BackHome
Refresh: OffView Personal Schedule
Session Submission Summary
Share...

Direct link:

Highlighted Session: Educating for inclusion beyond the pandemic: Digitalization, distance education and the teaching profession in Central Asia

Sun, February 19, 9:45 to 11:15am EST (9:45 to 11:15am EST), Grand Hyatt Washington, Floor: Declaration Level (1B), Declaration B

Group Submission Type: Highlighted Paper Session

Proposal

The global commitment to ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education for all, recorded in Goal 4 of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, has been recognized as a universal and transformative goal to help address global and national education challenges. Yet, as the mid-term deadline approaches, a large gap is evident between the current situation in education and that projected for 2030. The July 2022 Global Education Monitoring report puts this very clearly, noting that even if countries achieve their benchmarks, “the world will not achieve SDG 4”.

The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent global issues have worsened the situation and caused huge upheavals in the world’s education systems. School closures and the rapid shift to distance learning have created enormous problems and in 2020 affected “nearly 1.6 billion students in more than 190 countries and on all continents”. This translates to 94 per cent of the world's student population and “up to 99 per cent in low- and lower-middle income countries”.

As well as highlighting inequalities and vulnerabilities for learners, the role of teachers and the teaching profession has also come under the spotlight during the pandemic. As the UN has noted, “the transformation of education and the achievement of SDG 4 rely heavily on teachers”. Teachers have been essential in ensuring the continuity of learning for students during the pandemic, yet many have faced issues relating to lack of preparation, lack of digital and pedagogical skills, and lack of support for their own wellbeing. In many countries, there is an overall shortage of teachers, and the teaching profession has lost some of the esteem in which it had formerly been held.

This panel takes up three key global education issues exposed by the pandemic – digitalization, distance education, and the teaching profession. The panel presents new empirical findings from an international research project ‘Distance education to improve quality and access in Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia and Tajikistan’ which focuses on innovative approaches to distance education in these three Central Asian countries. These are settings where many educational inequalities intersect and also countries where the national governments have expressed their commitment to future-proofing education specifically in the areas of digitalization, distance education, and the teaching profession.

In the Kyrgyz Republic, Mongolia and Tajikistan, forced school closures during the pandemic further exposed existing problems in the school system, principally relating to the state of material and technical equipment, levels of teacher training and preparation, and unequal distribution of resources. During this time, gender disparities in education became more acute and there was an increase in domestic violence. Vulnerable children were excluded from the educational process due to socio-economic and/or health reasons. Where there are high levels of poverty, there has been limited access to quality education, including access to e-learning resources and distance learning. In addition, connecting schools to the Internet remains acutely problematic, especially in the most remote areas where there are problems with electricity supply. Long distances to school are a serious problem for Mongolian schoolchildren.

Governments in these countries formally announced priorities and policies for digitalization in education even before Covid-19 and responded with measures to train and build the digital competencies of teachers, but these have been insufficient. Although distance learning is seen as a necessary and effective way to continue the continuity of education, the first experiences in these countries have been very mixed regarding its organization and quality assurance. The underdeveloped digital infrastructure, teachers’ lack of digital competencies and students’ lack of skills have all led to increasing inequalities in education in the countries. The need for a situational analysis of the approaches and actions taken during the COVID-19 pandemic in order to develop new strategies on the part of the state is more relevant than ever.

Despite the relevance of the comparison and the possibilities for knowledge transfer from these three Global South contexts, these countries are often excluded from an education discourse dominated by the Global North. As such, this panel not only adds valuable evidence-driven findings that seek to contribute to greater educational inclusion and better prepared teachers but brings to the forefront multiple perspectives (presentations will be given by a government minister, the international research project coordinators, and national researchers) that can support the conference’s call to reshape education for a more equitable world.

The research project is led by Kyrgyz Republic-based Taalim-Forum with their partners Anahita (Tajikistan) and Nomadic Nature Conservation (Mongolia); three organizations with solid experience working in remote regions, in developing and implementing educational initiatives, and with strong links with governmental, local and international organizations. The research is supported by the International Development Research Centre (Canada).

The overall research questions underpinning this three year project are:
1) What are the specific vulnerabilities of different groups learning through distance education?
a) How different are the vulnerabilities by gender, ethnic minority, and for children living in remote communities?
b) Are other inequalities and vulnerable groups emerging in the countries?

2) Where have innovative distance education practices emerged?
a) How is ‘innovation’ defined by different educational stakeholders?
b) Who produces innovative practices?
c) How could such practices be scaled up (e.g. for different vulnerable groups, in different settings)?

Theoretically, this project is informed by the work of Bourdieu, Tonnies, Latour, Grisay and others, providing an excellent lens through which we can understand and analyse what exactly are the inequalities in education (in general) and in distance education (in particular) in the three countries. A discourse approach is crucial to answering the question of why certain phenomena (in this case, inequalities) arise and persist. In addition, feminist principles of empathy, trust, respect, global justice and shared responsibility support an intersectional approach that is based on the experiences and expertise of different stakeholders.

Sub Unit

Chair

Individual Presentations