Emerging best practices for using offline mobile phones to train English teachers in developing countries

Since mobile phone ownership and use saturate the developing world, teachers there could use their mobile phones to receive teacher training as distance education (West & Chew, 2014). However, the challenge remains that the vast majority of mobile phones used in developing countries lack Internet connectivity (Horton, 2012), requiring creative solutions for how best to deliver teacher training content to offline mobile phones. While demand for training exists, and the prevalence of mobile phones exists, projects for using offline mobile phones to train English teachers that have been brought to scale and result in rigorous, published findings do not readily exist (Kaleebu, Gee, Jones, & Watson, 2013; Power, 2012;Walsh, 2011). Using qualitative case study methodology of project documents found through conducting an extended systematic review, this study compares themes and categories of four projects, “English in Action” Bangladesh, “English Teacher” Nigeria, “SMS Story” Papua New Guinea, and “Text2Teach/Bridge IT” Philippines, that used offline mobile phones to train English teachers in developing countries, proving that those who are still waiting for Internet connectivity to reach them do not have to be left behind. The aim of this study is that a comparison of the themes and categories of these four projects will provide promising practices, leading to best practices, for this burgeoning field of using offline mobile phones to train teachers in response to a gap in the research and pressing global need. These practices are particularly valuable because they can be applied in other fields, from global health to microfinance, since they provide models that can be used no matter the mobile phone, with or without Internet. There are four recommended variations for using offline mobile phones to train English teachers in developing countries, namely by using text messages and teachers’ own phones, text messages and provided phones, training material stored on SD cards in teachers’ own phones, or training material stored on SD cards in provided phones. The most cost-effective variation seems to be text messages delivered to teachers’ own phones. No matter the choice of delivery modes, any project using offline mobile phones to train English teachers in developing countries will require three main strengths: a diverse network of project partners to include local government backing, a low or no-cost price point for participants, and a robust project monitoring and evaluation plan based on quality data gathering. The U.S. government could have tremendous potential global reach if it were to adopt teacher training policy for using offline mobile phones to train English teachers in developing countries through organizations like the U.S. Peace Corps and English Language Fellows program.