Digitized SEL in Crisis Contexts: Bridging or Widening the Digital Divide?

• In Event: Problematizing the “Digital Society”: The Digital Education Divide in Crisis Contexts

Proposal

Social and emotional learning (SEL) has become a highly popular, yet hotly debated topic. Over the last 30 years, SEL has not only been taken up by national governments interested in integrating SEL into their education systems, but also global actors like UNESCO and the World Bank who position SEL as integral for the global human rights, development, and sustainability (MGIEP-UNESCO, 2022). More recently, SEL has been widely taken up by the Education in Emergencies (EiE) community as an intervention with the potential to boost academic achievement and support psychosocial well-being, trauma-recovery, and resiliency for crisis-affected learners (INEE, 2018).
In the wake of recent social and civic unrest, particularly in the U.S., SEL has found itself at the heart of discussions related to race, equity, and social justice. Polarized critiques of SEL simultaneously position it as a classroom management tool that controls children’s bodies and affects (Stearns 2019), a vehicle for critical race theory (Anderson 2022), and a pedagogical approach that privileges whiteness and serves to police and/or ‘fix’ non-white students (Kaler-Jones 2020). Though, these debates have yet to meaningfully permeate the EiE community.
More recently, these debates have merged with discourse on the digital divide. While the digital divide has been present since the rise of technology, the COVID-19 pandemic emphasized and exacerbated it. During this time, urgent concern for children’s socialization and emotional wellbeing, in addition to their academic learning, resulted in the investment of significant resources to digitize SEL for home and distance learning. While EdTech’s engagement with SEL existed prior to the pandemic, since 2020 the EdTech industry has seized the opportunity to massively expand and capitalize on the digitization of SEL. However, while various transformative, anti-racist, anti-colonial, and social justice approaches to SEL aim to produce more equitable programming, critics highlight that SEL will never be equitable unless digital equity is also achieved (Thompson, 2021).
This paper highlights how EdTech originally made its way into EiE work through the use of radios, basic cell phones, and television, and has become more sophisticated over time with the introduction of computers, tablets, and smartphones. This has been complemented by expanded access to internet and wifi, the development of educational software and digital curricula, and the introduction of gamification and app-based modes of learning and communication (Ashlee et al., 2020; Tauson & Stannard, 2018). While much of this work has centered on basics like literacy and numeracy, since the COVID-19 pandemic SEL has slowly become a priority for EdTech solutions in crisis contexts. However, just as there are limited discussions in the EiE world related to SEL and equity, this paper highlights how there is also a lack of critical reflection on the equity implications of EdTech in crisis contexts and how digital SEL interventions—and digital education interventions more broadly—have the potential to both bridge and widen the digital divide for crisis-affected communities. Though, some actors like War Child Alliance are beginning to address this lacuna.

Author

• Kelsey A. Dalrymple, University of Wisconsin-Madison