The teaching and learning process is becoming a big challenge at Higher Education Institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa. This is mainly due to the constraints created by the liberalisation of university education and the implied surge in student numbers. In the area of History education particularly, the challenge of large student numbers has forced lecturers to predominantly use behaviourist teaching methods such as lecture and recitation. These methods are characterised by constrained dialogical conversations between lecturers and students, memorising of History facts, dates and limit students' capacity to think historically, which in turn compromises the quality of learning about the past. This article argues for the use of Mobile phone forums as lenses from the present that afford dialogical construction of meanings about the past. A qualitative approach with a case study design was used limited to pre-service teachers (students) at the Makerere University, Uganda. A Critical Discourse Analysis was used to analyse the qualitative data obtained from the students' engagement on the Mobile phone forum by means of the winksite application. The key research findings demonstrated that mobile phone forums enhance interactions between lecturers-students, students-students as a helpful precondition for collaborative learning and reflection about the human past. Conclusions was drawn with a recommendation for History educators to embrace mobile phone forums as a sustainable innovation at the African higher educational context with a potential to enhance dialogical conversations between the past the present and the anticipated future.

One of the challenges of teaching current students’ history is how to transform a generally boring subject to appeal to 21st century students. The continued use of traditional methods in teaching history by lecturers emphasizes recitation and narration. This makes student inactive. In this paper, we propose a model for teaching history using emerging technologies in ways that stimulate learners’ interest and draw on historical contexts. Following the four stages of design-based research methodology, two iterations were designed and examined where pre-service teachers (C21st students) used multimodal affordances of emerging technologies (modern tool) to interrogate historical facts (history) in creative and engaging manner. The findings suggest that design principles and guidelines have potential to help students and teachers to restore interest in history teaching and learning while simultaneously guiding and interpreting the human past. A major outcome of this research was the development of five major design principles and guidelines for teaching history in ways that C21st students learn - ¬¬connecting with the present, appreciating heritage, dialogue in history, doing history and validating history.

This paper argues that history education is becoming dangerously obsolete, as it does not always relate to the contemporary needs of 21st century learners, who often find history useless and irrelevant to their present situation. This challenge is attributed to, among other reasons, the way history is taught through largely lecture-driven pedagogies that significantly reduced active learner engagement. This article draws on Gadamer's Hermeneutic philosophy to advocate for dialogue in understanding and interpreting history artifacts using 21st century technologies. Gadamerian Hermeneutics focuses on horizons of understanding through open-ended questioning and answering between past and present rather than transmission to passive audiences. The article argues for the collaborative interpretation of history meanings between teachers and students mediated by a Wiki. The methodology involved a case study of pre-service teachers enrolled at Makerere University in Uganda. The purely qualitative study draws on Gilly Salmon's five-stage model of online learning. The findings indicate that participants successfully engaged with the first three stages-access and motivation, online socialisation, and information exchange-but less so with stages four and five, knowledge construction and development. The paper concludes by proposing a framework that could be useful to teachers wanting to facilitate history education using modern approaches that are relevant and meaningful to today's learners.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced most governments in Africa to temporarily close educational institutions in attempt to reduce the spread of the pandemic. In Uganda particularly, Higher Education Institutions, Universities and schools adopted the online and blended approaches to afford continuity of learning during the lockdown. This article provides a reflection of the opportunities, challenges and lessons learnt in teaching and learning of history during the COVID-19 pandemic. Qualitative data was obtained from a narrative inquiry of the researcher's own teaching experience and interviews with pre-service history teachers from Makerere University. Findings indicated that, while online and blended approaches facilitate history education through Makerere University e-Learning (MUELE) Learning Management System, WhatsApp exchanges, Zoom, emails, mobile phone text messaging and print media; there were persistent challenges such as limited Information Communication Technology (ICT) tools, digital illiteracy, digital divide, increased workloads as well as social-emotional stress and distractions at home. The article concludes with a key lesson for Teacher Education programmes to shift the way they train pre-service history teachers to embrace online learning with access to offline, downloadable, print learning materials to facilitate blended learning approaches. This is relevant in preparation of different generations of teachers to integrate blended pedagogy in History Education in response to the new normal caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study evaluates stakeholders’ perceptions of the actualisation of the formal, non-formal, as well as guidance and counselling curriculum in Uganda’s Seed secondary schools. Using a stratified four-stage cluster design, twelve Seed secondary schools, 630 students from senior three and four, and 93 teachers were randomly selected. Using purposive sampling, eight school administrators, four officials from the Directorate of Education Standards (DES), and 48 parents, were selected. Data collection was through administering interviews with school administrators and DES officials, conducting focus group discussions with teachers and parents, and self-administered questionnaires to students. A document review of institutional files and documents was done. Qualitative data was analysed using thematic coding and major themes emerged from the analysis; quantitative data was analysed using SPSS software. Findings on the actualisation of the formal curriculum show low levels of lesson preparations, teacher punctuality, parents’ monitoring of students learning, formative assessments, full-time teaching, equipped science laboratories, and the presence of computer laboratories, digital resources, and ICT teachers. Concerning the implementation of the non-formal curriculum, findings reveal inadequate time, facilities and equipment for co-curricular activities, several stakeholders managing discipline among students including prefects, disciplinary committees, parents, and the disciplinary committee of the board of governors, and poor medical care for students since the posted nurses abscond from duty. Lastly, concerning the implementation of guidance and counselling curriculum, findings indicate that several mechanisms like guidance and counselling programs, the existence of a career’s master/mistress, class visiting days are missing in most of the schools, and the psychosocial needs of students were not met. It is concluded that, to a large extent, a significant gap exists in the implementation of the official curriculum in seed secondary schools of Uganda. The study recommends the recruitment of more teachers on the government payroll in all seed secondary schools in the country. This will make teachers available at the school for consultation with students at all times. Construction and equipping of both science laboratories and computer laboratories in all seed secondary schools. Regular monitoring and close supervision of seed secondary schools by the relevant organs of the Ministry of Education and Sports should be effectively carried out. There is a need for the construction of staff houses at seed schools to maintain teacher presence for the effective implementation of non-formal curricular activities.