Living in Wait: The Learning Lives of High School Students in Addis Ababa A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Solen Feyissa IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Aaron Doering and Angelica Pazurek, Co-advisors December, 2016 © Solen Feyissa 2016 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation would have been impossible without the support of many people. First and foremost, I would like to thank the four Ethiopian youth whose stories are told in this dissertation. I am grateful to the parents, who welcomed me into their homes and shared their stories. I would like to thank the teachers, and school administrators, who welcomed me and provided all the support I needed. This work would have also been impossible without the support of the Graduate School and the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. Thank you for your generous funding. I would especially like to thank my advisors Aaron Doering and Angelica Pazurek. I want to thank Aaron for his support throughout the years. He has been a constant and enthusiastic advisor and mentor. I am deeply thankful to Angel for her empathetic reading of my work and her generosity throughout the dissertation writing process. Her guidance has helped me advance my thinking in profound and meaningful ways. Aaron and Angel’s ideas and encouragement permeate through all of my work. I want to thank my committee members Cassie Scharber and Bhaskar Upadhyay for their support and guidance throughout the years. Cassie has been a source of wisdom. She helped me to keep my doctoral studies in perspective and to remember what is most important in my scholarly work as well as in life. Bhaskar often reminded me and encouraged me to ask and answer questions in a way that others can build on. I am profoundly thankful for his time and his ideas. I would also like to thank my LT Ph.D. cohort, who have been constant friends and companion through graduate school; especially Suzan Koseoglu and Senenge Andzenge. Finally, I want to thank my friends and family members who cheered me all the way to the finish line. i DEDICATION ለ ማሀደር ፣ ዕምነት አና ኑቤክ ii ABSTRACT This research sought to examine how students in a developing country such as Ethiopia appropriate ICTs in their learning lives and how social contexts influence their ICT use for learning purposes. Working within the tradition of interpretive research, this study employed a multiple case study approach. Four students attending secondary schools in Addis Ababa were participants. Participant interviews were collected and were triangulated with participant observation, student journal entries and ICT curriculum analysis. The data were analyzed using within-case analysis and cross-case analysis. The six stages of inductive thematic analysis proposed by Braun and Clarke (2006) were used during both stages. Drawing from the learning lives of participants, this dissertation research adds to a growing body of research (Dombrowski, Harmon & Fox, 2016; Maryam & Imran, 2016; Ames, 2016) that focus on low-income communities and that suggest a multitude of interrelated, multi-faceted and complex factors that influence technology appropriation for learning while often amplifying existing inequalities and exclusions. These influential factors include differential access to ICTs, teacher absenteeism, standardized high-stakes exams, as well as cultural, religious and social norms. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................. i DEDICATION .................................................................................................................... ii ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... iii LIST OF TABLES .............................................................................................................. v LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................... vi CHAPTERS 1. INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................. 1 2. HISTORY AND CURRENT STATE OF THE ETHIOPIAN EDUCATION SYSTEM ............................................................................................................ 9 3. LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................................. 29 4. METHODOLOGY ........................................................................................... 42 5. DANIEL MENELIK ......................................................................................... 65 6. HANNA MARKOS .......................................................................................... 77 7. TEDDY YOHANNES ...................................................................................... 89 8. YAQOB MULUKEN ..................................................................................... 100 9. DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS .......................................................... 116 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................... 141 APPENDICES ................................................................................................................ 150 iv LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Gender distribution in School A and School B. .................................................. 49 Table 2. Connection between research questions and data. .............................................. 50 Table 3. ICT ownership distribution in School A and School B. ..................................... 51 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. A flow chart of the Ethiopian education system ...................................................... 16 Figure 2. The technology appropriation model. ....................................................................... 39 Figure 3. Inclusion criteria used in the systematic approach to purposeful sampling for participant selection ........................................................................ 47 Figure 4. When home is no longer home: on my realizing how Ethiopia, where I am from, has drastically changed. .......................................................... 56 Figure 5. When home is no longer home: on my realizing how Ethiopia, where I am from, has drastically changed. .......................................................... 56 Figure 6. to-do list for pre-entry observation at the research site ............................................ 56 Figure 7. Recording my observation during one morning. ...................................................... 56 Figure 8. Another reflection noting some of the problems I observed at the school. .................................................................................................................. 56 Figure 9. Reflection on data that was already collected and continuously analyzed. .............................................................................................................. 57 Figure 10. Hanna’s journal entry ............................................................................................. 58 Figure 11. Yaqob’s journal entry ............................................................................................. 59 Figure 12. A screenshot of a YouTube video showing Dr. Seyoum and Sister Saba ............................................................................................................ 68 Figure 13. A screenshot of a YouTube video showing one of Dr. Seyoum's presentation slides. ............................................................................................... 68 Figure 14. Dr. Seyoum's presentation slides showing “Gay Serial Killers” ............................ 69 Figure 15. Six female students gather around a non-functioning computer in the computer lab. ............................................................................................. 86 Figure 16. Genius Intelligence website .................................................................................... 96 Figure 17. A photo showing Yaqob’s hand thumb and forefinger framed in a manner that makes it seem as though he is holding the teacher’s head between his fingers. ................................................................... 109 Figure 18. Nazarene magazine cover showing a bleeding keyboard. .................................... 113 Figure 19. The protective metal box carrying the plasma television is used as a canvas to draw the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) under construction on the Blue Nile .................................................... 129 vi CHAPTER ONE Introduction Background The 2014 International Telecommunication Union’s (ITU) Information Communication Technologies (ICT)1 development index report, which is based on data collected annually from participating countries on ICT access, use, and skills, shows that the majority of African countries, including Ethiopia, remain at the bottom of its list. In addition, the dominating and unrelenting narrative about Africa in Western media frequently fuses messy truths into oversimplified bits of generalizations thereby reducing lives and life in Africa to a caricature of their most uninformed consumers’ narrow conceptions of the continent and the people that live in it. This, in turn, perpetuates the idea that Africa and its inhabitants live in a state of