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How might we improve the quality of education on an international scale?,…
How might we improve the quality of education on an international scale?
Improve access to quality education
During the COVID pandemic, only 25% low-income countries offered any remote learning, while 90% of wealthier countries provided remote options (Vegas, 2020).
This number remains consistent in the United States: 1 in 10 children did not have reliable access to technology for learning (US Census Bureau, 2020).
Hanson (2021) identifies that the cost of education can vary due to a variety of factors, such as international study, required living expenses, tuition, and materials; many countries provide some or all of these expenses, where some countries expect students to front all of these bills--often with loans.
Those with access to internet appear to be increasing. Between 2019 and 2020, the population grew by 81 million; there was an increase of 102 million unique phone users, an increase of 321 million unique internet uniques, and an increase of 453 million social media users (Kemp, 2020).
Regardless of the quality of education, if information is inaccessible, people cannot benefit from it.
It is clear that access to the internet is becoming more prominent, but access to remote educational resources appears to be lagging behind.
Potential inequalities that must be addressed
Religious
: Certain religious groups may conflict with other groups regarding curriculum (e.g., teaching evolutionary biology).
Racial
: There is a history of systematic oppression that many countries struggle with, and this carries over to education.
Political
: If globalization occurs, it must remain as apolitical and research-based as possible.
Language
: In a globalized setting, it is important to translate resources in a variety of languages and not simply use English as a default.
Economic
: Families who are wealthier might opt out of a globalized model and pursue privatized institutions, potentially leading to a larger economic gap.
Sex
: Many countries do not have equal rights across sexes, and may exclude certain populations from higher education.
One potential consequence of globalizing education is a measurable increase in equality and equity.
Concerns about globalization in education
Does this result in a more globalized form of cultural education that does not include each region’s unique culture?
Does globalized education only provide low quality, free access schools while higher class citizens opt for privatized schools?
Who controls an international education budget? Does this result in greater economic divide?
Do we suffer from a monopoly of globalized exam companies? McGraw-Hill, Pearson, etc.
Is there a national curriculum? International? What about the unique needs of countries?
Are there possibilities to censor information disliked by those who create the global curriculum?
When transferring to a globalized policy, it's critical not to assume a Eurocentric or Americentric perspective.
Improve teacher training
When training teachers, it’s important to have face-to-face training, allow pre-service teachers to practice teaching to real students, and allow follow-ups with these same students (Popova, Evans, Breeding & Arancibia, 2021).
Besides increasing access to education, having better trained teachers is one of the strongest indicators of student success (Araujo, Careniro, Cruz-Aguayo, & Schady, 2016)
According to Sparks (2020), countries are inconsistent with their pedagogical training: more successful countries tend to focus on pedagogy, while less successful focus on higher level content (especially for younger ages).
When teachers struggle to teach, it often is because of lack of pedagogical training rather than lack of content knowledge (Bold, Filmer, Martin, Molina, Rockmore, Stacy, Svensson, & Wane, 2017).
Many of the access concerns and inequality concerns apply to teacher training, as it is literally about educating teachers about pedagogy and content.
Therefore, in order to promote quality teachers, we must provide accessible quality pedagogical training to these professionals.
Consider a new education model
Care should be not to isolate students; although we can individualize every child’s education with more and more ease, that runs the risk of every student being isolated in their own educational bubble.
Collaborative products that emphasize peer modeling can be one potential solution
The needs of one country might not necessarily match the global curriculum.
Example: One country having flying cars, and the others still requiring drivers ed.
Example: Countries with developing infrastructure focusing on civil engineering while those with infrastructure also provide maintenance focused degrees
Example: Studies specific to your region (history, religion, language)
Future education will likely be heavily integrated with technology, which means we’ll need to train teachers about how to use edutech and teach students how to appropriately use technology (Pearson, 2018).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yj4mO4N3ErU
Soft skills will need to be focused on, as these are skills that cannot necessarily be automated.
Many of the tasks prior students were trained for are now being automated, so new systems need to be devised that focus on critical thinking, practical skills and creativity (Freethink, 2016)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZlgYiXzu58
Students can also be taught in extremely scaffolded ways that traditional, non-technology based curricula did not allow. A work-at-your-own-pace model with enrichment may become the norm, and will allow us to scaffold for multiple levels of students.
