Ethical challenges in between digitalisation and education

• In Event: Digital futures and schooling: between global debates and regional experiences

Proposal

There is no doubt that recent digitalisation processes have transformed education – and will continue to do so – in ways that are evolving, complex, and often seem to outstrip our ability to understand and analyse them. A minority of humanity is represented on the web and in technology companies; the majority is not. Yet, learning and education are embedded in history, culture, and contexts. These inherently defy automation because automation or digitalisation works by reducing or flattening this phenomenon to the bare minimum. Inequities in the digitalisation of education reflect real-world (human-created, non-technological, non-AI) inequalities. Much technology resembles its techno-optimistic, corporate, relatively privileged designers. It is not by chance that most of the research we draw on in this review paper is produced by people who do not (Brihane et al., 2022; Buolamwini & Gebru, 2018; Gebru, 2020; Gorur & Dey, 2021). Technology holds the potential to address certain inequalities.
Nevertheless, it can also reinforce and amplify existing inequalities while creating new harms if we do not scrutinise questions of equity in the design and deployment of technology systems in education. Digitalisation in education is not a binary on/off. Addressing the ethical issues posed by current developments in the digitalisation of education does not mean abandoning it. In this paper, we foreground the ethical challenges that arise regarding digitalisation use in education (whether as a private, public or common good) and consider how to put human and planetary flourishing at the heart of EdTech decision-making, development and deployment.

Author

• Moira V Faul, NORRAG, Geneva Graduate Institute