Abstract:

Ever since education became increasingly digitised, it is hard to imagine both teaching and learning taking place without infrastructure. In the past, books and blackboards have traditionally been prevalent infrastructure for education. However, over the last three decades, a number of educational infrastructure such as satellite TV, computers, mobile phones have been widely emerged and utilised. This advent of educational reform in infrastructure is associated with significant changes in practices. It is because the relations between infrastructure and practices are inextricable due to their entanglement. With sociomaterial perspective, infrastructure will not only be constructed by tangible artefacts but also be socially constituted by intangible ones. In the same vein, practices are not simply shaped by infrastructure but is constructed social processes of infrastructure formation. And by extension, the changes in practice will impart new and different meanings to infrastructure depending on networks with human and non-human. In addition to infrastructure, it is also crucial to explore educators, teachers and student teachers those who actually practise the infrastructure.

Thus, the paper will represent how infrastructure reform would change practices and construct meanings of end-users on infrastructure by creating the network between human (end-users) and non-human (infrastructure) actants.

Although infrastructure entails various things, this paper will delimit the extent of infrastructure to an information and communication technology (ICT) particularly plasma TV in Ethiopian secondary education context and concentrate on the city of Addis Ababa. Furthermore, it will look into the sphere of teacher training which is specifically associated with practices of ICT implementation for teaching and learning process. Since 2003, there have been three main policies to represent the inspiration of ICT implementation into teaching and learning:
1) Teacher Education System Overhaul;
2) Education Sector Development Programme;
3) General Education Quality Improvement Programme. As a whole, these policies aim at improving both infrastructure (plasma TV) and quality of teacher through better training curriculum (ICT training).

However, there are various reflections upon plasma TV introduction and related training depending on different perspectives. On the one hand, the government bodies, Centre for Educational Information and Communication Technology (CEICT) and Addis Ababa Education Bureau (AAEB) keep emphasising a crucial role of plasma TV. They believe that plasma TV instruction will achieve quality education so that plasma TV will be well utilised by secondary school teachers. Moreover, they argue that government has already provided enough training in relation to ICT utilisation. On the other hand, in reality, perspectives of end-users are different from those of aforementioned government bodies. Educators, teachers and student teachers, who are physically facing difficulties, would call for substantial needs and supports from the government such as training and genuine ICT implementation from grassroots level.

Therefore, the paper will not only focusing on the infrastructure of education reform (plasma TV) because it is not enough to find meanings and practices of ICT. Rather, individuals' minds and perceptions towards infrastructure have to be considered and supplemented so as to understand their actual meanings and practices.

Keywords:

Ethiopia, ICT, Teacher Training, Plasma TV Instruction.