Digital education governance in the Global South: new actors and methods in local realities (panel 2)

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Education is undergoing substantial changes amid rapid technological developments. With a growing digitalization, governments, schools and teachers engage with diverse digital educational products, such online platforms, apps, games, learning environments, among others. The advance of technology in education (EdTech) is embedded in grand narratives of transformation, which are particularly present in international education development efforts. The digital is portrayed as capable of reshaping education, bringing innovation, promoting inclusion and solving persistent educational issues. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the digitalization of education and, internationally, new digital products and services are increasingly used to manage education.
The digitalization of education implies new actors, methods, logics and sensibilities of governance. Governance here is understood as both the structural organization of education, which connects actors, groups and institutions in uneven networks, and also as the techniques, concepts and practical tools used to shape human action, decision making, and conduct to achieve specific outcomes (Rose, 1999, Williamson, 2016). For the past decades, there has been an international diffusion of new methods of education governance, such as the reliance on data and large-scale assessments for policy making and a growing role of non-state actors in education. With the wide dissemination of EdTech, educational governance increasingly needs to be understood as digital educational governance. This means that disseminated methods of governance interact with and/or are changed by the use of EdTech. Although being often regarded as the backdrop for more traditional policy making and governance elements, the digitalization of education contribute to and possibly transform other governance aspects (Williamson, 2016).
In contrast to the grand narratives of educational transformation through EdTech and claims of being technical and apolitical, digital systems are created and operationalized by specific actors, with particular world views, sensibilities and goals of reforming education according to certain agendas. Practices and discourses are reframed and power is redistributed in particular ways. The use of EdTech, then, presents both possible benefits and risks, as argued by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to education on the 2022 report. Among the risks, we can highlight increasing inequality, standardizing education in detriment to cultural diversity, growing involvement of commercial actors in education and promoting the datafication of education. Whilst the use of technology in education is hoped to address education needs, it can also maintain or enhance issues. For instance, the digitalization of education has allowed for the collection and systematization of unprecedented data, creating new possibilities and also concerns about privacy and surveillance. The digitalization of education has also been heavily dependent on the engagement of non-state actors, with diverse stakeholders including for-profit companies, philanthropy, venture capital, startup companies and others, allowing for new arrangements that can improve education or limit it as a right through profit-seeking efforts.
These dynamics, however, do not take place in abstract scenarios. They play out in territories with specific historical, political, economic and cultural contexts, which interact with global actors and discourses of digital education governance, framing, reframing, translating and adapting into their local settings. Concerning Global South countries, aspects of education governance, such as funding, government capacity, legal frameworks, power imbalances and inequalities within and between countries, among many other elements, interplay with digital governance in particular ways, imposing specific analysis and discussions. At the same time, local specificities are embedded in the context of globalization, which requires approaches that also consider global trends, movements, flows of people, ideas, money, and relations between the North and the South. Although there is a growing body of research analyzing new digital elements in and of education governance, there are insufficient studies that explore how these new dynamics are being enacted in Global South countries and how they concern Global North/South relations.
This double panel, with a virtual and an on-site panel, aims to discuss how education governance is shifting in relation to the growing digitalization of education, focusing on enactments and implications for the Global South as well as global dynamics, analyzing global trends and local specificities. Governance and digitalization are understood broadly, to allow for contributions from authors working on diverse contexts. They use different theoretical framings and methodological approaches in many empirical settings, including the US, Latin America, East Africa and India. They cover a wide range of topics regarding digital education governance, discussing aspects of data, privacy and surveillance; new actors, privatization and commodification; the roles played by governments (at national and local levels), multilateral organizations (such as the World Bank International Finance Corporation’s - IFC and the Inter-American Development Bank - IADB), EdTech startups, big tech companies and venture capital investors, as well civil society organizations, exploring alternatives to commercial EdTech. Nonetheless, all presentations address how the use of technology is changing the ways in which education is governed, engaging with questions of how decisions are made, whose voices and interests are valid and which groups are excluded, which rationalities prevail, what structures of power and politics sustain these new models and how these dynamics play out in local and global contexts.

Sub Unit

• Globalization & Education SIG

Chair

• Moira V Faul, NORRAG, Geneva Graduate Institute

Individual Presentations

• Improving Schooling through the Digitisation of Governance: A case study from India - Radhika Gorur, Deakin University

• EdTech startups to solve educational problems: a case study from Brazil - Marina Avelar, Federal University of Minas Gerais

Discussant

• Janja Komljenovic, Lancaster University