From change agent to sustainable scaffolding?

Educational institutions in rural Bangladesh are faced with multiple problems and barriers when implementing ICT in teaching and learning. The paper reports from an ethnographic action research project set up in rural Bangladesh to induce change in a specific institution and to inform research about the barriers to ICT. The authors set out to research how a researcher and change agent by means of a participatory process can construct and distribute knowledge together with local stakeholders so that the local stakeholders ultimately can take charge of a continued development. It is concluded that the change process in the institution has begun with the action research project, but also that it is probably too early to say for sure if the change is sustainable. With respect to doing action research in rural Bangladesh it is concluded that an action oriented approach is promising. The action research approach gave the authors access to study an enactment of problems in relation to the implementation of ICT which could not have been foreseen solely based on a traditional ethnographic study