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

Direct link:

Digital futures and schooling: between global debates and regional experiences

Sun, March 23, 9:45 to 11:00am, Palmer House, Floor: 7th Floor, Dearborn 3

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

This panel results from cooperation between two organisations from the Global North and South, the Network for International Policies and Cooperation in Education (NORRAG) and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). Both have an extensive history in the field of education and offer innovative perspectives on the relationship between digitalisation and education. The panel’s objective is to present a reflection on the contributions of digitalisation to the expansion of schooling and analyse its present and future risks. Additionally, it aims to highlight the regional inequalities that arise with the incorporation of digital technologies in education.
Educational systems have long been structured around the expansion of school technology. This technology took shape during the 17th century and became a structuring part of nation-states during the 19th century. From an organisational standpoint, its main attribute was the placement of a teacher and a group of students in the form of a class group, all located within a single distributive unit, the school building. From a pedagogical perspective, its main attribute was the structuring of teaching around the simultaneous method: one teacher taught everyone the same thing at the same time. The pace of progress within the school was organised around gradualism, a mechanism that allowed knowledge to be distributed according to the students’ ages. This grammar of schooling relied on material and pedagogical resources that filled the classrooms (blackboards, maps, desks, notebooks, posters, etc.), shaping school technology.
The school technology organised by nation-states sought to ensure the expansion of literacy and the incorporation of most of the population into educational systems. As these systems became more widespread, other technologies began to be integrated into the school environment, from documentary projections to the introduction of computers in schools and classrooms. However, these technologies did not alter the structuring attributes of the school form; instead, they complemented it.
The introduction of digital technologies in schooling brought about a change as it transformed both the organisation of teaching and school administration. Indeed, digitalisation in schooling encompasses various areas, including e-learning, online courses, digital resources, virtual classrooms and administrative tools. These transformations create a delocalisation that permeates all layers of educational systems, as it is the educational platforms – managed by various actors – that can organise the school offering.
Among the benefits of digitalisation are increased access and flexibility, the reduction of costs as textbooks and pedagogical materials are not required, the promotion of engagement and motivation through multimedia resource interaction, and the personalisation of learning. The main challenges include the widening of digital divide due to lack of access to devices and/or the Internet, teacher training, over-reliance on technology – for both teachers and students – as well as issues related to cybersecurity and privacy, and screen fatigue.
Digitalisation opens up opportunities but also affects the regulatory factors of the educational system: it is no longer clear who distributes what, to whom, how and for what purpose. This issue also requires understanding that technology’s impact on education is complex and shaped by broader social, economic and political forces.
This panel is situated at the intersection between the diffusion of global discourses accelerating the digitalisation shift and the review of Latin American experiences, which reflect new theoretical and experienced-based constructions. These serve as a pivot to clarify the achievements and challenges posed by digitalisation while projecting the contributions of empirical research on the changes occurring in schooling. They also help to highlight the risks of widening material and symbolic gaps stemming from particular conceptions of the relationship between digitalisation and education.
To this end, the session offers five presentations followed by comments from a discussant. The first presents an overview reflection on the potentialities of technology to address certain inequalities while reinforcing existing ones. Based on a literature review, it addresses the need to scrutinise questions of equity in the design and deployment of technology systems in education. As the author proposes, digitalisation in education is not a binary on/off, so addressing the ethical issues posed by current developments in the digitalisation of education does not mean abandoning it.
The second paper moves to the Latin American region to analyse the importance of developing digital skills within education systems. The paper reviews the main conceptual frameworks being used globally to define digital skills and the types of empirical measurements and tests applied in Latin America, the Caribbean, and internationally among students. Based on the 2022 PISA tests, the paper compares the level of development of students' digital skills in the region with those from high-income countries, identifying the principal axes of inequality at the regional level and within countries.
Along the same lines, the third paper explores the opportunities for developing digital critical literacy within the framework of AI platform adoption. It focuses on the possibilities of such development in the socio-technical conditions that characterize the relationship between digitalisation and education in three different countries: Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. These countries present diverse trajectories and material conditions to assemble responses to the social impacts of AI platform adoption. This diversity might broaden the digital divide within the Latin American region.
The fourth paper introduces the Brazilian case, characterised by a vast socio-economic disparity and diverse educational landscape, together with significant investments in expanding access to ICT. Through the analysis of data from key national surveys, the paper sheds light on the challenges schools face in implementing digital education policies, particularly in public schools that serve low-income populations.
The last paper draws lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic. Based on national research conducted in Argentina through surveys of secondary school principals and teachers, it warns about the differences between public and private sector schools when using digital technologies to reorganise teaching and learning.
In sum, the papers in this session examine, through theoretical and empirical analyses, the tension underlying the advance of digitalisation in schooling at the global scale and the risks of increasing inequalities at the regional level.

Sub Unit

Organizers

Chair

Individual Presentations

Discussant