Failure to Localize: How Digital SEL May Exacerbate Inequities in Humanitarian Contexts

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

Proposal

Compounding crises, such as armed conflict, poverty, and displacement, create major barriers to accessing education, learning, and wellbeing. Despite decades of humanitarian action intended to combat education inequalities, in access, quality, and outcomes, disparities persist. In an attempt to narrow the gap, the education in emergencies (EiE) project has tried a multitude of strategies and solutions designed for comparatively wealthy, stable contexts. As the whole world turned into a state of “crisis” during the COVID-19 pandemic, the focus in education turned to digitization to increase access and social emotional learning (SEL) to address the negative social-emotional and mental health effects of the pandemic (Hamilton, et al, 2021). These trends aimed to address pre-existing gaps that were exposed and new challenges that emerged. Both digitization and SEL took root in the field of EiE as well, where basic access to electricity, technology, school structures, qualified teachers, and even relevant curricula are lacking. A rapid evidence review conducted in 2020 highlighted the potential for EdTech to support learning and well-being, while also demonstrating the need for community participation and the risk of exacerbating existing inequalities, and further marginalizing the most marginalized young people who do not have access to technology (Morris & Farrell, 2020).
To address the challenges of relevance and inequitable effects of learning, and specifically of SEL, the field invoked the discourse of localization. Localization emerged as a humanitarian priority with the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit, where actors pledged to make humanitarian action “as local as possible and as international as necessary.” Yet locally-driven efforts remain a long-term goal. Local actors feel excluded from humanitarian coordination mechanisms; priorities and decisions continue to be made at the international level, not driven by local needs and interests (Robillard, et al, 2021).
The intersection of digitization, SEL, and localization presents yet another opportunity for the expansion of global powers’ priorities in crisis-affected communities. This paper proposes that the confluence of the rise of digitization, SEL, and localization may unintentionally serve to maintain and even exacerbate existing inequities. Trends in EiE are primarily based on evidence and expectations driven by global north donors, rather than local communities. Digitization of education relies on the access and consistency of technology that is present in the US, for example, but is not readily available in many EiE contexts. The rise of SEL was driven by the robust evidence in the West (e.g., Durlak, et. al., 2011) and driven by international actors (e.g. USAID, 2019). The drive to localize these approaches was based on their success in a vastly different, stable context. However, the barriers to localization (i.e., inequitable structures, power dynamics, and capacity concerns (Robillard, et al, 2021)) suggest that it, too, may unintentionally be at odds with existing humanitarian aid structures and realities in EiE contexts. This paper problematizes the discourse of localization when it comes to providing donor-driven content (SEL) through inaccessible modalities (i.e., digitally)

Author

• Rena Deitz, New York University