| Popis: |
Higher Education has been repeatedly thought of as critical for the development of the skills, knowledge and expertise considered fundamental for social and economic development (Schuller et al., 2004). More recently, it has been positioned as a crucial space for democratisation to flourish, with increasing pressures on elite social institutions to widen participation (Morley et al., 2009) and to “actively seek to address social inequality and promote equity and social justice” (Mbati, 2019, p. 254). Nonetheless, social inequalities hampering choice, representation and participation in higher education continue to exist based on class, race, gender, socioeconomic and geographical backgrounds (Devkota, 2021). In part, this can be attributed to the technocratic ‘consciousness’ (Fischer, 1990) of elite institutions, which among other conventions, standardise the use of digital systems and structures, which often are inaccessible or unfamiliar to students from socially disadvantaged backgrounds (Timmis & Muhuro, 2019). Since the beginning of the Covid- 19 pandemic in 2020, a sharp transition to online platforms has been observed in the Higher Education sector. Such exponential reliance on digital means has not only exacerbated the pre-existing inequalities but forged new ones, particularly for those already marginalised (Atherton, 2020; Timmis & Muhuro, 2019). This situation demands universities’ urgent attention to identifying the many forms in which the digital transformation of education has disrupted learners’ engagement and the increasing inequalities emerging as a result of the transition to emergency online learning. This report sets out the findings from an international literature review of empirical research exploring how the expansion of digitalisation in higher education has transformed and disrupted students’ access and participation during the pandemic. In doing so, it draws attention to spatial, social, material, and educational inequalities for undergraduate and postgraduate students across a wide range of countries from all continents. In attempting to draw attention to pre-existing power imbalance dynamics, access, and resources across the breath of contexts reviewed, we adopt the macro categories ‘Global South’ and ‘Global North’. The use of South-North terminology has grown exponentially over the last 15 years, becoming a well-received way of framing research questions (Haug et al., 2021). It has marked a shift from the earlier attention to (under)development by placing the emphasising on more complex geopolitical relations (Waisbich et al., 2021). Despite this shift, making use of the ‘Global South’ and ‘Global North’ categorisation is far from ideal and continues to be a contested topic. One of the main criticisms relates to the reductionist nature of binary definitions that oversimplify the vast contextual differences across and within countries as if they were homogeneous (Skupien & Rüffin, 2020; Waisbich et al., 2021). Furthermore, such distinctions might reinforce the idea that countries in the "North" offer the key to enhancing educational and research quality of the "South" whereas those in the "South" are either trying to catch up or are merely recipients of the wisdom and expertise of the "North" (Sabzalieva et al., 2020). Whilst acknowledging their imperfect and overly dualistic nature, these terms are far preferable in our view, to outmoded, derogatory, and deficit terminology such as 'developing' and 'third world' countries. We have therefore adopted the Global North/South categorisation cautiously to acknowledge spatial inequalities in relation to higher education and to reflect on the contrasting experiences of students across these broad ‘global societies’ (de Sousa Santos, 2016) whilst acknowledging the risk of oversimplifying the complexity of a global environment as well as inequalities at an intra-national level and within universities (Trahar et al., 2020). Within each of these contexts, we place considerable attention on the experiences of students who have been exposed to the most exclusionary pressures and marginalisation. In doing so, we explore the ways in which inadequate processes to ensure participation, presence, and achievement (Ainscow et al., 2006) of vulnerable students can lead to exacerbated forms of marginalisation. Hence, this report, through an international review of recent literature, teases out the different forms of intersecting inequalities experienced by students while engaging in online emergency education. This report adopts a sociological lens that allows us to explore the local, spatial and cultural divides that contribute to exacerbated digital inequalities. In doing so, we draw attention to the multiple ways in which online learning as a practice embedded in wider sociocultural contexts can be made inaccessible for students. Hence attention is not paid only to students’ availability of digital devices or connectivity, as earlier discourses of the ‘digital divide’ (Lembani et al., 2020) have done. Beyond these more evident inequalities, we look into the social dynamics framing students learning practices. |
