Online schools for women and girls in Afghanistan. Is that an option?

• In Event: A focus on community: Civil society and non-formal approaches to education and peacebuilding for crisis-affected learners

Proposal

Introduction and Context
Afghanistan's educational landscape has endured a tumultuous journey, particularly for women and girls constrained by traditional and religious barriers over the years. Despite notable strides in recent years toward advancing girls' education, in 2021, the education sector witnessed a stark decline in female enrollment following the Taliban’s ban on girls' education. According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization [UNESCO] (2023), the number of girls attending primary schools surged from nearly zero in 2001 to 2.5 million in 2018. By August 2021, girls constituted 40% of the student population at the primary level (UNESCO, 2023). However, since September 2021, approximately 1.5 million girls aged 12 and above have been indefinitely barred from schools (e.g., public, private, and girls only) (UNESCO, 2024).

Against this backdrop, both national and international stakeholders began exploring alternatives for girls' education, chief among them online classes.
Objective
In this presentation, we seek to present our empirical findings from a mixed-method study that we conducted throughout the spring and summer of 2024. Its preliminary results were presented at the XVIII World Congress of Comparative Education Societies in July 2024. This study examined online education's efficiencies, challenges, and prospects for girls and women in Afghanistan. Our research focused on key factors such as trust in online learning, student motivation, access to information and technology, social media use, and family support.
Rationale
Our study closely aligns with the 2025 theme and the focus of the Education in Conflict and Emergencies SIG for Afghanistan, which is a fragile state in the international arena. Further, this paper highlights the complexities of access, offerings, provision, and acquisition of knowledge through digital means in Afghanistan, a protracted conflict environment, from both research and practice standpoints. Moreover, from a social justice lens, our findings point to the larger disparities between different communities and how these inequities converge in gender identity and socioeconomic status.

Theoretical and Conceptual Framing
The challenges surrounding girls' education in Afghanistan have been persistent over the years, marked by various hurdles and setbacks. As a result, different alternatives (village-based, home-based schools, and online schools) have been sought at various junctures to curb the ensuing damages of these restrictive policies and praxis (Burde & Linden, 2013; Kirk & Winthrop, 2006; Kissane, 2012). Following the COVID-19 pandemic, online education emerged as an alternative to traditional schooling (Paudel, 2021). While online education has supplanted most countries' traditional face-to-face classroom model, Afghanistan's transition has been marked by unique challenges. These challenges include unreliable internet connectivity and frequent power outages among the many (Khuram, 2021). Having an in-depth understanding of these dynamics while underscoring that these online schools serve diverse populations across Afghanistan with various gender and ethnic identities, linguistic and cultural backgrounds, and socioeconomic status, we adopted Kirkhart’s (1995) multicultural validity drove theoretical framing of this study, its methodological orientation and the actual administration of data collection instruments.
Methods
We utilized a mixed methods design for this study that involved collecting quantitative and qualitative information through a survey questionnaire, interviews, and focus groups. We used a mixed methods explanatory sequential design that allowed for a fuller contextualization of findings and we collected qualitative data in the first phase, analyzed the results, and then used the results to plan the quantitative phase and gain an in-depth understanding of concepts, themes, and phenomena (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2018). We used purposeful sampling strategies in both the quantitative and qualitative.

All interviews with administrators and focus groups with parents were audio recorded and automatically transcribed by Zoom. We cleaned and de-identified transcriptions. We conducted a thematic coding analysis (Corbin & Strauss, 2008) on all transcripts and paired thematic coding analysis with elaborative coding (Saldaña, 2016). We used qualitative data to construct our 57-item survey questionnaire, which included nine constructs and demographic questions. The questionnaire provided a quantitative or numeric description of students' perceptions of their schools (Creswell & Creswell, 2022; Fowler, 2014). The instrument was translated into Farsi and Pashto and back-translated into English for readability and was deployed to Google Forms; 222 students, all women, completed the survey.

Results, Implications, and Conclusion
Our findings demonstrate that almost all of the programs are pursuing the former curriculum framework that was devised and formulated by the former Ministry of Education. Almost all of the administrators (n=8) reported that their schools were not using any learning management system, which aligns with our survey findings, where 76% of the students (n=168) indicated receiving instructions via various social media platforms, including YouTube. Similarly, these schools do not have enrollment, quality assurance, assessment, and graduation systems in place. When asked about their hopes and concerns, parents expressed their concerns about the uncertain future of their daughters, given the current situation.

We conclude that these online programs can offer some form of education to women and girls in Afghanistan. Overall, the programs can serve as supplementary to traditional schooling but not as an alternative. Access to information and technology and ensuing technical issues continue to limit the scope and depth of online education programs in Afghanistan. Finally, we recommend that human rights actors and educational activists (i) continue advocacy at international and regional levels through multilateral and faith-based organizations in support of reopening schools for the girls; (ii) continue advocacy for greater investment in strengthening existing programs to expand their LMS, quality assurance, learning assessment, admissions, and graduation systems, processes and mechanisms (iii) work with international third-party quality assurance and accreditation agencies to accredited diplomas and transcripts offered by these programs. The significance of this study lies in its timely exploration of online education as the sole viable option for girls and women in Afghanistan who have been denied access to traditional schooling.

Authors

• Nasir Kaihan, Arizona State University

• Shokria Ahmadi