Government decision-making around scaling edtech innovations in low- and middle-income countries: Pressures, promises, and perils

• In Event: Educational policies and politics

Proposal

A digital world has certainly arrived, and the field of global education is no exception. Digital education technology applications (edtech herein)— such as classroom learning devices, tech-enabled teacher development, information and communication technology (ICT) for teacher networks, data systems for schools or whole countries, and artificial intelligence— have exploded in popularity since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. This proposed paper discusses the many reasons for this explosion, as well as the promises and potential uses for edtech around the world. It also dives into the many tradeoffs, costs, and concerns related to edtech's ability to be feasibly, equitably, and sustainably implemented. And it offers recommendations for decision makers, edtech innovators, and education researchers for how to increase clarity around the many choices that are available.

The edtech landscape has in many ways taken over education reform, education budgeting, and government education decision-making in locations around the world. As a result, it has pushed aside traditional processes of how governments evaluate and adopt promising education innovations for scale and has crowded out interest in many analog approaches for improving education, especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

This proposed paper presentation draws on a two-year study of government decision-making for education in eight LMICs to share findings, analysis, and practical recommendations for how governments and researchers approach the adoption, adaptation, and support of edtech innovations for scale in their locations.


Methods

As part of broader, ongoing work for education improvement in LMICs, in 2022-23 the authors of this paper conducted desk research and more than two dozen semi-structured interviews. First, via stratified purposeful sampling, eight countries were selected: Bhutan, El Salvador, Ghana, Honduras, Kyrgyzstan, Malawi, Nepal, and Nicaragua. Next, thirty, hour-long interviews were conducted virtually with national-level government policymakers in the countries; in-country advisors and research specialists; and a purposeful sample of edtech researchers, tech industry experts, and representatives from the global education donor community. All interviews were transcribed and hand-coded, studied through three overlapping-but-sequenced analytical rounds, and written up in different ways on different topics. This present paper focuses on the edtech part of this larger study.


Findings

Overall, there was significant interest from education policymakers in all eight countries around adopting edtech innovations. This heavy focus on edtech notably influenced the policymakers’ decision-making about what innovations in general to consider adopting, adapting, and supporting at scale. The strong interest in edtech derived from a confluence of four factors: (1) external demand for digitalization from other sectors in a country (such as the president, families, the ministry for information and communication technologies, and the media), (2) the many tech companies aggressively attempting to enter new markets, (3) some donor organizations’ prioritization of edtech as a viable solution in LMICs, and (4) the already strong presence of edtech in higher-income countries that puts pressure on LMICs to embrace edtech.

At the same time, our interviews highlighted the paucity of useful research that could aid education decision makers to determine the possibilities and risks of specific edtech innovations when deciding what to adopt for scale. We found that many decision-makers were not interested in using data to make these decisions— instead focusing on the political gains of the decision and the reputations of the tech companies or people pitching the innovations. And, even if the decision-makers desired good data on the potential impact of the innovations in locations such as their own, our interviews with edtech experts revealed that objective, relevant, and timely research was mostly absent. What was available in its place were marketing pitches and company-funded research, careful but outdated academic research that was difficult for non-specialists to understand, and some online databases with subjective ratings for various options in edtech.


Discussion

This proposed paper presentation will present analysis of the current context in these eight LMICs in which there is popularity and pressure for adopting edtech and yet, simultaneously, little research or data suggesting that scaling edtech will be viable, sustainable, equitable, or effective as a solution in their location. The presentation will detail findings of this study and implications for researchers, funders, education implementers, and policymakers interested in edtech. And the presentation will conclude by introducing a simple technique— built out of the findings of this study— for how decision makers, scaling teams, researchers, and others can evaluate any potential edtech innovation for scaling in a country by way of its MOTIVATION (how much desire exists in the location for adoption), its FEASIBILITY (how viable it is to contextualize and implement at scale), and its SUSTAINABILITY (whether it will last for more than a few years). Use of this heuristic should enable policymakers and educationalists to clearly see where the pressure for adoption is warranted in the location, where more research is needed to make a strategic decision, and how to systematically proceed with evidence-based decision-making for the edtech innovation in question.


Significance and relevance to conference theme

Given this year’s CIES theme, "Envisioning Education in a Digital Society," this empirical analysis and complementary recommendations could not be more relevant. It is clear that policymakers and other education stakeholders around the world are currently being urged to carefully make decisions about adopting, adapting, and supporting the right edtech innovations for scale by way of thoughtful data use in their locations. But unless and until there are researchers able to produce quick and relevant cycles of evidence on specific edtech innovations, this goal will be unmet. And, equally important, policy makers— and the funders, practitioners, researchers and other stakeholders who work alongside them— must be supported to rigorously weigh the potential value against the opportunity costs when choosing currently popular digital innovations over more mundane, but perhaps more promising, ones. The research that informs this paper presentation offers exactly that, and this paper therefore illuminates a path toward how the field can make good on its promises to successfully envision education in a digital society.

Author

• Brad Olsen, The Brookings Institution