The use of video recording in educational activities in African countries is neither recent nor unique. Variously employed in teacher training and extension work over the past two decades, the uses of this technology have been guided primarily by non-indigenous models of communication. This is particularly evident in the teacher training technique known as micro-teaching. After a critical review of educational technology literature covering foundational theories and field experiences, two case examples are presented which describe first the historical use of video in Malawi's Chancellor College and secondly, the combined use of video production with "Theatre for Development" in a Forestry Extension project. The analysis of these experiences, based in critical social theory, build arguments which show that conventional uses of video in education act as a vehicle for dominant, exogenous forms of cultural reproduction through the formal education system. The failure to fully employ and embrace the technology, years after its introduction, may be as much a result of passive cultural resistance to external influence as it is a lack of technical training, infrastructural support, or effects of inadequate staff development, reasons which are most often cited. In ethnographic terms, the institutional case example of video in teacher training describes the general construct of communicative behaviors traditionally employed with video technology, characterized predominately by highly institutionalized and non-indigenous patterns. The ethnography of the village based production of a video drama represents a selected discrepant case construct which challenges the defined patterns historically since emerging models of participatory extension communication are recent interventions in Malawi. As documentation of a field technique, the study also describes a unique combination of popular theater and video production used in extension communication. This description should prove worthwhile to practitioners, extension workers and educators interested in the use of video in communication and education in development, especially where its use contributes to the facilitation of authentic cultural expression and the production of indigenous forms of knowledge and culture.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UMASS/oai:scholarworks.umass.edu:dissertations-9037 |
| Date | 01 January 1995 |
| Creators | McCurry, David Scott |
| Publisher | ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst |
| Source Sets | University of Massachusetts, Amherst |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Source | Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest |
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