"Continuous effort – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential." ~Winston Churchill
Global Health
Is our destiny insanity?
According to many, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results. While it is unclear who honestly said it first, Einstein is most frequently credited. For a discussion on education, technology, and global health, it seems reasonable to attribute the quote to one of the most influential academics of our time.
Einstein describes insanity, according to quantum theory, as the way the world works (Wilczek, 2015). In quantum mechanics, you can do the same thing many times and get different results because small changes in the initial conditions can alter the results (Wilczek, 2015). As Wilczek (2015) highlights, the underlying idea is that in situations where we cannot predict precisely what will happen next, it is because there are aspects of the current situation that we have not considered. Using Einstein Insanity as a lens to compare what we learned (and forgot) from our experience with previous pandemics (e.g., SARS 2003), I will outline what significant lessons education has learned, has forgotten, or has yet to learn.
How history repeats itself
COVID-19 is not the first, nor will it be, the last pandemic. Infectious diseases have always impacted global health, be it outbreaks, endemics or pandemics. The epidemiology and infection control principles are almost 2,500 years old (MMWR, 2006). Florence Nightingale (a relative of mine) was among the first to link the importance of hygiene, cleaning, and disinfection with infection control (Fee & Garofalo, 2010). She was passionate about spreading medical knowledge easily and understandably, writing in simple English, and using data visualization with infographics to present statistical data effectively (Bostridge, 2011).
Speaking in plain ‘English.’
The introduction of technology, the internet, and social media has led to the rise of social influencers and the rapid sharing of good, bad, and even ugly information. Fake news, and the proliferation of raw opinion that passes for news, is creating confusion, punching holes in what is true, and causing a kind of fun-house effect that leaves the reader doubting everything, including real news (Schulten & Brown, January 19, 2017). The challenge growing daily is how we consume information online, what is considered fact versus opinion, and who should be the gatekeeper of this decision process (Antin, February 12, 2020).
Communicating and educating your audience requires more than ‘speaking at or to.’ Speece (2012) noted that messages in high-context cultures are carried in how the words relate to the implicit background. Sociocultural theory emphasizes the significance of cultural and historical contexts, social interaction, peer collaboration, and the construction of new knowledge with the guidance of adults and peers (Gunawardena et al., 2019, p.20). Using visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning activities and understanding how non-confrontational communication styles can support improved collaboration with the educator will improve acceptance, retention, and adoption of shared knowledge.
Figure out the real challenge
It is recognizing that we are all one body moving through time and space together” (Wagamese, 2013). Global health prioritizes improving health and achieving equity in health for all people (Kaplan et al., 2009). It must use the resources, knowledge, and experiences of everyone to address health challenges globally (Kaplan et al., 2009). While much work has been done to define global health and set forth discipline-specific competencies, less has been done in interdisciplinary or interprofessional global health education (Rowthorn & Olsen, 2014).
Developed countries cannot assume we know what is best or that our policies, principles, or practices will seamlessly translate to success in other locales. COVID has forced us to rethink stereotypical norms, identify discriminatory patterns, and open our eyes to those who are marginalized or ignored (Boys, 2021). Just as global health seeks to achieve equity for all people, so must education.
Deviance when positive is better than bias
Positive Deviance (PD) is based on the observation that in every community, there are certain individuals or groups whose uncommon behaviours and strategies enable them to find better solutions to problems than their peers while having access to the same resources and facing similar or worse challenges (What is Positive Deviance, n.d.). Improvements to infection control and prevention practices have utilized this concept globally to improve patient outcomes.
Education encourages students and teachers to accentuate ability, valorize perfection, and stigmatize anything that hints at intellectual (or physical) weakness (Boys, 2021). COVID has identified the biases in how student competency is framed, what constitutes a learning space, where rich learning can occur, and the inequalities in access to and inclusion in education (Boys, 2021). Using the concept of positive deviance, researchers can uncover new behaviours and strategies to improve education, not just in terms of practices but access and inclusion. Educators can use their personal experiences and those of their students to identify who, how and why they excelled versus their classmates.
Avoiding insanity and battling indifference to improving the future
“The world we see that seems so insane results from a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds” (Quotes by William James, n.d.).
As outlined above, global health has shown the need to speak in plain English, figure out the real problem or challenge, and that biases can get in the way of understanding that different can be better. The following figure outlines how that impacts education and educational technology.
We can no longer afford to educate our prejudices. COVID has taught us social vigilance and a personal sense of responsibility through understanding the importance of education, technology and infection control (Kenny, n.d.). As we move into the future, the further we are from the pandemic, the easier it is to forget what we have learned and regress to our pre-pandemic ways. In that case, we are simply repeating history, hoping for a different result, and destined to insanity.
Boys, J. (2022;2021;). Exploring inequalities in the social, spatial and material practices of teaching and learning in pandemic times. Postdigital Science and Education, 4(1), 13-32. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-021-00267-z
Fee, E., & Garofalo, M. E. (2010). Florence Nightingale and the Crimean War. American journal of public health, 100(9), 1591. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2009.188607
Gunawardena, C. N., Frechette, C., & Layne, L. (2019). Extract from Chapter 2 Theoretical foundations of learning in online communities. In Culturally inclusive instructional design. A framework and guide for building online wisdom communities. (pp. 17-28). New York, USA: Routledge.
International Commission on the Futures of Education (ICFE). (2020). Education in a post-COVID world: Nine ideas for public action.
Rowthorn, V., & Olsen, J. (2014). All together now: Developing a team skills competency domain for global health education. The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 42(4), 550-563. https://doi.org/10.1111/jlme.12175
Self-study course: Principles of epidemiology in public health practice, third edition. (2006). MMWR. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 55(42), 1154-1154.
Speece, M. (2012). Learning style, culture and delivery mode in online distance education. US-China Education Review, A 1, 1-12.
