Teaching technology to technology teachers in refugee settlements in Uganda

Emerging from the Digital Education Practitioner Network (DEPN) project at the University of Edinburgh in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation, a recent Google Academic Research Award funded project on training teachers who work in refugee settlements in Uganda, aims to address the significant challenges involved working in such contexts.

MCF Impact Stories

Introduction to the project

Emerging  from the Digital Education Practitioner Network (DEPN) project at the University of Edinburgh in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation, a recent Google Academic Research Award funded project on training teachers who work in refugee settlements in Uganda, aims to address the significant challenges involved working in such contexts. 

Challenges in achieving education equity for displaced populations

Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4) emphasizes the importance of quality education as a pathway to empowerment, knowledge, and inclusion. However, achieving equity in education is especially challenging with forcibly displaced communities, which account for a global population of 110 million as of the end of 2024. Uganda, the largest host country in sub-Saharan Africa with a forcibly displaced population of 1,810,646 people, sees education as possibly the most powerful way to integrate this population into Ugandan society.  Yet teachers in these settings face immense challenges, including overcrowded classrooms, diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds of learners, and high levels of trauma and mental health issues among students. 

Barriers to effective education and teacher development

Additionally, teachers often have limited access to digital tools and training, which hampers their ability to deliver effective education and to network and learn from others working in refugee education. These conditions lead to high absenteeism, poor student performance, and rigid learning paths. The lack of support and resources not only diminishes teaching quality and outcomes but also stymies the professional development of educators, impeding the achievement of national, regional, and global educational goals. Teacher retention is quite low in these contexts.

The RGAI-FCT Project: Leveraging technology for teacher training

In response, Ggaliwango Marvin, a Mastercard Foundation Scholar under DEPN from Makerere University and Dr Michael Gallagher, the lead of the DEPN project at the University of Edinburgh, have created the Responsible Generative AI for Accelerated Competency-Based Teacher Training in Fragile Contexts (RGAI-FCT) project, which looks to enhance the teaching capabilities of teachers working in forcibly displaced contexts in Uganda by leveraging  emerging technologies. 

Accelerated competency-based teacher training for refugee educators

To do so, the projects looks to develop an Accelerated Competency-Based Teacher Training program specifically for refugee teachers, which will equip teachers with the skills to both critically evaluate and, if appropriate, use these emerging technologies in their teaching. They will also explore how these can be used for curriculum development and to promote the development of transferable skills such as digital literacy. We see AI used in this way as a proxy for the use of digital technology in education overall, particularly for audiences in fragile or displaced contexts. 

Project implementation and objectives

Running from 2025-2027, the project is aiming to engage with several cohorts of teachers across several refugee settlements, schools, and regions in Uganda, hoping to train teachers to improve educational outcomes for secondary-level learners . 

Research programme and community-based approach

The project will be backed by a research programme involving hands-on workshops, a train-the-trainer methodology, and community participation in co-designing curricular outputs. Teachers will be involved in all of this activity from the very beginning. The team will integrate community and indigenous knowledge-based practices to ensure cultural sensitivity and inclusivity, and to make sure what emerges is a decidedly Ugandan response to refugee education and teacher training. All thanks to the Mastercard Foundation and the opportunities provided by the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program. 

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