Inequalities in Girls’ Learning Opportunities Via EdTech: Addressing the Challenge of Covid-19

Authors

Helen Crompton, Old Dominion UniversityFollow
Agnes Chigona
Katy Jordan
Christina Myers

Document Type

Report

Publication Date

2021

DOI

10.5281/zenodo.4917252

Publication Title

EdTech Hub Working Paper

Volume

31

Pages

1-26

Abstract

The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic prompted school closures, which affected nearly 1.5 billion learners globally. Girls are likely to have experienced learning losses during the pandemic to a greater extent, as there are multiple barriers that influence gender disparities in accessing and benefiting from EdTech, including social inequalities or norms and technological constraints. Equity needs to be foregrounded when EdTech interventions are implemented, by considering disparities emerging from digital access, freedom, literacy, pedagogies, and design:

Digital access: Potential gender disparities in digital access, including at home, should be considered when EdTech interventions are designed.

Digital freedom: Social norms, as well as online discrimination, or violence can influence the extent to which girls are allowed to use EdTech — acknowledging these system-level factors is important to implement equitable EdTech.

Digital literacy: Girls are often more likely to have lower levels of digital literacy than their male counterparts — tackling these inequalities and disparities is needed to enable girls and boys to equally make use of EdTech.

Digital pedagogies: Issues related to promoting gender bias, discrimination, and misrepresentation can emerge in teaching practices — facilitating professional development opportunities for teachers could be used to make digital pedagogies more inclusive.

Digital design: Disparities in learning outcomes can emerge when contextual factors, social inequalities and norms are not factored into the design of EdTech interventions — participatory approaches could be used to align EdTech interventions with local and contextualised needs.

Comments

Published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

ORCID

0000-0002-1775-8219 (Crompton)

Original Publication Citation

Helen, C., Agnes, C., Katy, J., & Christina, M. (2021). Inequalities in girls’ learning opportunities via EdTech: Addressing the challenge of Covid-19. FP-ETH Working Paper 31. EdTech Hub. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4917252

Repository Citation

Crompton, Helen; Chigona, Agnes; Jordan, Katy; and Myers, Christina, "Inequalities in Girls’ Learning Opportunities Via EdTech: Addressing the Challenge of Covid-19" (2021). Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications. 148.
https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/teachinglearning_fac_pubs/148