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Towards learning equity: What should (and shouldn’t) be scaled up?

Tue, February 21, 2:45 to 4:15pm EST (2:45 to 4:15pm EST), Grand Hyatt Washington, Floor: Declaration Level (1B), Penn Quarter B

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal #4 (SDG4) has placed a high priority on the on learning equity. However, SDG4, as designed, is mainly normative: that is, the goal tends to emphasize averages across nations, with relatively limited attention to variations within countries and contexts. As designed today, most educational systems are primarily normative: that is, their goal tends to emphasize averages across nations (as evidenced by OECD and UIS-UNESCO indices), with less attention to variations within countries, contexts and, for example, specific language communities.

Children who are learning at the bottom of the pyramid (LBOP; Author, 2018) often receive the least resources, and are likely to be less targeted for support by educational leaders and policymakers in LMICs. The papers in this panel explore the multiple dimensions of improving learning for such poor, disadvantaged, and marginalized children in low-income countries. In particular, for many international stakeholders, a key policy focus on learning equity is to achieve programs that promote learning “at scale”.

In this panel, papers explore the origins, promises, and limitations of the notion of learning at scale. The panel will bring together specialists in research, policy and practice who have been involved, in various ways, at promoting learning equity to achieve SDG4.

The concept of “scaling up” educational reforms can be effectively traced to the work of Elmore (1996) over recent decades. In an influential article in 1996, Elmore claimed that educational reform should include “promising educational practices might be developed and adopted ‘at scale.”’ Stated another way, ‘”scale” should include a drive for a kind of uniformity that makes the world more intelligible to people who are “uncomfortable with complexity.”’ Nearly 25 years later, Elmore sought to distance himself from this notion, stating that “scale” for its own sake is less important than “demonstrating that powerful ideas can work in diverse environments” (Elmore, 2016). In other words, he argued against producing predictable and replicable effects across settings, and more towards reforms that emerge organically from diverse settings of practice.

This historical perspective leads to an important dialectic: that is “scaling up” versus “scaling down.” The former (scaling up) is heavily influenced by the private sector, and in particular the digital economy, that sees advances in terms of “silver bullets” or “leap frogging”, where expansion can achieve lower unit-costs by reaching large numbers of students (Robinson & Winthrop, 2016; Piper, Oyanga, Mejia & Pouezevara, 2017; World Bank, 2016; Olsen, 2022). The latter (scaling down; Meyerson, 2016) implies (as with Elmore 2016) that adaptation and context sensitive approaches to better and more equitable learning outcomes derives from greater focus on context sensitivity – by paying particular attention to variations in socioeconomic status, language, and gender, as well as changes in globalization, migration, civil conflict and more.

The structure of educational systems has most often resulted in preparing a select group of advantaged pupils for progression to the next stage of education. Today, the greatly expanded access to education as part of the UN SDGs has resulted in massive increases in the dispersion of pupils’ learning outcomes – raising both inequality and inequity in the form of pyramidal education and learning outcomes. In the present panel we consider how recent research addresses the topic of improving learning equity in local and global contexts, with a focus on the opportunities and opportunities of working towards learning equity “at scale.”

The four panel papers are provided by senior scholars in the field. The first paper – entitled “Moving from an “education system” to a “learning system”: Scaling-up vs. scaling-down” – considers learning equity issues within marginalized populations in global and local contexts. Building on the distinction between scaling up and scaling down, the paper concludes with recommendations for reducing learning inequities through the strengthening of learning systems. The second paper – entitled “Learning equity gets a short shrift in funding: A local agency perspective in India” – provides an agency-centric perspective on foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN) programs, and the current scaling up constraints that they face. The third paper -– entitled “Equity in education at scale in Mexico. What does it mean?” – focuses on national data from Mexico, with a particular focus on how national programs will need to scale down in order to concentrate further resources on those who are from marginalized and Indigenous communities. The fourth paper – entitled “What can RCTs across 5 countries on Covid-19 distance education approaches tell us about the value of large-scale studies?” – provides findings from five empirical interventions using a similar scale-up approach to distance education during the Covid-19 pandemic. The author argues that such RCTs support the importance of large-scale intervention designs.

Following these four papers and there will be two discussants, very well-known for their work in this field.

In sum, the overall focus of this panel is to expand the conversation about learning for all in low-income countries by bringing greater attention to reducing learning inequalities within countries in an increasingly globalized world. Even though the SDG4 clearly mandates a focus on issues of inclusion and marginalization in LMICs, there are many obstacles that make achievement difficult – one of these is distinction between scaling up and scaling down and its impact on learning equity.

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