Distance education is being used increasingly for both pre and in-service teacher
education in both developed and developing countries (Robinson & Latchem, 2003;
Kwapong, 2007; Perraton, 2010). In Rwanda, the Kigali Institute of Education (KIE)
introduced its first distance education programme in 2001 with the aim of upgrading
the qualifications of under-qualified high school teachers, including those who teach
English, using printed materials as the main teaching/learning resource. This study
has aimed to investigate the role of the 2010 version of these materials in addressing
the professional needs of high school English teachers. It was centrally informed by
theories of the sociologist of education, Basil Bernstein (1996, 1999), about
curriculum and of the sociocultural psychologist, Lev Vygotsky (1978), on mediation,
by Shulman’s (1986, 1987) work on pedagogic content knowledge and by literature
on English language teaching, on language teacher education and on distance
education materials design.
The investigation involved textual analysis of a selection of KIE’s distance education
materials for English teaching and focused on the content selected for these
materials and on the mediation of this content on the page. After this analysis, one
section of these was re-designed by the researcher. Nine teacher-learners enrolled in
the programme for English teaching were interviewed to determine their responses
to both the KIE materials and to the redesigned section. The findings suggest that
Kigali Institute of Education’s distance education materials for English do not
adequately address the academic and professional needs of high school English
teachers for four main reasons. Firstly, the content selected for the materials does
not respond sufficiently to the interests and needs of foreign language teachers of
English. Secondly, it is not externally aligned to the curriculum at the level that these
teachers are supposed to teach. Thirdly, the mediation of this content does not
adequately support the development of subject and pedagogic content knowledge
and skills of teacher-learners and encourages surface rather than deep learning
(Biggs, 1987). Lastly, with the exception of sections on some literary genres, the
materials list useful ideas and language teaching approaches and methods but
consistently fail to explain to the teacher-learners how to teach different aspects of
language. These findings suggest that these materials do not adequately assist
teacher-learners to develop pedagogic content knowledge (Shulman, 1987) for the
teaching of English. The limitations identified may result from a lack of knowledge,
skills and experience in distance education materials and graphic design among the
KIE materials designing team and from inadequate resource provision (including
time) by the institution and suggest that there is a need for changes to the KIE
distance education materials designing process.