Research Spotlight: Opening Classroom Resources in Zambia’s Community Schools

Open educational resources, often called OER, promise a more equitable path by making teaching and learning materials freely available for use and adaptation. Yet the promise of openness depends on more than access to a file or a tablet. It depends on infrastructure, teacher confidence, institutional guidance, copyright awareness, and the social networks that help educators learn from one another.

A recent article by Enala Sharon Lufungulo, Jiyou Jia, and Kennedy Mwila brings this complexity into focus through a qualitative study of OER adoption in Zambian community schools. We spoke with one of the authors, Enala Sharon Lufungulo of the University of Zambia, to learn more about what shapes those decisions in practice.

This research matters because OER is often discussed as a solution to educational inequality, but the article shows that adoption is never simply a matter of making resources available. Teachers need awareness, usable infrastructure, relevant materials, clear intellectual property guidance, and professional support that matches their level of readiness.

Enala Sharon Lufungulo reflected on the broader significance of the study: “The most important implication is that equitable access to OER cannot be achieved by distributing digital resources alone. Community school teachers need differentiated professional development, reliable infrastructure, clear guidance on copyright and adaptation, and support to contextualise materials for the Zambian curriculum. Equity is realised when teachers can confidently access and turn open resources into meaningful learning experiences.”

For educators and institutional leaders, the study offers a grounded reminder that equitable access is built through systems. A tablet, a repository, or a downloadable lesson can help, but the deeper question is whether teachers have the confidence, time, policy clarity, and support needed to turn those resources into meaningful classroom practice.

For qualitative and education researchers, the article is also valuable because it connects lived experience with theory. It uses the OER adoption pyramid, diffusion of innovations, and connectivism to show how teachers move through awareness, capacity building, social learning, and voluntary adoption within real institutional constraints.

The article identifies several linked factors that shape whether OER becomes part of classroom practice. Three contributions stand out for readers interested in education, qualitative research, and responsible technology adoption.

• Awareness can come before full technological readiness. The article reports that some teachers understood the value of OER even when electricity, internet access, or school technology remained limited, suggesting that awareness can help create demand for better infrastructure and support.
• Institutional guidance matters, especially around intellectual property. Interview and focus group evidence showed that many teachers were unsure about written OER policies and copyright implications, which can reduce confidence and increase the risk of unintended misuse.
• Teachers need different kinds of support. The conclusion groups teachers into savvy adopters, resource-constrained adopters, and struggling adopters, showing that professional development should be differentiated rather than designed as one generic training programme.

These findings make the study useful for policy design because they translate broad calls for openness into specific needs for infrastructure, training, local content, and school-level guidance.

Enala Sharon Lufungulo described what stood out most in the data: “The most striking finding was that awareness of OER could precede technological readiness. Even where electricity, internet access and digital devices were limited, teachers recognized the value of OER and expressed a willingness to learn more. This challenges the assumption that adoption must follow the linear sequence of the OER adoption pyramid and suggests that awareness building should not wait for perfect infrastructure.”

The study used a qualitative multi-method approach in Lusaka and Chipata, Zambia. Data came from in-depth interviews with participants involved in OER adoption, two focus group discussions, document analysis, and social media content analysis connected to organisations working with community schools and OER.

The data were complex because the authors were not only examining whether teachers used OER, but how adoption was shaped by infrastructure, policy knowledge, digital literacy, cultural acceptance, and social learning. The article describes thematic and content analysis, with manual coding cross-checked against AI-generated codes, and it also reports code frequencies and visual summaries while keeping the main contribution interpretive and qualitative.

The authors describe a dual coding process in which traditional manual coding was integrated with AI-assisted tools, among them Evidano, then known as AILYZE, to support keyword extraction, categorisation, and preparation of large transcription volumes.

The article is careful not to frame AI as a substitute for scholarly interpretation. The authors state that manual coding was cross-checked with AI-generated codes, and that the integrated approach “leveraged the strengths of both human and artificial intelligence in uncovering meaningful patterns within the data.”

Enala Sharon Lufungulo also noted how AI tools can support careful research workflows when used responsibly: “Evidano helped me navigate a large volume of qualitative data efficiently. I used it for document analysis, summarisation, and the initial coding of interview transcripts, including the identification of relevant verbatim excerpts. It also helped me organise related codes into categories and suggest possible themes while preserving participants’ voices.

“I also used Evidano as a critical sounding board during the meaning-making process. I compared its proposed interpretations with my own reflections, assumptions and deductions, which helped me consider alternative meanings and critically examine my emerging interpretations. Evidano and other AI outputs were reviewed, refined and cross-checked against the original data, my manual coding in Microsoft Word and MAXQDA, participants’ accounts, and the study’s theoretical framework.

“Although AI reduced the time and workload involved in the initial stages of analysis, the final codes, themes, interpretations and analytical decisions remained my responsibility. Researchers should therefore use AI transparently, protect participants’ confidential data, critically verify its outputs, and never allow efficiency to replace reflexivity, methodological rigour or scholarly judgement.”

In this study, Evidano supported a broader qualitative workflow, while the authors retained responsibility for interpretation, alignment with theory, and scholarly judgement. The result is a measured example of AI assistance as a research support tool rather than a replacement for methodological rigour.

The broader implication is that OER policy must be matched by implementation detail. Zambia’s national education technology ambitions create an important foundation, but the article shows that school-level practice depends on sustained teacher training, clear policy guidance, reliable infrastructure, and support for locally relevant materials.

For researchers, policymakers, and educators, Enala Sharon Lufungulo’s takeaway offers a useful bridge from evidence to action: “The practical takeaway is that OER adoption is an ecosystem, not a single intervention. Zambia and related Global South contexts need coordinated action: differentiated teacher training, reliable connectivity and devices, practical school-level guidance on OER and intellectual property, locally relevant materials, and sustained partnerships among government, schools, NGOs, and communities. Without implementation support, strong policy ambitions will not translate into classroom change.”

The study also speaks to a wider audience beyond Zambia. In many settings, open resources are treated as a technical or licensing question, but this article shows that adoption is also social, cultural, institutional, and pedagogical.

By centring the voices and experiences of community school educators, the article encourages readers to treat OER adoption as a human process. Its lasting contribution is to show that open access becomes meaningful when teachers are supported to find, evaluate, adapt, and confidently use resources in ways that serve their learners.