Page 123 - Education in a Digital World

110 International Development

It is important that any analysis of the role of digital technology in educational
development remains mindful of these different values and agendas that underpin
the use of digital technology to achieve social change and international development.
We shall return to these ideological dimensions of technology and development
later on in the chapter. For the time being, we should now move on to consider
the specific contribution of digital technology to education-based development.

The Rise of Education and Digital Technology in
International Development
Alongside areas such as healthcare, agriculture and housing, education constitutes a
central element of international development work. At one level, the educational
issues faced by those living in low-income countries are centred on fundamental
matters of ensuring access to learning and teaching. As David Hollow (2009)
observed, even as Africa entered the second decade of the twenty-first century,
more than 20 million children in the continent had missed out on receiving any
form of schooling at any time during their childhood. Moreover, the quality of
learning for those who had received some form of schooling was often compro-
mised by large class sizes, poor quality teaching and lack of resources. From this
perspective, many of the educational concerns of international development con-
tinue to be straightforward – i.e. ensuring that all individuals receive a ‘basic’ level
of education. This issue was a key element of the United Nations ‘Millennium
Development Goals’ that were set in 2000 – making explicit the promise of
achieving universal primary education by 2015. In the light of this ambition, pro-
viding children and young people with access to good quality education was
established as a priority for global and regional development efforts throughout the
2000s and into the 2010s.
While the goal of universal primary education continues to provide a dominant
frame of reference, education is also seen as a key aspect of other areas of develop-
ment work – such as efforts to improve adult employment, health awareness,
community cohesion and environmental sustainability. All of these areas illustrate
the breadth of what is known as ‘education for development’– i.e. the use of
education to promote development and prosperity, to improve quality of life for
individuals and societies, and to help remove ‘unfreedoms’ for individuals to satisfy
their basic needs (Daniel 2002). All these concerns of ensuring equitable access to
education, and promoting education for development have therefore formed key
aspects of the ICT4D field. Indeed, digital technology has come to be seen as a
ready means of overcoming entrenched educational inequalities across low-income
nations. As Michelle Selinger (2009, p.206) reasons:

ICTs can indeed hold the key to a step change towards improvement in the
world’s education systems. ICT is certainly not a panacea for education, but it