Enabling Quality Education That Buffers Against Global Challenges

Session Type: Invited Speaker Session

Abstract

“Challenge is the normal”
The symposium will be based on the insight that global challenges are chronic and cumulative – uncertainty is to be expected, and the challenges affect education in particular. Research shows that crises of different kinds – from war to famine to pandemic – disrupts systems. The consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and of recent wars are striking examples of this. Negative education outcomes have been shown and can be predicted for the future. Such outcomes particularly affect the regions and the young people in significantly precarious conditions: Global challenges increase social divide.

Education research is called on to contribute everything possible in order to mitigate the consequences of challenges. WERA scan support this by initiatives that

-enable to identify world-wide local responses to the disruptions of global challenges and their effects;
-carry out cross-border research to determine initiatives that buffer against chronic and cumulative barriers to education resulting from global challenges;
-promotes unpredicted positive education outcomes despite the presence of the ongoing multifarious challenges, for example as evidence-supported cases;
-ascertain the characteristics of local responses that might be transferable to other contexts.

The focus of the symposium is on contemplating characteristics of adaptive and transformative responses to global challenges: Which available resources are used to support positive education outcomes in the presence of challenges? Which actions are working well (in a regional case) to have a positive impact on education – also in times of crises? And what might be adaptable to other contexts, what not?

In particular, the symposium will provide examples that try to buffer high inequality – not least from spaces where chronic and cumulative challenge is normative. These include in particular lessons from the South & East.

The members of the WERA Task Force Global Challenges are:
Ingrid Gogolin, Universität Hamburg, Germany
Dirk Hastedt, International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement
Sergey Kosaretzky, Higher School of Economics (HSE)
Pinsky Centre of General and Extracurricular Education, Russia

Sub Unit

• World Education Research Association

Discussant

• Harkaitz Zubiri-Esnaola, University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU

Moderator

• Ingrid Gogolin, Universität Hamburg

• Dirk Hastedt, International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement

Panelists

• Celeste YM Yuen, Chinese University of Hong Kong

• A. Lin Goodwin, Boston College