Two pilot testing workshops were conducted in Freetown, Sierra Leone from 23-27 February 2009 and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania from 23-27 March, 2009.

The workshop in Freetown was officially opened by the Deputy Minster of Education, Youth and Sports of Sierra Leone, Dr. Lansana Nyalley. In his opening remarks, Dr Nyalley appreciated the good work that UNESCO and IICBA are doing in his country, and pledged to further strengthen the link established. In addition, other ministry officials and the secretary of the UNESCO National Commission spoke in the opening. The Vice Chancellor of Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone, Prof. Jonas, A. S. Redwood Sawyer, gave the keynote address to the workshop. The workshop was also given media coverage as the national television and many of the newspapers published in Freetown reported on it.

The Dar Es Salaam workshop was opened by Mr. Binde, Assistant Director of the Department of Teacher Education in the Ministry of Education of the United Republic of Tanzania. The UNESCO cluster office was also represented at the opening by Ms. Florence Ssereo, Programme Specialist for Education of the Dar es Salaam Cluster Office.

The major objective of the mission was to pilot test the four training modules for the training of heads and deputy heads of teacher education institutions in sub-Saharan Africa on the management of their institutions, in an actual training situation in order to get feedback on their content, design and relevance for the intended purpose of building the managerial capacity of heads and deputy heads of TEIs in Africa.

Under this major objective, the workshops also had the following specific objectives.

•To enable heads and deputy heads of TEIs share experiences to identify what works where and why;

•To acquaint them with current thinking in the area of educational management;

•To demonstrate the usefulness of open source software and ICT for TEI management staff;

•To encourage networking with their fellow professionals.

IICBA has been engaged in the preparation of training modules for the training of heads and deputy heads of teacher education institutions in sub-Saharan Africa on the management of their institutions. The funds for the training package were secured from the Extra-Budgetary resources allocated by HQ. The project started in mid-2007, with a curriculum design workshop organised in Addis Ababa in August 2007. Following this, a team of two teacher education management experts were contracted to write two modules each with the aim of producing a set of four modules. The modules proposed were:

i) Management of Teacher Education Institutions: General Aspects,

ii) Financial Management of Institutions of Teacher Education,

iii) Academic Staff Management of Institutions of Teacher Education,

iv) Space Management of Institutions of Teacher Education.

Each of these modules has an ICT component that informs trainees on the availability of free and open source software that could be used to facilitate their work as managers of teacher education institutions.

L’Institut International de l’UNESCO pour le Renforcement des Capacités en Afrique (UNESCO-IIRCA) vient d’initier la publication d'une collection de fascicules intitulée: Principes de la formation des enseignants. La collection vise à contribuer à l’enrichissement des connaissances des praticiens, des décideurs, des planificateurs et des gestionnaires de la formation des enseignants évoluant à différents niveaux (national, régional) dans le secteur de l’éducation en Afrique.

UNESCO-IICBA has been engaged in building the capacities of teacher education institutions in many areas of teacher education. As part of this effort, a training workshop was conducted on the contextualization of science education in Malawi and the use of Opensource softwares to develop the contextualized science materials into a full-fledged course.

IICBA organized the training program in collaboration with the UNESCO National Commission for Malawi and the Malawi College of Distance Education (MCDE) from 16 to 20 December 2008.

The main objectives of the workshop are to train science teacher educators in Malawi teacher training colleges (TTCs) in:

• the development and implementation of context-based science education teaching and learning materials and courses (as a bottom—up curriculum development model).

• the use of Opensource softwares as a course management system for contextualized science education courses (both for face-to-face and distance learning).

The training was conducted for 5 days from 16—20 December 2008 in the National Bank Learning and Growth Center in Blantyre, Malawi. The Center is an ideal training place equipped with computers for each trainee, LCD projector and screen. 21 science teacher educators from 5 TTCs of Malawi and 1 local coordinator from the Malawi College of Distance Education (MCDE) participated in the workshop.

Participants analyzed and reflected on the existing national science and technology teaching-learning materials for primary schools and teacher training colleges. Based on the context-based science education models that are discussed during the training sessions, participants realized that the currently used materials are at the first level (out of four sequentially more context-focused levels). They also developed, in groups, exemplary units of context-based science education and presented their developed units to the whole participants for comments.

The participants also developed the skills and knowledge in installing the selected OpenSource software (Moodle), in creating the contextualized science courses using the software, in how to use contextualized images in the software, etc. Finally, all participants received the entire package of the two components of the training in CD-ROMs so that they can use them in their respective colleges.