🗓️ Wednesday 21 May 2025  🕙 10:00-11:00

• 🟠Theme: Examining the intersection of education, digital culture, and information literacies

Understanding digital pedagogies in a Kenyan context by exploring teacher habitus

Emma Morton

Recording

Abstract

As an educator in Kenya, I have been interested in how technology is used in schools, with a particular focus on how teachers implement digital pedagogies in their classroom practices, by which I mean, how they use technologies to mediate the educational experience of the classroom (Väätäjä & Ruokamo, 2021). There continues to be a tendency for teachers to vary considerably in how they use technology; some integrate it seamlessly and innovatively into their lessons, whilst others accommodate it within their established and traditional styles of teaching (Selwyn, 2022).

In Kenya, teachers tend to use technology as a substitute for traditional sources of information and prefer a didactic, lecture-style of pedagogy (Heinrich et al., 2020; Kerkhoff & Makubuya, 2022). In my research study, I aim to understand their digital pedagogies by exploring their habitus. Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of habitus (1977, 1992) is both a theoretical and methodological tool that enables the researcher to access the interrelationships between socially learned behaviours, user agency and their dispositions (Costa et al., 2019; Grenfell & James, 2004). Bourdieu’s framework of habitus (1977, 1992) is a useful way to understand the digital pedagogies of a group of Kenyan teachers and to explain why they use technology in ways they take for granted and rarely question. To redress potential weaknesses in digital pedagogies in Global South countries such as Kenya, the focus of research is predominantly on extrinsic barriers such as digital inequalities of poor infrastructure, or problems of access and resources (Kerkhoff & Makubuya, 2022). There is also an acknowledgement that in Kenya there are insufficient professional development opportunities which constrain teachers’ digital pedagogies (Heinrich et al., 2020). Sociologists in the Global North argue that, in addition to these extrinsic challenges of skills and material provisions, social factors such as teacher self-efficacy and their dispositions also matter to digital education (Davies (2015), Halford and Savage (2011). In my research I suggest it is useful to explore empirically teachers’ backgrounds and dispositions, in order to understand their technology practices within their schools. Using qualitative narrative inquiry, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 teachers across three private schools in Kenya. The research investigates how teachers implement digital pedagogies, focusing on their pedagogical orientation, practices, and competencies, as framed by Väätäjä and Ruokamo’s (2021) model for digital pedagogy.

The findings reveal that most teachers use technology at foundational levels, such as for accessing information or audiovisual reinforcement, with isolated examples of transformative digital pedagogical practices. Teachers’ narratives highlight the influence of their educational backgrounds, shaped by Kenya’s traditional 8-4-4 educational system, which emphasised teacher-led, didactic methods. This historical context informs their digital pedagogical habitus, often resulting in deterministic and instrumentalist technology use. While teachers recognise the value of learner-centred approaches, they struggle to implement them due to ingrained beliefs about the teacher’s role and limited training opportunities. However, some teachers demonstrated reflexivity and agency, disrupting their habitus to adopt more transformative digital pedagogical practices. Self-efficacy and adaptability emerged as key competencies among teachers, as they learned to integrate technology into classroom practices despite challenges. The findings highlight the need for teachers’ professional development programmes to address intrinsic factors, such as the teachers’ social realities and dispositions, alongside extrinsic technical training. Modelling transformative digital pedagogies in training could help teachers better understand and implement effective technology use in classrooms. The study advocates for a holistic and context-sensitive approach to enhance digital pedagogies in Kenya.

References

Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge University Press.

Bourdieu, P. (1992). The Logic of Practice. Stanford University Press.

Costa, C., Burke, C., & Murphy, M. (2019). Capturing habitus: theory, method and reflexivity. International Journal of Research and Method in Education, 42(1), 19–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/1743727X.2017.1420771

Grenfell, M., & James, D. (2004). Change in the field—changing the field: Bourdieu and the methodological practice of educational research. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 25(4), 507–523. https://doi.org/10.1080/014256904200026989

Heinrich, C. J., Darling‐Aduana, J., & Martin, C. (2020). The potential and prerequisites of effective tablet integration in rural Kenya. British Journal of Educational Technology, 51(2), 498–514. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.12870

Kerkhoff, S. N., & Makubuya, T. (2022). Professional Development on Digital Literacy and Transformative Teaching in a Low‐Income Country: A Case Study of Rural Kenya. Reading Research Quarterly, 57(1), 287–305. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.392

Selwyn, N. (2022). Technology and Teachers. In Education and Technology: Key Issues and Debates. Bloomsbury Academic.

Väätäjä, J. O., & Ruokamo, H. (2021). Conceptualizing dimensions and a model for digital pedagogy. In Journal of Pacific Rim Psychology (Vol. 15, pp. 1–12). SAGE Publications Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1177/1834490921995395