share and build an understanding of school reform with people from so many different backgrounds and frameworks,” he says.
The Evaluation of the Jordan Education Initiative is conducted in partnership with RTI International and WorldLinks Arab Region and funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development.
As technology businesses are booming in Jordan, educators are striving to prepare schools and students to keep pace. In 2003, an education initiative was launched in 100 Discovery Schools to upgrade technology skills and knowledge. EDC’s Daniel Light spent time in these classrooms evaluating the program.
Tell us about the Jordan Education Initiative.
Jordan is a small Arab country situated between Israel, Syria, and Iraq. It has received maybe a million Iraqi refugees—some quite wealthy and some quite poor—which has put a strain on the school system.
This initiative, which we call JEI, was created in 2003 at the World Economic Forum as an initiative between the public and private sector and King Abdullah of Jordan. Under JEI, Jordan developed a cadre of technology companies that create original digital curriculum content locally and helped the Discovery Schools improve their capacity to use these 21st-century resources effectively.
The Discovery Schools were chosen from public schools, including K–8 and high schools, in and around the capital city of Amman. The project goals were to upgrade their technology infrastructure, expand computer labs, provide Internet connections, create digital curricula, and support integration of technology and e-learning resources.
Describe a typical classroom in Jordan.
For a developing country, Jordan’s schools are relatively well provisioned. They have content-area textbooks and locally developed curricula, and students from grade 4 on take eight different subjects. Most schools have a technology infrastructure and computers. Teachers just didn’t know how to use them with their style of teaching, and they wanted to know how to use them better.
What are some of the challenges they confront?
Jordan is facing a lack of preservice training for teachers. Teachers are certified in their content areas, but they have much less training in human development and pedagogy. The teaching practice in most classrooms is lecture-based. Kids sit and take notes while the teacher lectures to them.
In one computer lab we observed, third-graders listened to their teacher lecture about computers. She showed a picture of a computer on an overhead projector and said, “This is a computer, this is a keyboard, this is a mouse.” And the students were sitting in a room with 30 computers—all of them turned off, with covers over them. So there’s a disconnect.
The challenge going forward is to provide teachers with the training needed to help them learn different styles of teaching. With that, they can use technology to engage their students. That makes the technology meaningful. It gives students a reason for doing a PowerPoint presentation or using the Web to research information for a report.
What was your impression of the students?
Though English as a Foreign Language (EFL) is taught in the schools, I was impressed that the high school girls knew English so well. They told me they learned it from watching Oprah. They have cable TV, and cell phones are readily available and inexpensive. Cybercafés are everywhere, with Internet access to both English and Arabic Web sites. So outside of school, youth are living in a technology-rich context.
What is your outlook for advancing technology in Jordanian classrooms?
The government and the ministry of education want to help students not just be consumers of television and media, but to use media to create products, navigate the Web, and bring information into their lives for their own goals. Jordan doesn’t have oil, so the country’s future is dependent on having an educated workforce. Jordan is poised to be the technology leader in the Arab region. And the schools are ready for the next step.
Fortunately, the schools have strong leadership and principals who know where they want to go. The teachers are really excited to talk about their practices and hungry to learn what we’re doing here and in other countries where we work. There’s a strong desire to innovate and try new practices. And the students are very motivated and engaged. That bodes well for the future.
Originally published on January 21, 2009