Guest editorial: dynamic accounts of digital divides: longitudinal insights into inequitable access to online learning
Guest editorial: dynamic accounts of digital divides: longitudinal insights into inequitable access to online learning
Educational access is the first step to realising education as a universal human right. Yet, education remains a luxury for many. Contrary to expectations, the advent of online learning has not resolved this fundamental injustice as out-of-school learning and early drop-outs remain widespread phenomena. Rather, digital divides have hit hard in exacerbating social inequalities, with help from Covid-19. This special issue takes a critical look at online learning in its potential to rebalance and hinder universal educational access. It includes four papers focused on differing positions of disadvantage. Based on these papers, this special issue highlights that — although it is possible for disadvantaged learners to compensate for inequities — socioeconomic and infrastructural constraints often prevail, and will continue to unless critical changes are made to the educational ecosystem. Furthermore, the Special Issue calls for future work that takes process-level changes into account in order to generate recommendations that are better grounded in iterative change and causality: only then can actionable and impactful changes be made for a more equitable future of online learning.
Disadvantage, Educational access, Longitudinal research, Online learning, Social justice
104-107
McIntyre, Nora
c9a9ecfb-10a7-4f59-b1f5-652f9db2f28f
31 May 2023
McIntyre, Nora
c9a9ecfb-10a7-4f59-b1f5-652f9db2f28f
McIntyre, Nora
(2023)
Guest editorial: dynamic accounts of digital divides: longitudinal insights into inequitable access to online learning.
Educational Technology and Society, 26 (4), .
(doi:10.30191/ETS.202310_26(4).0007).
Abstract
Educational access is the first step to realising education as a universal human right. Yet, education remains a luxury for many. Contrary to expectations, the advent of online learning has not resolved this fundamental injustice as out-of-school learning and early drop-outs remain widespread phenomena. Rather, digital divides have hit hard in exacerbating social inequalities, with help from Covid-19. This special issue takes a critical look at online learning in its potential to rebalance and hinder universal educational access. It includes four papers focused on differing positions of disadvantage. Based on these papers, this special issue highlights that — although it is possible for disadvantaged learners to compensate for inequities — socioeconomic and infrastructural constraints often prevail, and will continue to unless critical changes are made to the educational ecosystem. Furthermore, the Special Issue calls for future work that takes process-level changes into account in order to generate recommendations that are better grounded in iterative change and causality: only then can actionable and impactful changes be made for a more equitable future of online learning.
Text
ETS_26_4_07
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Accepted/In Press date: 31 May 2023
e-pub ahead of print date: 31 May 2023
Published date: 31 May 2023
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Funding Information:
This Special Issue is highly inter-disciplinary with a research focus that has much room for further research attention and significant global impact. In view of these, the Guest Editor thanks the authors and generous reviewers for their invaluable support towards the completion and success of this Special Issue.
Publisher Copyright:
© This article of Educational Technology & Society is available under Creative Commons CC-BYNC-ND 3.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).
Keywords:
Disadvantage, Educational access, Longitudinal research, Online learning, Social justice
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 478895
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/478895
ISSN: 1436-4522
PURE UUID: 1a4f0ff2-d5be-41b3-87dc-5d543204c322
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Date deposited: 12 Jul 2023 16:41
Last modified: 06 Jun 2024 02:10
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