Crisis Management for Disaster Risk Reduction in Education Systems: Learning from the Elaboration and Integration of Technology-Focused Strategies

• In Event: Designing and Implementing EiE Research for a more equitable world: Emerging outputs from the E-Cubed Research Fund

Proposal

The COVID-19 pandemic led to an unprecedented disruption of education around the world. In this context, government reaction centered, first, on organizing committees to prepare crisis response proposals together with non-governmental organizations and international cooperation agencies (PREAL, 2020). Second, government response largely focused on educational technologies to keep students engaged. States were thus managing processes of crisis response preparation while simultaneously implementing new learning technologies that went beyond the traditional focus on equipment acquisition (e.g., computers).

With the above in mind, this presentation’s purpose is to provide insights from a systematic review of the literature about (a) how education systems have responded to crises contexts, (b) the factors that have contributed to the successful implementation of technology-focused crisis response strategies in the education sector, and (c) the ways that local-level actors have experienced the technology strategies on which crisis response in education has been based, and with what consequences. Put differently, our review aims at analyzing literature on:
1. The kinds of technology-focused strategies that key stakeholders at centralized and decentralized levels have employed in responding to crises in education systems,
2. The factors that have encouraged or inhibited the successful implementation of technology-focused crisis response strategies, and
3. How local-level actors (principals, teachers, parents, students, etc.) have experienced the technology-centered strategies on which crisis response has been based.
4. The results achieved by technology-focused crisis response strategies, and the conditions associated with their emergence.

Relevant literature has been identified through a search of the Web of Science. We developed and refined search criteria related to education, technology, and crisis. In the first round of review, we evaluated ~900 results (titles/abstracts). The second round of analysis (of the 282 retained articles) focused on the extraction of relevant information related to the objectives above. That is, retained studies speak to crisis response development and implementation in/for public primary and secondary schools and include all subject areas taught in these settings.

Findings shared are based on a synthesis of insights. These findings are then discussed through the combination of two frameworks. The first is a technology governance framework, which draws attention to the structures, processes, and relational mechanisms that affect an organization’s incorporation of new technologies across and within organizational levels (De Haes & Van Grembergen, 2005). The second framework—rooted in systems-thinking—highlights the social, organizational, leadership, technological, and pedagogic factors that contribute to the successful implementation of distance learning technologies in practice, as judged, e.g., by student engagement, faculty satisfaction, sustainability, and scalability (Menchaca & Bekele, 2008). These frameworks complement one another and correspond directly to the literature review objectives stated above.

As will be discussed, the insights provided are novel precisely because they intersect with, but also go beyond, a number of literatures that tend not to speak to one another. These bodies of literature relate to disaster risk reduction (e.g., Amri et al., 2018), crisis management responses (Fischer et al., 2016), educational administration and decentralization (Edwards & DeMatthews, 2014), and technology integration studies (Peterson, 2004).

Authors

• D. Brent Edwards, University of Hawaii

• Mauro C Moschetti, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

• Patricia Grillet, University of Hawaii