COVID-19 has been going on around the world for nearly three years. With the continuous mutation of this virus and the repetition of COVID-19 prevention policies in all countries worldwide, people gradually began to develop the habit of keeping physical distance. As a result, although we have effectively reduced the infectious hazard posed by the virus, COVID-19 has inevitably caused incalculable impacts and losses on global economic development and social life, especially in education.
In the process of fighting against COVID-19, most countries around the world usually adopt the closure of schools to prevent students from gathering and infection, in order to protect the health of the majority of students. According to statistics, until mid-April 2020, more than 1.6 billion students in 188 countries have been affected by school shutdowns, accounting for 91.3% of the world’s student population (The Canadian Commission for UNESCO, 2020). Despite the measures of closing schools without suspending classes taken by countries worldwide, COVID-19 still has an immeasurable impact on global education. A report from The World Bank and UNESCO (2021) shows that in low-income and middle-income countries, the percentage of 10-years-old teenagers who have trouble reading and understanding simple text has reached 70%, while the number was 57% in 2019. The nature of education is an interactive learning process. Face-to-face education is an optimal solution for direct communications and physical interactions between teachers and students (and among students), thereby improving the quality of education, which online education cannot easily achieve. A quantitative study from Harvard and Brown universities also showed that students who learned from the online math program Zearn dropped 48% in their math performance (Bennette, 2020). Teachers and students have many discomforts in online teaching platforms partially driven by artificial intelligence, which induces various psychological and social issues (Fan, 2020).
On the other hand, there is a massive gap in various countries’ educational resources and budgets due to the different stages of economic development. According to the latest report jointly released by the World Bank and UNESCO (2021), the gap in educational budgets between underdeveloped and developed countries has widened since the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, even in the same country or region, the massive implementation of online education at this stage has widened the performance gap between students with different family conditions (Luo & Si, 2020). COVID-19 has alerted the global community of the unequal allocation of educational resources among countries and families. Thus, this crisis will further accelerate the ongoing reform of education.
With digital transformation permeating every aspect of our lives, digital skills and digital learning are now integral to all kinds of education systems. Along with recent revolutionary shifts in education psychology, pedagogy and approaches, new educational tools present radical features such as deep learning, inter-professional integration, human-computer collaboration, co-creation and sharing, and autonomous control. Teachers can leverage the full potential of these smart technologies to cultivate students’ innovative skills, constructive abilities and cooperative spirits by offering interactive learning activities, individualized intelligent guidance and diversified assessment systems. At the same time, it is highly possible for local school boards to break the geographical and resource constraints through the proper use of intelligent technology in order to reduce teachers’ burden and better implement fair and quality education.
However, in many developing countries and even some developed countries, the application of technology in the field of education is not yet mature. While a few countries have integrated AI technologies into their education systems, half of the world’s population still cannot access the Internet. The World Bank and UNESCO (2021) estimate that about 500 million students from preschool to high school cannot access distance learning during the school shutdown caused by COVID-19, with three-quarters of them from the poorest households or rural areas. The lack of internet connectivity, digital devices and skills prevents students from accessing and using instructional content that relies on digital technology. Meanwhile, in the global context, most education and training institutions are not yet ready to provide distance and blended learning options to ensure educational continuity during special circumstances. The digital divide among institutions, areas, and countries exacerbates educational inequities (Xu, 2020).
As explained by Koplan et al. (2009), global health is critical for all nations since “we are all related”, a belief from indigenous knowledge keepers. Moreover, a major global health crisis such as COVID-19 reminds all educators of the importance of achieving equality worldwide. Therefore, global health constitutes a new foundation for the development of educational technologies: addressing global inequality in educational resources. For example, individuals can drive reforms in the foundations of education in a global health context by participating in the open movement of knowledge in virtual communities. In addition, governments around the world can strengthen cooperation in the field of education, establish a concept of shared responsibility, innovate to serve the most marginalized learning groups, increase investment in open, free, and high-quality online learning content, support interactive teaching and learning methods, and lead digital changes, so as to promote the development of high-quality education on a global scale.
References:
Bennette, P. W. (2020, July). The educational experience has been substandard for students during COVID-19 . Policy Options.
Boys, J. (2021). Exploring Inequalities in the Social, Spatial and Material Practices of Teaching and Learning in Pandemic Times. Postdigital Science and Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-021-00267-z
Fan, G. (2020). Educational Ecological Reconstruction in the Post-pandemic Era[J]. Fudan Education Forum, 18(4), 17.
Koplan, J. P., Bond, T. C., Merson, M. H., Reddy, K. S., Rodriguez, M. H., Sewankambo, N. K., Wasserheit, J. N., & Consortium of Universities for Global Health Executive Board (2009). Towards a common definition of global healthLinks to an external site.. Lancet (London, England), 373(9679), 1993–1995. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(09)60332-9
Luo, C., & Si, C. (2020). Will online education widen the gap between students with different family conditions? – A natural experiment based on the new crown pneumonia epidemic. Research in Finance and Economics, 46(11), 15.
The Canadian Commission for UNESCO (2020, April 20). COVID-19 Is Creating a World Crisis in Education. https://en.ccunesco.ca/blog/2020/4/online-educational-resources-covid19
The World Bank, & UNESCO. (2021). Education Finance Watch 2021. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000375577.
Xu, J. (2020). The response of the global education system and the challenges of online education under the new crown pneumonia epidemic: findings and reflections based on the results of the OECD global survey [J]. Comparative Education Research, 42(6), 8.