Tackling the digital divide. How international organizations address digitalization of education

• In Event: Digital and Distance Education

Proposal

The Covid pandemic revitalized the discussion of how education can be delivered using information and communication technology (ICT) in a distance learning setting. Within a very short period, enormous resources were devoted to the conversion from in-class to distance learning. Obstacles to the adoption of distance learning ICT vary widely from country to country and depend on individual capacities. While some countries struggled to decide on unified platforms and online teaching methods across schools, others struggled to connect students with the internet at all, demonstrating, that issues of inclusiveness and internet access are still pressing issues. These differences are not new and have previously been discussed under the label of the digital divide. This term emphasizes that between countries of the Global South and industrialized Western states of the Global North, even before Covid, varying paces in expanding digitalization in the education sector resulted in a widening gap between both groups. The Covid pandemic was a catalyst for bringing this issue of equity between countries’ capacities to the forefront.
Several national and international actors have addressed the digital divide in an attempt to increase equity in education and include everyone. Because international organizations (IOs) play an essential role in influencing education policies, some IOs have also devised strategies to promote digitalization in the education sector and general ICT skills to bridge the digital divide. This was further reinforced after the negative impact of the Covid pandemic on learners became increasingly evident. Since we know from previous research that different IOs discuss different issues based on their members’ needs, this observation could also translate to the debate around the digitalization of education. Therefore, we ask how different IOs address digital learning and what forms their recommendations and policy programs take.
Preliminarily evidence suggests, that while digitalization in education remained a central issue for IOs, different IOs have discussed different actions countries should take to overcome the learning crisis following school closures. The UNESCO, for example, provides a multitude of resources, mostly focusing on options including offline functionality, radio, and mobile phone usage, and asynchrony teaching opportunities through already established platforms and formats. Other IOs, so for example the OECD, are focusing on technological advancements to support online teaching and learning and keeping students engaged. Also, IOs with a more regional focus, like ASEAN or the IADB, took up the issue of educational digitalization and put forth how their member states should best tackle the upcoming challenges against the background of regional idiosyncrasies. In sum, while different IOs put forth different action plans to improve digital learning, we can assume that the overall goal is the same: facilitating schooling through the internet. Different IOs might just tackle different stages of the transition from analog to digital teaching, mirroring the digital divide.
This hypothesis corresponds well with the theory of sociological institutionalism, developed by John W. Meyer and colleagues. One of the basic assumptions of this theory is that (policy) ideas and norms about education practices have been diffused around the globe and thus have become increasingly similar over time. According to World Society theory, education ideas initially originated in Western models and most education systems globally, therefore, follow the typical similar (western) structure. Most IOs have a rational-legal bureaucratic structure and culture and employ western scientific methods for evidence production for policymaking. In addition, many of the headquarters of these IOs are located in western countries, resulting in many IOs largely incorporating these western ideas and norms. For states (of the Global South) partaking in a discussion about recent topics means being part of the club of modern, up-to-date organizations or countries.
Meyer and colleagues state, that not only is education becoming similar, but the means to deliver education have been following what is now considered a World Culture. This World Culture prescribes what ideas should be prioritized, and what can be considered viable options in introducing reforms in education policy. Hence, sociological institutionalism provides an explanation as to why different stakeholders, like IOs, promote similar solutions and discuss issues in a similar manner. However, the theory also incorporates mechanisms that address differences in how something is discussed and, then, how something is implemented. The implementation of a norm could become decoupled from its original purpose. Similarly, policies might be adopted on paper, to be following World Culture, but the implementation might not occur. Given the normative pressure in their environments, organizations and states learn to distinguish between actual performance, and “myth and ceremony”.
To discover, how IOs discuss the digitalization of learning and if there are differences, and how these differences take shape, we select IOs from Global North and Global South with either a global or regional focus and analyze how they frame educational digitalization before and after Covid-19.
Methodologically, we apply various quantitative tools such as Collocation Analysis to analyze to what extent IOs discuss topics of digitalization in education similarly. We then contrast our findings with qualitative in-depth case studies of individual IOs. By analyzing the policy publications of four IOs with content analysis methods, we evaluate if IOs hold similar views on digitalization in education or if instances of decoupling take place where IOs deviate in their concrete policy programs from the overarching ideas and norms of the World Culture. In sum, we try to establish, if the recent debates of decoupling and resistance against World Culture due to its western origin can be found in the digitalization debate of different IOs, or if, in this emergency situation, the general trend is similar regardless of IO location, aiming at moving schooling and learning from an offline setting to online. Furthermore, our study highlights how different IOs address issues of equity and inclusiveness in the context of digitalization in education.

Authors

• Helen Seitzer, University of Bremen

• Kerstin Martens, University of Bremen