IP # 5: Global Health & its Impact on Education

By Cody Peters

How does global health impact education, and what educational lessons have been learned from the COVID-19 pandemic?

As outlined by the Foundation for Global Governance and Sustainability (FOGGS) on their Covid Education Alliance (COVIDEA) webpage and in their introduction section of the covid education alliance primer, educational systems were “not fully adapted to the digital transformations nor equipped to respond to external shocks” (FOGGS, 2020, p. i). In essence, socio-economic factors obviously impact education as a whole, so the seismic shift in everyday life that was caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic had a significant effect on educational settings. With the mass exodus from the educational settings of physical classrooms to online digital spaces, there were undoubtedly a myriad of different effects on both educators and students alike, as well as how effective educational systems functioned as a whole. This is readily obvious when considering one of the more basic and widespread metrics of education that was surprisingly heavily affected by the massive shift caused by COVID-19: how well did students perform exactly during the pandemic? As outlined in their July of 2020 article on how “The Educational Experience has been Substandard for Students During COVID-19”, Paul W. Bennett notes that, in Canada, “provincial tracking of student progress was spotty at best, and the answer from the Nova Scotia Education Department came in a terse email” (Bennett, 2020, p. 1) that outlined that the province would not collect data on progress and engagement of its students. He goes on to state that this “was not uncommon, and we are now learning that from province to province, education authorities were negligent in one of their primary responsibilities – monitoring and reporting on student academic and social development” (Bennett, 2020, p. 1). Similarly, Megan Kuhfeld et al. noted that collecting data to study how COVID-19 affected student learning was heavily disrupted, as they could “not examine spring-to-fall changes because so few students tested in spring 2020 after the pandemic began” (Kuhfeld, 2020, p. 1). It doesn’t matter how well prepared or ill-suited the provincial responses were to needing to shift away from physical spaces if there is no data on academic and social development of students in these provinces. Obviously, the pandemic required the swift integration of technology into educational settings, as the inability to have in-person lessons required students and educators alike to migrate to online settings such as Zoom video conferences and digital classrooms, forcing everyone in education to require access to both a computer and stable internet connection. This poses an exacerbated problem, “as schools around the world roll out tech-based solutions, it’s apparent that the children already most at risk are the ones likely to fall further behind” (UNESCO, 2020, p. 1). This reliance on technological integration at such a rapid pace with such short notice puts an obvious strain on students and educators who were already struggling due to socio-economic pressure. The COVID-19 pandemic has illustrated that matters of global health have a massive impact on education, especially when considering the financial implications of a massive pedagogical shift.

This relevance of global health on education constitutes a new foundation on which educational technology has been, is being, and will continue to be built. UNESCO has recognized that the pandemic has created a situation that “is unprecedented in the history of education—and many school systems, teachers, students and parents were tossed into it without the planning or technology to make it work properly” (UNESCO, 2020, p. 1), stating that the integration of technology into education is extremely important to help accommodate the currently shifting educational landscape. The Canadian Commission for UNESCO has outlined that the international context of the pandemic has highlighted the requirement of schools around the world to implement tech-based distance learning programs, and the importance of online resources that can be accessed anywhere, provided one has access to a digital device and stable internet connection, in an effort to provide some level of stability in education. They have also noted the importance of integrating the development of digital skills, a sentiment echoed by the British Columbian Government in their roll out of the digital literacy framework several years ago. Both stress the importance of developing digital skills, as we progress towards an ever-more technologically integrated academic atmosphere. As the COVID-19 pandemic indicated, there is a very real chance that as we progress in the 21st century there may come times wherein traditional pedagogical practices of in-person learning is no longer viable; and when these times come, education as a whole needs to be ready to shift to a more technologically inclined setting in order to facilitate requirements such as distance learning. This represents the new baseline foundation for educational sectors to be developed upon; as the pandemic has shown, it cannot simply be a fall-back that haphazardly gets thrown together in a short-term, last-ditch effort to continue educational practices. It needs to be intrinsically integrated into the foundations of learning, so as to better equip educators and students alike for the eventuality of changing systems of education.

References:

Kuhfeld, M., Soland, J., Tarasawa, B., Johnson, A., Ruzek, E., Lewis, K. (2020, December 3) How is COVID-19 affecting student learning?. Brown Center Chalkboard, Brookings.

Bennett, P. W. (2020, July 20). The educational experience has been substandard for students during COVID-19. Policy Options.

The Canadian Commission for UNESCO. (2020, April 20). COVID-19 Is creating a world crisis in education.

Burgess, S., & Sievertsen, H. H. (2020, April 1). Schools, skills, and learning: The impact of COVID-19 on education.

Foundation for Global Governance and Sustainability. (2020, October 8). COVID Education Alliance: Adapting education systems to a fast changing and increasingly digital world through the use of appropriate technologies: A Primer.

Government of British Columbia. (2015). BC’s Digital Literacy Framework.