A new UNESCO report on technology in education, titled “Technology in Education: A Tool on Whose Terms?”, was launched on 19 July 2023 in Montevideo, Uruguay, highlighting the lack of appropriate governance and regulation of technology in education, and urges countries to set their own terms for the way technology is designed and used in education. The report also proposes four questions that policy makers and educational stakeholders should reflect upon as technology is being deployed in education: Is it appropriate? Is it equitable? Is it scalable? Is it sustainable?
According to the report, technology can be a useful tool for learning, but it is important to use it wisely. Studies have shown that technology can improve learning in some contexts, but only if it is used in moderation and in conjunction with qualified teachers. It is also important to monitor student use of technology to ensure that it is not being used as a distraction. However, there are also some challenges to using technology in education, such as the widening of learning inequities between students when instruction is exclusively remote and online content is not always context appropriate. A study of open educational resource collections found that nearly 90% of higher education online repositories were created either in Europe or in North America; 92% of the material in the Open Educational Resources Commons global library is in English.
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the inequities in access to education, as the shift to online learning left out at least half a billion students, mostly affecting the poorest and those in rural areas. The right to education is increasingly synonymous with the right to meaningful connectivity, yet one in four primary schools do not have electricity. All countries should set benchmarks for connecting schools to the internet between now and 2030, with a focus on the most marginalized.
In addition, there is a lack of sound, rigorous, and impartial evidence of the added value of technology in learning. Most evidence comes from the United States, where the What Works Clearinghouse found that less than 2% of education interventions assessed had “strong or moderate evidence of effectiveness.” When the evidence only comes from technology companies, there is a risk of bias. Many countries ignore the long-term costs of technology purchases, and the EdTech market is expanding while basic education needs remain unmet. The cost of moving to basic digital learning in low-income countries and connecting all schools to the internet in lower-middle-income countries would add 50% to their current financing gap for achieving national SDG 4 targets. A full digital transformation of education with internet connectivity in schools and homes would cost over a billion per day just to operate.
The report further emphasized that the rapid pace of technological change is putting a strain on education systems as they try to adapt. Digital literacy and critical thinking are becoming increasingly important, particularly with the growth of generative AI. However, there is a lack of curricula for AI in many countries, and only half of countries have standards for developing teachers’ ICT skills. Additionally, only 16% of countries guarantee data privacy in education by law. These challenges must be addressed in order to ensure that education systems are prepared for the future. One analysis found that 89% of 163 education technology products could survey children. Further, 39 of 42 governments providing online education during the pandemic fostered uses that ‘risked or infringed’ on children’s rights.