The opportunity in adversity: technology as an instrument of antifragility in school responses to Covid-19

• In Event: Digital technologies and initiatives supporting education during the COVID-19 pandemic

Proposal

COVID-19 prompted a global rethink of schooling, forcing an unprecedented transition to virtual education that was mediated by the digital divide. Yet, in the Indian context, the lived experiences of the pandemic within schools and communities at the disadvantaged end of the digital divide remain under-researched. The prevailing emphasis within scholarship has been on taking stock of systemic failures to build resilience for future crises, with mainstream schooling being the central focus. In this context, my piece will share qualitative evidence from the case of a low-resource educational NGO in India and how, despite severely limited digital access, it leveraged technology as a tool to not only withstand the pandemic but ‘evolve’ from it. The NGO provides elementary education to children from migrant families, with little to no literacy among parents, no access to videoconferencing technology, and few mobile phones to a household, if at all. Against the backdrop of a nationwide migrant exodus, the transition to online education in such a context became an exercise in balancing resource constraints with education provision, community support, personal obligations, and compliance with state mandates. Yet, the NGO’s experience of the crisis reveals unexpected ameliorations and exercises of agency in managing these competing factors and navigating the digital divide. My paper will explore some of these everyday negotiations, examining how the COVID-19 pandemic affected the lives and roles of NGO stakeholders. It will spotlight the key role of technology in facilitating the organisational innovations, adaptations, strategies and perspectives that developed out of pandemic-induced pressures. In doing so, it explores some of the complexities, challenges, and opportunities of attempting to harness technology as an instrument to recast roles, spaces, and processes; support pedagogical innovations; build cross-stakeholder relationships; and streamline communications and monitoring. This includes, for instance, using the lockdown as an opportunity to extend foundational literacy and numeracy to parents through their children, in an upward-directional, intergenerational flow of education. Situated within the Critical Realist paradigm, this research is anchored by Nassim Taleb’s (2012) notion of antifragility, or crisis-induced growth, which guides the case selection, methods, and ongoing analysis for this research. Designed by drawing on key literature from seminal methodological sourcebooks (Guba and Lincoln, 1985; Yin, 2003) and leading voices on COVID-19, schooling, and international and comparative education (Reimers et al., 2022; Reimers, 2021; Rose, 2015), this work responds to three key questions: 1) How was non-state elementary education experienced by its various stakeholders during the significant disruptions caused by COVID-19? 2) In what ways did such schooling demonstrate antifragility during these disruptions? 3) What can studying the adaptive actions of non-state schools in response to COVID-19 reveal about antifragility in present education systems? My paper will present emerging findings and analysis from this retrospective exploratory (Yin, 2003; Mills et al., 2010) research study. Designed as an embedded case study (Yin, 2003), the research draws on primary qualitative data collected through visits to a purposive sample (Patton, 2015) of four of the twenty-nine school branches run by the NGO. The visits were conducted from February to September 2023, with 5–6 weeks spent at each branch. The data sources comprised extensive field notes from participant and non-participant observation; artefact analysis; 22 semi-structured interviews with teachers, management-members and other stakeholders; photovoice conducted with 20 student participants aged 12–16; and four focus group discussions with students’ parents (Creswell, 2007; Merriam and Tisdell, 2009). The diversity of data sources allowed for a comprehensive gauging of how the pandemic was experienced by different stakeholders associated with the NGO, as well as the considerations guiding the organisational response to COVID-19. This range of data collection methods facilitated triangulation and extensive exploration of the subject matter, mitigating some of the validity threats associated with retrospective research (Mills et al., 2010). The objective of data analysis is to 1) explore how NGO operations were affected by the pandemic and 2) identify the factors enabling an antifragile institutional response to COVID-19. The data was transcribed, digitised, descriptively coded, and is now being thematically analysed using NVivo (Miles et al., 2013). The data will then be grouped into meta-patterns or themes using inductive coding, drawing also on a-priori codes developed during early readings and a pilot study (Guest et al., 2013). This data will be evaluated for organisational values, goals, operations, and circumstances (economic, political, cultural, social, etc.). Tools including framework matrices and logic models for systemic reform (Yin, 2003: 131-32) will be used to evaluate the complex dynamics underlying the schools’ response to COVID-19. This will be followed by the Critical Realist processes of abduction and retroduction (Fletcher, 2017), drawing on theories of organisational change, educational change, disaster management, and others to supplement and contextualise the findings within existing literature. With implications for post-pandemic educational design, the research explores how crisis can be leveraged as an opportunity for transformation and enable departure from entrenched practices and perspectives. Seeking lessons in resource optimisation and adaptive innovation, this work is significant for its emphasis on tracing real-time evolutions precipitated by crises. Where mainstream Indian education, a system said to be facing intractable difficulties (Vasavi, 2019), was further challenged by COVID-19, the case of this NGO promises to shed light on successful organisational adaptation. With more such crises predicted to be on the horizon (Mathew, 2022: 94), I argue that studying such examples could catalyse significant learnings about how to extend the power of technology in an unequal world bracing for ever-greater transformations and uncertainties. Although further research is required on the factors enhancing antifragility in educational institutions, I argue that the significance of this work ultimately lies in 1) its spotlighting of a form of education whose experience of the pandemic has largely remained in shadow, particularly in Asia; 2) its operationalisation of antifragility and its provision of a framework for evaluating antifragility within educational institutions; and 3) its suggestion of an avenue for imagining post-COVID educational futures that pushes the debate a step beyond the pervasive but static notion of resilience towards a more dynamic, responsive, and evolving model.

Author

• Nikita Jha, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge