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• Published: 12 February 2024

Education reform and change driven by digital technology: a bibliometric study from a global perspective

• Chengliang Wang 1 ,
• Xiaojiao Chen 1 ,
• Teng Yu   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-5198-7261 2 , 3 ,
• Yidan Liu 1 , 4 &
• Yuhui Jing 1  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  11 , Article number:  256 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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• Development studies
• Science, technology and society

Amidst the global digital transformation of educational institutions, digital technology has emerged as a significant area of interest among scholars. Such technologies have played an instrumental role in enhancing learner performance and improving the effectiveness of teaching and learning. These digital technologies also ensure the sustainability and stability of education during the epidemic. Despite this, a dearth of systematic reviews exists regarding the current state of digital technology application in education. To address this gap, this study utilized the Web of Science Core Collection as a data source (specifically selecting the high-quality SSCI and SCIE) and implemented a topic search by setting keywords, yielding 1849 initial publications. Furthermore, following the PRISMA guidelines, we refined the selection to 588 high-quality articles. Using software tools such as CiteSpace, VOSviewer, and Charticulator, we reviewed these 588 publications to identify core authors (such as Selwyn, Henderson, Edwards), highly productive countries/regions (England, Australia, USA), key institutions (Monash University, Australian Catholic University), and crucial journals in the field ( Education and Information Technologies , Computers & Education , British Journal of Educational Technology ). Evolutionary analysis reveals four developmental periods in the research field of digital technology education application: the embryonic period, the preliminary development period, the key exploration, and the acceleration period of change. The study highlights the dual influence of technological factors and historical context on the research topic. Technology is a key factor in enabling education to transform and upgrade, and the context of the times is an important driving force in promoting the adoption of new technologies in the education system and the transformation and upgrading of education. Additionally, the study identifies three frontier hotspots in the field: physical education, digital transformation, and professional development under the promotion of digital technology. This study presents a clear framework for digital technology application in education, which can serve as a valuable reference for researchers and educational practitioners concerned with digital technology education application in theory and practice.

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Introduction.

Digital technology has become an essential component of modern education, facilitating the extension of temporal and spatial boundaries and enriching the pedagogical contexts (Selwyn and Facer, 2014 ). The advent of mobile communication technology has enabled learning through social media platforms (Szeto et al. 2015 ; Pires et al. 2022 ), while the advancement of augmented reality technology has disrupted traditional conceptions of learning environments and spaces (Perez-Sanagustin et al., 2014 ; Kyza and Georgiou, 2018 ). A wide range of digital technologies has enabled learning to become a norm in various settings, including the workplace (Sjöberg and Holmgren, 2021 ), home (Nazare et al. 2022 ), and online communities (Tang and Lam, 2014 ). Education is no longer limited to fixed locations and schedules, but has permeated all aspects of life, allowing learning to continue at any time and any place (Camilleri and Camilleri, 2016 ; Selwyn and Facer, 2014 ).

The advent of digital technology has led to the creation of several informal learning environments (Greenhow and Lewin, 2015 ) that exhibit divergent form, function, features, and patterns in comparison to conventional learning environments (Nygren et al. 2019 ). Consequently, the associated teaching and learning processes, as well as the strategies for the creation, dissemination, and acquisition of learning resources, have undergone a complete overhaul. The ensuing transformations have posed a myriad of novel issues, such as the optimal structuring of teaching methods by instructors and the adoption of appropriate learning strategies by students in the new digital technology environment. Consequently, an examination of the principles that underpin effective teaching and learning in this environment is a topic of significant interest to numerous scholars engaged in digital technology education research.

Over the course of the last two decades, digital technology has made significant strides in the field of education, notably in extending education time and space and creating novel educational contexts with sustainability. Despite research attempts to consolidate the application of digital technology in education, previous studies have only focused on specific aspects of digital technology, such as Pinto and Leite’s ( 2020 ) investigation into digital technology in higher education and Mustapha et al.’s ( 2021 ) examination of the role and value of digital technology in education during the pandemic. While these studies have provided valuable insights into the practical applications of digital technology in particular educational domains, they have not comprehensively explored the macro-mechanisms and internal logic of digital technology implementation in education. Additionally, these studies were conducted over a relatively brief period, making it challenging to gain a comprehensive understanding of the macro-dynamics and evolutionary process of digital technology in education. Some studies have provided an overview of digital education from an educational perspective but lack a precise understanding of technological advancement and change (Yang et al. 2022 ). Therefore, this study seeks to employ a systematic scientific approach to collate relevant research from 2000 to 2022, comprehend the internal logic and development trends of digital technology in education, and grasp the outstanding contribution of digital technology in promoting the sustainability of education in time and space. In summary, this study aims to address the following questions:

RQ1: Since the turn of the century, what is the productivity distribution of the field of digital technology education application research in terms of authorship, country/region, institutional and journal level?

RQ2: What is the development trend of research on the application of digital technology in education in the past two decades?

RQ3: What are the current frontiers of research on the application of digital technology in education?

Literature review

Although the term “digital technology” has become ubiquitous, a unified definition has yet to be agreed upon by scholars. Because the meaning of the word digital technology is closely related to the specific context. Within the educational research domain, Selwyn’s ( 2016 ) definition is widely favored by scholars (Pinto and Leite, 2020 ). Selwyn ( 2016 ) provides a comprehensive view of various concrete digital technologies and their applications in education through ten specific cases, such as immediate feedback in classes, orchestrating teaching, and community learning. Through these specific application scenarios, Selwyn ( 2016 ) argues that digital technology encompasses technologies associated with digital devices, including but not limited to tablets, smartphones, computers, and social media platforms (such as Facebook and YouTube). Furthermore, Further, the behavior of accessing the internet at any location through portable devices can be taken as an extension of the behavior of applying digital technology.

The evolving nature of digital technology has significant implications in the field of education. In the 1890s, the focus of digital technology in education was on comprehending the nuances of digital space, digital culture, and educational methodologies, with its connotations aligned more towards the idea of e-learning. The advent and subsequent widespread usage of mobile devices since the dawn of the new millennium have been instrumental in the rapid expansion of the concept of digital technology. Notably, mobile learning devices such as smartphones and tablets, along with social media platforms, have become integral components of digital technology (Conole and Alevizou, 2010 ; Batista et al. 2016 ). In recent times, the burgeoning application of AI technology in the education sector has played a vital role in enriching the digital technology lexicon (Banerjee et al. 2021 ). ChatGPT, for instance, is identified as a novel educational technology that has immense potential to revolutionize future education (Rospigliosi, 2023 ; Arif, Munaf and Ul-Haque, 2023 ).

Pinto and Leite ( 2020 ) conducted a comprehensive macroscopic survey of the use of digital technologies in the education sector and identified three distinct categories, namely technologies for assessment and feedback, mobile technologies, and Information Communication Technologies (ICT). This classification criterion is both macroscopic and highly condensed. In light of the established concept definitions of digital technology in the educational research literature, this study has adopted the characterizations of digital technology proposed by Selwyn ( 2016 ) and Pinto and Leite ( 2020 ) as crucial criteria for analysis and research inclusion. Specifically, this criterion encompasses several distinct types of digital technologies, including Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), Mobile tools, eXtended Reality (XR) Technologies, Assessment and Feedback systems, Learning Management Systems (LMS), Publish and Share tools, Collaborative systems, Social media, Interpersonal Communication tools, and Content Aggregation tools.

Methodology and materials

Research method: bibliometric.

The research on econometric properties has been present in various aspects of human production and life, yet systematic scientific theoretical guidance has been lacking, resulting in disorganization. In 1969, British scholar Pritchard ( 1969 ) proposed “bibliometrics,” which subsequently emerged as an independent discipline in scientific quantification research. Initially, Pritchard defined bibliometrics as “the application of mathematical and statistical methods to books and other media of communication,” however, the definition was not entirely rigorous. To remedy this, Hawkins ( 2001 ) expanded Pritchard’s definition to “the quantitative analysis of the bibliographic features of a body of literature.” De Bellis further clarified the objectives of bibliometrics, stating that it aims to analyze and identify patterns in literature, such as the most productive authors, institutions, countries, and journals in scientific disciplines, trends in literary production over time, and collaboration networks (De Bellis, 2009 ). According to Garfield ( 2006 ), bibliometric research enables the examination of the history and structure of a field, the flow of information within the field, the impact of journals, and the citation status of publications over a longer time scale. All of these definitions illustrate the unique role of bibliometrics as a research method for evaluating specific research fields.

This study uses CiteSpace, VOSviewer, and Charticulator to analyze data and create visualizations. Each of these three tools has its own strengths and can complement each other. CiteSpace and VOSviewer use set theory and probability theory to provide various visualization views in fields such as keywords, co-occurrence, and co-authors. They are easy to use and produce visually appealing graphics (Chen, 2006 ; van Eck and Waltman, 2009 ) and are currently the two most widely used bibliometric tools in the field of visualization (Pan et al. 2018 ). In this study, VOSviewer provided the data necessary for the Performance Analysis; Charticulator was then used to redraw using the tabular data exported from VOSviewer (for creating the chord diagram of country collaboration); this was to complement the mapping process, while CiteSpace was primarily utilized to generate keyword maps and conduct burst word analysis.

Data retrieval

This study selected documents from the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) and Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) in the Web of Science Core Collection as the data source, for the following reasons:

(1) The Web of Science Core Collection, as a high-quality digital literature resource database, has been widely accepted by many researchers and is currently considered the most suitable database for bibliometric analysis (Jing et al. 2023a ). Compared to other databases, Web of Science provides more comprehensive data information (Chen et al. 2022a ), and also provides data formats suitable for analysis using VOSviewer and CiteSpace (Gaviria-Marin et al. 2019 ).

(2) The application of digital technology in the field of education is an interdisciplinary research topic, involving technical knowledge literature belonging to the natural sciences and education-related literature belonging to the social sciences. Therefore, it is necessary to select Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) and Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) as the sources of research data, ensuring the comprehensiveness of data while ensuring the reliability and persuasiveness of bibliometric research (Hwang and Tsai, 2011 ; Wang et al. 2022 ).

After establishing the source of research data, it is necessary to determine a retrieval strategy (Jing et al. 2023b ). The choice of a retrieval strategy should consider a balance between the breadth and precision of the search formula. That is to say, it should encompass all the literature pertaining to the research topic while excluding irrelevant documents as much as possible. In light of this, this study has set a retrieval strategy informed by multiple related papers (Mustapha et al. 2021 ; Luo et al. 2021 ). The research by Mustapha et al. ( 2021 ) guided us in selecting keywords (“digital” AND “technolog*”) to target digital technology, while Luo et al. ( 2021 ) informed the selection of terms (such as “instruct*,” “teach*,” and “education”) to establish links with the field of education. Then, based on the current application of digital technology in the educational domain and the scope of selection criteria, we constructed the final retrieval strategy. Following the general patterns of past research (Jing et al. 2023a , 2023b ), we conducted a specific screening using the topic search (Topics, TS) function in Web of Science. For the specific criteria used in the screening for this study, please refer to Table 1 .

Literature screening

Literature acquired through keyword searches may contain ostensibly related yet actually unrelated works. Therefore, to ensure the close relevance of literature included in the analysis to the research topic, it is often necessary to perform a manual screening process to identify the final literature to be analyzed, subsequent to completing the initial literature search.

The manual screening process consists of two steps. Initially, irrelevant literature is weeded out based on the title and abstract, with two members of the research team involved in this phase. This stage lasted about one week, resulting in 1106 articles being retained. Subsequently, a comprehensive review of the full text is conducted to accurately identify the literature required for the study. To carry out the second phase of manual screening effectively and scientifically, and to minimize the potential for researcher bias, the research team established the inclusion criteria presented in Table 2 . Three members were engaged in this phase, which took approximately 2 weeks, culminating in the retention of 588 articles after meticulous screening. The entire screening process is depicted in Fig. 1 , adhering to the PRISMA guidelines (Page et al. 2021 ).

The process of obtaining and filtering the necessary literature data for research.

Data standardization

Nguyen and Hallinger ( 2020 ) pointed out that raw data extracted from scientific databases often contains multiple expressions of the same term, and not addressing these synonymous expressions could affect research results in bibliometric analysis. For instance, in the original data, the author list may include “Tsai, C. C.” and “Tsai, C.-C.”, while the keyword list may include “professional-development” and “professional development,” which often require merging. Therefore, before analyzing the selected literature, a data disambiguation process is necessary to standardize the data (Strotmann and Zhao, 2012 ; Van Eck and Waltman, 2019 ). This study adopted the data standardization process proposed by Taskin and Al ( 2019 ), mainly including the following standardization operations:

Firstly, the author and source fields in the data are corrected and standardized to differentiate authors with similar names.

Secondly, the study checks whether the journals to which the literature belongs have been renamed in the past over 20 years, so as to avoid the influence of periodical name change on the analysis results.

Finally, the keyword field is standardized by unifying parts of speech and singular/plural forms of keywords, which can help eliminate redundant entries in the knowledge graph.

Performance analysis (RQ1)

This section offers a thorough and detailed analysis of the state of research in the field of digital technology education. By utilizing descriptive statistics and visual maps, it provides a comprehensive overview of the development trends, authors, countries, institutions, and journal distribution within the field. The insights presented in this section are of great significance in advancing our understanding of the current state of research in this field and identifying areas for further investigation. The use of visual aids to display inter-country cooperation and the evolution of the field adds to the clarity and coherence of the analysis.

Time trend of the publications

To understand a research field, it is first necessary to understand the most basic quantitative information, among which the change in the number of publications per year best reflects the development trend of a research field. Figure 2 shows the distribution of publication dates.

Time trend of the publications on application of digital technology in education.

From the Fig. 2 , it can be seen that the development of this field over the past over 20 years can be roughly divided into three stages. The first stage was from 2000 to 2007, during which the number of publications was relatively low. Due to various factors such as technological maturity, the academic community did not pay widespread attention to the role of digital technology in expanding the scope of teaching and learning. The second stage was from 2008 to 2019, during which the overall number of publications showed an upward trend, and the development of the field entered an accelerated period, attracting more and more scholars’ attention. The third stage was from 2020 to 2022, during which the number of publications stabilized at around 100. During this period, the impact of the pandemic led to a large number of scholars focusing on the role of digital technology in education during the pandemic, and research on the application of digital technology in education became a core topic in social science research.

Analysis of authors

An analysis of the author’s publication volume provides information about the representative scholars and core research strengths of a research area. Table 3 presents information on the core authors in adaptive learning research, including name, publication number, and average number of citations per article (based on the analysis and statistics from VOSviewer).

Variations in research foci among scholars abound. Within the field of digital technology education application research over the past two decades, Neil Selwyn stands as the most productive author, having published 15 papers garnering a total of 1027 citations, resulting in an average of 68.47 citations per paper. As a Professor at the Faculty of Education at Monash University, Selwyn concentrates on exploring the application of digital technology in higher education contexts (Selwyn et al. 2021 ), as well as related products in higher education such as Coursera, edX, and Udacity MOOC platforms (Bulfin et al. 2014 ). Selwyn’s contributions to the educational sociology perspective include extensive research on the impact of digital technology on education, highlighting the spatiotemporal extension of educational processes and practices through technological means as the greatest value of educational technology (Selwyn, 2012 ; Selwyn and Facer, 2014 ). In addition, he provides a blueprint for the development of future schools in 2030 based on the present impact of digital technology on education (Selwyn et al. 2019 ). The second most productive author in this field, Henderson, also offers significant contributions to the understanding of the important value of digital technology in education, specifically in the higher education setting, with a focus on the impact of the pandemic (Henderson et al. 2015 ; Cohen et al. 2022 ). In contrast, Edwards’ research interests focus on early childhood education, particularly the application of digital technology in this context (Edwards, 2013 ; Bird and Edwards, 2015 ). Additionally, on the technical level, Edwards also mainly prefers digital game technology, because it is a digital technology that children are relatively easy to accept (Edwards, 2015 ).

Analysis of countries/regions and organization

The present study aimed to ascertain the leading countries in digital technology education application research by analyzing 75 countries related to 558 works of literature. Table 4 depicts the top ten countries that have contributed significantly to this field in terms of publication count (based on the analysis and statistics from VOSviewer). Our analysis of Table 4 data shows that England emerged as the most influential country/region, with 92 published papers and 2401 citations. Australia and the United States secured the second and third ranks, respectively, with 90 papers (2187 citations) and 70 papers (1331 citations) published. Geographically, most of the countries featured in the top ten publication volumes are situated in Australia, North America, and Europe, with China being the only exception. Notably, all these countries, except China, belong to the group of developed nations, suggesting that economic strength is a prerequisite for fostering research in the digital technology education application field.

This study presents a visual representation of the publication output and cooperation relationships among different countries in the field of digital technology education application research. Specifically, a chord diagram is employed to display the top 30 countries in terms of publication output, as depicted in Fig. 3 . The chord diagram is composed of nodes and chords, where the nodes are positioned as scattered points along the circumference, and the length of each node corresponds to the publication output, with longer lengths indicating higher publication output. The chords, on the other hand, represent the cooperation relationships between any two countries, and are weighted based on the degree of closeness of the cooperation, with wider chords indicating closer cooperation. Through the analysis of the cooperation relationships, the findings suggest that the main publishing countries in this field are engaged in cooperative relationships with each other, indicating a relatively high level of international academic exchange and research internationalization.

In the diagram, nodes are scattered along the circumference of a circle, with the length of each node representing the volume of publications. The weighted arcs connecting any two points on the circle are known as chords, representing the collaborative relationship between the two, with the width of the arc indicating the closeness of the collaboration.

Further analyzing Fig. 3 , we can extract more valuable information, enabling a deeper understanding of the connections between countries in the research field of digital technology in educational applications. It is evident that certain countries, such as the United States, China, and England, display thicker connections, indicating robust collaborative relationships in terms of productivity. These thicker lines signify substantial mutual contributions and shared objectives in certain sectors or fields, highlighting the interconnectedness and global integration in these areas. By delving deeper, we can also explore potential future collaboration opportunities through the chord diagram, identifying possible partners to propel research and development in this field. In essence, the chord diagram successfully encapsulates and conveys the multi-dimensionality of global productivity and cooperation, allowing for a comprehensive understanding of the intricate inter-country relationships and networks in a global context, providing valuable guidance and insights for future research and collaborations.

An in-depth examination of the publishing institutions is provided in Table 5 , showcasing the foremost 10 institutions ranked by their publication volume. Notably, Monash University and Australian Catholic University, situated in Australia, have recorded the most prolific publications within the digital technology education application realm, with 22 and 10 publications respectively. Moreover, the University of Oslo from Norway is featured among the top 10 publishing institutions, with an impressive average citation count of 64 per publication. It is worth highlighting that six institutions based in the United Kingdom were also ranked within the top 10 publishing institutions, signifying their leading position in this area of research.

Analysis of journals

Journals are the main carriers for publishing high-quality papers. Some scholars point out that the two key factors to measure the influence of journals in the specified field are the number of articles published and the number of citations. The more papers published in a magazine and the more citations, the greater its influence (Dzikowski, 2018 ). Therefore, this study utilized VOSviewer to statistically analyze the top 10 journals with the most publications in the field of digital technology in education and calculated the average citations per article (see Table 6 ).

Based on Table 6 , it is apparent that the highest number of articles in the domain of digital technology in education research were published in Education and Information Technologies (47 articles), Computers & Education (34 articles), and British Journal of Educational Technology (32 articles), indicating a higher article output compared to other journals. This underscores the fact that these three journals concentrate more on the application of digital technology in education. Furthermore, several other journals, such as Technology Pedagogy and Education and Sustainability, have published more than 15 articles in this domain. Sustainability represents the open access movement, which has notably facilitated research progress in this field, indicating that the development of open access journals in recent years has had a significant impact. Although there is still considerable disagreement among scholars on the optimal approach to achieve open access, the notion that research outcomes should be accessible to all is widely recognized (Huang et al. 2020 ). On further analysis of the research fields to which these journals belong, except for Sustainability, it is evident that they all pertain to educational technology, thus providing a qualitative definition of the research area of digital technology education from the perspective of journals.

Temporal keyword analysis: thematic evolution (RQ2)

The evolution of research themes is a dynamic process, and previous studies have attempted to present the developmental trajectory of fields by drawing keyword networks in phases (Kumar et al. 2021 ; Chen et al. 2022b ). To understand the shifts in research topics across different periods, this study follows past research and, based on the significant changes in the research field and corresponding technological advancements during the outlined periods, divides the timeline into four stages (the first stage from January 2000 to December 2005, the second stage from January 2006 to December 2011, the third stage from January 2012 to December 2017; and the fourth stage from January 2018 to December 2022). The division into these four stages was determined through a combination of bibliometric analysis and literature review, which presented a clear trajectory of the field’s development. The research analyzes the keyword networks for each time period (as there are only three articles in the first stage, it was not possible to generate an appropriate keyword co-occurrence map, hence only the keyword co-occurrence maps from the second to the fourth stages are provided), to understand the evolutionary track of the digital technology education application research field over time.

2000.1–2005.12: germination period

From January 2000 to December 2005, digital technology education application research was in its infancy. Only three studies focused on digital technology, all of which were related to computers. Due to the popularity of computers, the home became a new learning environment, highlighting the important role of digital technology in expanding the scope of learning spaces (Sutherland et al. 2000 ). In specific disciplines and contexts, digital technology was first favored in medical clinical practice, becoming an important tool for supporting the learning of clinical knowledge and practice (Tegtmeyer et al. 2001 ; Durfee et al. 2003 ).

2006.1–2011.12: initial development period

Between January 2006 and December 2011, it was the initial development period of digital technology education research. Significant growth was observed in research related to digital technology, and discussions and theoretical analyses about “digital natives” emerged. During this phase, scholars focused on the debate about “how to use digital technology reasonably” and “whether current educational models and school curriculum design need to be adjusted on a large scale” (Bennett and Maton, 2010 ; Selwyn, 2009 ; Margaryan et al. 2011 ). These theoretical and speculative arguments provided a unique perspective on the impact of cognitive digital technology on education and teaching. As can be seen from the vocabulary such as “rethinking”, “disruptive pedagogy”, and “attitude” in Fig. 4 , many scholars joined the calm reflection and analysis under the trend of digital technology (Laurillard, 2008 ; Vratulis et al. 2011 ). During this phase, technology was still undergoing dramatic changes. The development of mobile technology had already caught the attention of many scholars (Wong et al. 2011 ), but digital technology represented by computers was still very active (Selwyn et al. 2011 ). The change in technological form would inevitably lead to educational transformation. Collins and Halverson ( 2010 ) summarized the prospects and challenges of using digital technology for learning and educational practices, believing that digital technology would bring a disruptive revolution to the education field and bring about a new educational system. In addition, the term “teacher education” in Fig. 4 reflects the impact of digital technology development on teachers. The rapid development of technology has widened the generation gap between teachers and students. To ensure smooth communication between teachers and students, teachers must keep up with the trend of technological development and establish a lifelong learning concept (Donnison, 2009 ).

In the diagram, each node represents a keyword, with the size of the node indicating the frequency of occurrence of the keyword. The connections represent the co-occurrence relationships between keywords, with a higher frequency of co-occurrence resulting in tighter connections.

2012.1–2017.12: critical exploration period

During the period spanning January 2012 to December 2017, the application of digital technology in education research underwent a significant exploration phase. As can be seen from Fig. 5 , different from the previous stage, the specific elements of specific digital technology have started to increase significantly, including the enrichment of technological contexts, the greater variety of research methods, and the diversification of learning modes. Moreover, the temporal and spatial dimensions of the learning environment were further de-emphasized, as noted in previous literature (Za et al. 2014 ). Given the rapidly accelerating pace of technological development, the education system in the digital era is in urgent need of collaborative evolution and reconstruction, as argued by Davis, Eickelmann, and Zaka ( 2013 ).

In the domain of digital technology, social media has garnered substantial scholarly attention as a promising avenue for learning, as noted by Pasquini and Evangelopoulos ( 2016 ). The implementation of social media in education presents several benefits, including the liberation of education from the restrictions of physical distance and time, as well as the erasure of conventional educational boundaries. The user-generated content (UGC) model in social media has emerged as a crucial source for knowledge creation and distribution, with the widespread adoption of mobile devices. Moreover, social networks have become an integral component of ubiquitous learning environments (Hwang et al. 2013 ). The utilization of social media allows individuals to function as both knowledge producers and recipients, which leads to a blurring of the conventional roles of learners and teachers. On mobile platforms, the roles of learners and teachers are not fixed, but instead interchangeable.

In terms of research methodology, the prevalence of empirical studies with survey designs in the field of educational technology during this period is evident from the vocabulary used, such as “achievement,” “acceptance,” “attitude,” and “ict.” in Fig. 5 . These studies aim to understand learners’ willingness to adopt and attitudes towards new technologies, and some seek to investigate the impact of digital technologies on learning outcomes through quasi-experimental designs (Domínguez et al. 2013 ). Among these empirical studies, mobile learning emerged as a hot topic, and this is not surprising. First, the advantages of mobile learning environments over traditional ones have been empirically demonstrated (Hwang et al. 2013 ). Second, learners born around the turn of the century have been heavily influenced by digital technologies and have developed their own learning styles that are more open to mobile devices as a means of learning. Consequently, analyzing mobile learning as a relatively novel mode of learning has become an important issue for scholars in the field of educational technology.

The intervention of technology has led to the emergence of several novel learning modes, with the blended learning model being the most representative one in the current phase. Blended learning, a novel concept introduced in the information age, emphasizes the integration of the benefits of traditional learning methods and online learning. This learning mode not only highlights the prominent role of teachers in guiding, inspiring, and monitoring the learning process but also underlines the importance of learners’ initiative, enthusiasm, and creativity in the learning process. Despite being an early conceptualization, blended learning’s meaning has been expanded by the widespread use of mobile technology and social media in education. The implementation of new technologies, particularly mobile devices, has resulted in the transformation of curriculum design and increased flexibility and autonomy in students’ learning processes (Trujillo Maza et al. 2016 ), rekindling scholarly attention to this learning mode. However, some scholars have raised concerns about the potential drawbacks of the blended learning model, such as its significant impact on the traditional teaching system, the lack of systematic coping strategies and relevant policies in several schools and regions (Moskal et al. 2013 ).

2018.1–2022.12: accelerated transformation period

The period spanning from January 2018 to December 2022 witnessed a rapid transformation in the application of digital technology in education research. The field of digital technology education research reached a peak period of publication, largely influenced by factors such as the COVID-19 pandemic (Yu et al. 2023 ). Research during this period was built upon the achievements, attitudes, and social media of the previous phase, and included more elements that reflect the characteristics of this research field, such as digital literacy, digital competence, and professional development, as depicted in Fig. 6 . Alongside this, scholars’ expectations for the value of digital technology have expanded, and the pursuit of improving learning efficiency and performance is no longer the sole focus. Some research now aims to cultivate learners’ motivation and enhance their self-efficacy by applying digital technology in a reasonable manner, as demonstrated by recent studies (Beardsley et al. 2021 ; Creely et al. 2021 ).

The COVID-19 pandemic has emerged as a crucial backdrop for the digital technology’s role in sustaining global education, as highlighted by recent scholarly research (Zhou et al. 2022 ; Pan and Zhang, 2020 ; Mo et al. 2022 ). The online learning environment, which is supported by digital technology, has become the primary battleground for global education (Yu, 2022 ). This social context has led to various studies being conducted, with some scholars positing that the pandemic has impacted the traditional teaching order while also expanding learning possibilities in terms of patterns and forms (Alabdulaziz, 2021 ). Furthermore, the pandemic has acted as a catalyst for teacher teaching and technological innovation, and this viewpoint has been empirically substantiated (Moorhouse and Wong, 2021 ). Additionally, some scholars believe that the pandemic’s push is a crucial driving force for the digital transformation of the education system, serving as an essential mechanism for overcoming the system’s inertia (Romero et al. 2021 ).

The rapid outbreak of the pandemic posed a challenge to the large-scale implementation of digital technologies, which was influenced by a complex interplay of subjective and objective factors. Objective constraints included the lack of infrastructure in some regions to support digital technologies, while subjective obstacles included psychological resistance among certain students and teachers (Moorhouse, 2021 ). These factors greatly impacted the progress of online learning during the pandemic. Additionally, Timotheou et al. ( 2023 ) conducted a comprehensive systematic review of existing research on digital technology use during the pandemic, highlighting the critical role played by various factors such as learners’ and teachers’ digital skills, teachers’ personal attributes and professional development, school leadership and management, and administration in facilitating the digitalization and transformation of schools.

The current stage of research is characterized by the pivotal term “digital literacy,” denoting a growing interest in learners’ attitudes and adoption of emerging technologies. Initially, the term “literacy” was restricted to fundamental abilities and knowledge associated with books and print materials (McMillan, 1996 ). However, with the swift advancement of computers and digital technology, there have been various attempts to broaden the scope of literacy beyond its traditional meaning, including game literacy (Buckingham and Burn, 2007 ), information literacy (Eisenberg, 2008 ), and media literacy (Turin and Friesem, 2020 ). Similarly, digital literacy has emerged as a crucial concept, and Gilster and Glister ( 1997 ) were the first to introduce this concept, referring to the proficiency in utilizing technology and processing digital information in academic, professional, and daily life settings. In practical educational settings, learners who possess higher digital literacy often exhibit an aptitude for quickly mastering digital devices and applying them intelligently to education and teaching (Yu, 2022 ).

The utilization of digital technology in education has undergone significant changes over the past two decades, and has been a crucial driver of educational reform with each new technological revolution. The impact of these changes on the underlying logic of digital technology education applications has been noticeable. From computer technology to more recent developments such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and artificial intelligence (AI), the acceleration in digital technology development has been ongoing. Educational reforms spurred by digital technology development continue to be dynamic, as each new digital innovation presents new possibilities and models for teaching practice. This is especially relevant in the post-pandemic era, where the importance of technological progress in supporting teaching cannot be overstated (Mughal et al. 2022 ). Existing digital technologies have already greatly expanded the dimensions of education in both time and space, while future digital technologies aim to expand learners’ perceptions. Researchers have highlighted the potential of integrated technology and immersive technology in the development of the educational metaverse, which is highly anticipated to create a new dimension for the teaching and learning environment, foster a new value system for the discipline of educational technology, and more effectively and efficiently achieve the grand educational blueprint of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (Zhang et al. 2022 ; Li and Yu, 2023 ).

Hotspot evolution analysis (RQ3)

The examination of keyword evolution reveals a consistent trend in the advancement of digital technology education application research. The emergence and transformation of keywords serve as indicators of the varying research interests in this field. Thus, the utilization of the burst detection function available in CiteSpace allowed for the identification of the top 10 burst words that exhibited a high level of burst strength. This outcome is illustrated in Table 7 .

According to the results presented in Table 7 , the explosive terminology within the realm of digital technology education research has exhibited a concentration mainly between the years 2018 and 2022. Prior to this time frame, the emerging keywords were limited to “information technology” and “computer”. Notably, among them, computer, as an emergent keyword, has always had a high explosive intensity from 2008 to 2018, which reflects the important position of computer in digital technology and is the main carrier of many digital technologies such as Learning Management Systems (LMS) and Assessment and Feedback systems (Barlovits et al. 2022 ).

Since 2018, an increasing number of research studies have focused on evaluating the capabilities of learners to accept, apply, and comprehend digital technologies. As indicated by the use of terms such as “digital literacy” and “digital skill,” the assessment of learners’ digital literacy has become a critical task. Scholarly efforts have been directed towards the development of literacy assessment tools and the implementation of empirical assessments. Furthermore, enhancing the digital literacy of both learners and educators has garnered significant attention. (Nagle, 2018 ; Yu, 2022 ). Simultaneously, given the widespread use of various digital technologies in different formal and informal learning settings, promoting learners’ digital skills has become a crucial objective for contemporary schools (Nygren et al. 2019 ; Forde and OBrien, 2022 ).

Since 2020, the field of applied research on digital technology education has witnessed the emergence of three new hotspots, all of which have been affected to some extent by the pandemic. Firstly, digital technology has been widely applied in physical education, which is one of the subjects that has been severely affected by the pandemic (Parris et al. 2022 ; Jiang and Ning, 2022 ). Secondly, digital transformation has become an important measure for most schools, especially higher education institutions, to cope with the impact of the pandemic globally (García-Morales et al. 2021 ). Although the concept of digital transformation was proposed earlier, the COVID-19 pandemic has greatly accelerated this transformation process. Educational institutions must carefully redesign their educational products to face this new situation, providing timely digital learning methods, environments, tools, and support systems that have far-reaching impacts on modern society (Krishnamurthy, 2020 ; Salas-Pilco et al. 2022 ). Moreover, the professional development of teachers has become a key mission of educational institutions in the post-pandemic era. Teachers need to have a certain level of digital literacy and be familiar with the tools and online teaching resources used in online teaching, which has become a research hotspot today. Organizing digital skills training for teachers to cope with the application of emerging technologies in education is an important issue for teacher professional development and lifelong learning (Garzón-Artacho et al. 2021 ). As the main organizers and practitioners of emergency remote teaching (ERT) during the pandemic, teachers must put cognitive effort into their professional development to ensure effective implementation of ERT (Romero-Hall and Jaramillo Cherrez, 2022 ).

The burst word “digital transformation” reveals that we are in the midst of an ongoing digital technology revolution. With the emergence of innovative digital technologies such as ChatGPT and Microsoft 365 Copilot, technology trends will continue to evolve, albeit unpredictably. While the impact of these advancements on school education remains uncertain, it is anticipated that the widespread integration of technology will significantly affect the current education system. Rejecting emerging technologies without careful consideration is unwise. Like any revolution, the technological revolution in the education field has both positive and negative aspects. Detractors argue that digital technology disrupts learning and memory (Baron, 2021 ) or causes learners to become addicted and distracted from learning (Selwyn and Aagaard, 2020 ). On the other hand, the prudent use of digital technology in education offers a glimpse of a golden age of open learning. Educational leaders and practitioners have the opportunity to leverage cutting-edge digital technologies to address current educational challenges and develop a rational path for the sustainable and healthy growth of education.

Discussion on performance analysis (RQ1)

The field of digital technology education application research has experienced substantial growth since the turn of the century, a phenomenon that is quantifiably apparent through an analysis of authorship, country/region contributions, and institutional engagement. This expansion reflects the increased integration of digital technologies in educational settings and the heightened scholarly interest in understanding and optimizing their use.

Discussion on authorship productivity in digital technology education research

The authorship distribution within digital technology education research is indicative of the field’s intellectual structure and depth. A primary figure in this domain is Neil Selwyn, whose substantial citation rate underscores the profound impact of his work. His focus on the implications of digital technology in higher education and educational sociology has proven to be seminal. Selwyn’s research trajectory, especially the exploration of spatiotemporal extensions of education through technology, provides valuable insights into the multifaceted role of digital tools in learning processes (Selwyn et al. 2019 ).

Other notable contributors, like Henderson and Edwards, present diversified research interests, such as the impact of digital technologies during the pandemic and their application in early childhood education, respectively. Their varied focuses highlight the breadth of digital technology education research, encompassing pedagogical innovation, technological adaptation, and policy development.

Discussion on country/region-level productivity and collaboration

At the country/region level, the United Kingdom, specifically England, emerges as a leading contributor with 92 published papers and a significant citation count. This is closely followed by Australia and the United States, indicating a strong English-speaking research axis. Such geographical concentration of scholarly output often correlates with investment in research and development, technological infrastructure, and the prevalence of higher education institutions engaging in cutting-edge research.

China’s notable inclusion as the only non-Western country among the top contributors to the field suggests a growing research capacity and interest in digital technology in education. However, the lower average citation per paper for China could reflect emerging engagement or different research focuses that may not yet have achieved the same international recognition as Western counterparts.

The chord diagram analysis furthers this understanding, revealing dense interconnections between countries like the United States, China, and England, which indicates robust collaborations. Such collaborations are fundamental in addressing global educational challenges and shaping international research agendas.

Discussion on institutional-level contributions to digital technology education

Institutional productivity in digital technology education research reveals a constellation of universities driving the field forward. Monash University and the Australian Catholic University have the highest publication output, signaling Australia’s significant role in advancing digital education research. The University of Oslo’s remarkable average citation count per publication indicates influential research contributions, potentially reflecting high-quality studies that resonate with the broader academic community.

The strong showing of UK institutions, including the University of London, The Open University, and the University of Cambridge, reinforces the UK’s prominence in this research field. Such institutions are often at the forefront of pedagogical innovation, benefiting from established research cultures and funding mechanisms that support sustained inquiry into digital education.

Discussion on journal publication analysis

An examination of journal outputs offers a lens into the communicative channels of the field’s knowledge base. Journals such as Education and Information Technologies , Computers & Education , and the British Journal of Educational Technology not only serve as the primary disseminators of research findings but also as indicators of research quality and relevance. The impact factor (IF) serves as a proxy for the quality and influence of these journals within the academic community.

The high citation counts for articles published in Computers & Education suggest that research disseminated through this medium has a wide-reaching impact and is of particular interest to the field. This is further evidenced by its significant IF of 11.182, indicating that the journal is a pivotal platform for seminal work in the application of digital technology in education.

The authorship, regional, and institutional productivity in the field of digital technology education application research collectively narrate the evolution of this domain since the turn of the century. The prominence of certain authors and countries underscores the importance of socioeconomic factors and existing academic infrastructure in fostering research productivity. Meanwhile, the centrality of specific journals as outlets for high-impact research emphasizes the role of academic publishing in shaping the research landscape.

As the field continues to grow, future research may benefit from leveraging the collaborative networks that have been elucidated through this analysis, perhaps focusing on underrepresented regions to broaden the scope and diversity of research. Furthermore, the stabilization of publication numbers in recent years invites a deeper exploration into potential plateaus in research trends or saturation in certain sub-fields, signaling an opportunity for novel inquiries and methodological innovations.

Discussion on the evolutionary trends (RQ2)

The evolution of the research field concerning the application of digital technology in education over the past two decades is a story of convergence, diversification, and transformation, shaped by rapid technological advancements and shifting educational paradigms.

At the turn of the century, the inception of digital technology in education was largely exploratory, with a focus on how emerging computer technologies could be harnessed to enhance traditional learning environments. Research from this early period was primarily descriptive, reflecting on the potential and challenges of incorporating digital tools into the educational setting. This phase was critical in establishing the fundamental discourse that would guide subsequent research, as it set the stage for understanding the scope and impact of digital technology in learning spaces (Wang et al. 2023 ).

As the first decade progressed, the narrative expanded to encompass the pedagogical implications of digital technologies. This was a period of conceptual debates, where terms like “digital natives” and “disruptive pedagogy” entered the academic lexicon, underscoring the growing acknowledgment of digital technology as a transformative force within education (Bennett and Maton, 2010 ). During this time, the research began to reflect a more nuanced understanding of the integration of technology, considering not only its potential to change where and how learning occurred but also its implications for educational equity and access.

In the second decade, with the maturation of internet connectivity and mobile technology, the focus of research shifted from theoretical speculations to empirical investigations. The proliferation of digital devices and the ubiquity of social media influenced how learners interacted with information and each other, prompting a surge in studies that sought to measure the impact of these tools on learning outcomes. The digital divide and issues related to digital literacy became central concerns, as scholars explored the varying capacities of students and educators to engage with technology effectively.

Throughout this period, there was an increasing emphasis on the individualization of learning experiences, facilitated by adaptive technologies that could cater to the unique needs and pacing of learners (Jing et al. 2023a ). This individualization was coupled with a growing recognition of the importance of collaborative learning, both online and offline, and the role of digital tools in supporting these processes. Blended learning models, which combined face-to-face instruction with online resources, emerged as a significant trend, advocating for a balance between traditional pedagogies and innovative digital strategies.

The later years, particularly marked by the COVID-19 pandemic, accelerated the necessity for digital technology in education, transforming it from a supplementary tool to an essential platform for delivering education globally (Mo et al. 2022 ; Mustapha et al. 2021 ). This era brought about an unprecedented focus on online learning environments, distance education, and virtual classrooms. Research became more granular, examining not just the pedagogical effectiveness of digital tools, but also their role in maintaining continuity of education during crises, their impact on teacher and student well-being, and their implications for the future of educational policy and infrastructure.

Across these two decades, the research field has seen a shift from examining digital technology as an external addition to the educational process, to viewing it as an integral component of curriculum design, instructional strategies, and even assessment methods. The emergent themes have broadened from a narrow focus on specific tools or platforms to include wider considerations such as data privacy, ethical use of technology, and the environmental impact of digital tools.

Moreover, the field has moved from considering the application of digital technology in education as a primarily cognitive endeavor to recognizing its role in facilitating socio-emotional learning, digital citizenship, and global competencies. Researchers have increasingly turned their attention to the ways in which technology can support collaborative skills, cultural understanding, and ethical reasoning within diverse student populations.

In summary, the past over twenty years in the research field of digital technology applications in education have been characterized by a progression from foundational inquiries to complex analyses of digital integration. This evolution has mirrored the trajectory of technology itself, from a facilitative tool to a pervasive ecosystem defining contemporary educational experiences. As we look to the future, the field is poised to delve into the implications of emerging technologies like AI, AR, and VR, and their potential to redefine the educational landscape even further. This ongoing metamorphosis suggests that the application of digital technology in education will continue to be a rich area of inquiry, demanding continual adaptation and forward-thinking from educators and researchers alike.

Discussion on the study of research hotspots (RQ3)

The analysis of keyword evolution in digital technology education application research elucidates the current frontiers in the field, reflecting a trajectory that is in tandem with the rapidly advancing digital age. This landscape is sculpted by emergent technological innovations and shaped by the demands of an increasingly digital society.

Interdisciplinary integration and pedagogical transformation

One of the frontiers identified from recent keyword bursts includes the integration of digital technology into diverse educational contexts, particularly noted with the keyword “physical education.” The digitalization of disciplines traditionally characterized by physical presence illustrates the pervasive reach of technology and signifies a push towards interdisciplinary integration where technology is not only a facilitator but also a transformative agent. This integration challenges educators to reconceptualize curriculum delivery to accommodate digital tools that can enhance or simulate the physical aspects of learning.

Digital literacy and skills acquisition

Another pivotal frontier is the focus on “digital literacy” and “digital skill”, which has intensified in recent years. This suggests a shift from mere access to technology towards a comprehensive understanding and utilization of digital tools. In this realm, the emphasis is not only on the ability to use technology but also on critical thinking, problem-solving, and the ethical use of digital resources (Yu, 2022 ). The acquisition of digital literacy is no longer an additive skill but a fundamental aspect of modern education, essential for navigating and contributing to the digital world.

Educational digital transformation

The keyword “digital transformation” marks a significant research frontier, emphasizing the systemic changes that education institutions must undergo to align with the digital era (Romero et al. 2021 ). This transformation includes the redesigning of learning environments, pedagogical strategies, and assessment methods to harness digital technology’s full potential. Research in this area explores the complexity of institutional change, addressing the infrastructural, cultural, and policy adjustments needed for a seamless digital transition.

Engagement and participation

Further exploration into “engagement” and “participation” underscores the importance of student-centered learning environments that are mediated by technology. The current frontiers examine how digital platforms can foster collaboration, inclusivity, and active learning, potentially leading to more meaningful and personalized educational experiences. Here, the use of technology seeks to support the emotional and cognitive aspects of learning, moving beyond the transactional view of education to one that is relational and interactive.

Professional development and teacher readiness

As the field evolves, “professional development” emerges as a crucial area, particularly in light of the pandemic which necessitated emergency remote teaching. The need for teacher readiness in a digital age is a pressing frontier, with research focusing on the competencies required for educators to effectively integrate technology into their teaching practices. This includes familiarity with digital tools, pedagogical innovation, and an ongoing commitment to personal and professional growth in the digital domain.

Pandemic as a catalyst

The recent pandemic has acted as a catalyst for accelerated research and application in this field, particularly in the domains of “digital transformation,” “professional development,” and “physical education.” This period has been a litmus test for the resilience and adaptability of educational systems to continue their operations in an emergency. Research has thus been directed at understanding how digital technologies can support not only continuity but also enhance the quality and reach of education in such contexts.

Ethical and societal considerations

The frontier of digital technology in education is also expanding to consider broader ethical and societal implications. This includes issues of digital equity, data privacy, and the sociocultural impact of technology on learning communities. The research explores how educational technology can be leveraged to address inequities and create more equitable learning opportunities for all students, regardless of their socioeconomic background.

Innovation and emerging technologies

Looking forward, the frontiers are set to be influenced by ongoing and future technological innovations, such as artificial intelligence (AI) (Wu and Yu, 2023 ; Chen et al. 2022a ). The exploration into how these technologies can be integrated into educational practices to create immersive and adaptive learning experiences represents a bold new chapter for the field.

In conclusion, the current frontiers of research on the application of digital technology in education are multifaceted and dynamic. They reflect an overarching movement towards deeper integration of technology in educational systems and pedagogical practices, where the goals are not only to facilitate learning but to redefine it. As these frontiers continue to expand and evolve, they will shape the educational landscape, requiring a concerted effort from researchers, educators, policymakers, and technologists to navigate the challenges and harness the opportunities presented by the digital revolution in education.

Conclusions and future research

Conclusions.

The utilization of digital technology in education is a research area that cuts across multiple technical and educational domains and continues to experience dynamic growth due to the continuous progress of technology. In this study, a systematic review of this field was conducted through bibliometric techniques to examine its development trajectory. The primary focus of the review was to investigate the leading contributors, productive national institutions, significant publications, and evolving development patterns. The study’s quantitative analysis resulted in several key conclusions that shed light on this research field’s current state and future prospects.

(1) The research field of digital technology education applications has entered a stage of rapid development, particularly in recent years due to the impact of the pandemic, resulting in a peak of publications. Within this field, several key authors (Selwyn, Henderson, Edwards, etc.) and countries/regions (England, Australia, USA, etc.) have emerged, who have made significant contributions. International exchanges in this field have become frequent, with a high degree of internationalization in academic research. Higher education institutions in the UK and Australia are the core productive forces in this field at the institutional level.

(2) Education and Information Technologies , Computers & Education , and the British Journal of Educational Technology are notable journals that publish research related to digital technology education applications. These journals are affiliated with the research field of educational technology and provide effective communication platforms for sharing digital technology education applications.

(3) Over the past two decades, research on digital technology education applications has progressed from its early stages of budding, initial development, and critical exploration to accelerated transformation, and it is currently approaching maturity. Technological progress and changes in the times have been key driving forces for educational transformation and innovation, and both have played important roles in promoting the continuous development of education.

(4) Influenced by the pandemic, three emerging frontiers have emerged in current research on digital technology education applications, which are physical education, digital transformation, and professional development under the promotion of digital technology. These frontier research hotspots reflect the core issues that the education system faces when encountering new technologies. The evolution of research hotspots shows that technology breakthroughs in education’s original boundaries of time and space create new challenges. The continuous self-renewal of education is achieved by solving one hotspot problem after another.

The present study offers significant practical implications for scholars and practitioners in the field of digital technology education applications. Firstly, it presents a well-defined framework of the existing research in this area, serving as a comprehensive guide for new entrants to the field and shedding light on the developmental trajectory of this research domain. Secondly, the study identifies several contemporary research hotspots, thus offering a valuable decision-making resource for scholars aiming to explore potential research directions. Thirdly, the study undertakes an exhaustive analysis of published literature to identify core journals in the field of digital technology education applications, with Sustainability being identified as a promising open access journal that publishes extensively on this topic. This finding can potentially facilitate scholars in selecting appropriate journals for their research outputs.

Limitation and future research

Influenced by some objective factors, this study also has some limitations. First of all, the bibliometrics analysis software has high standards for data. In order to ensure the quality and integrity of the collected data, the research only selects the periodical papers in SCIE and SSCI indexes, which are the core collection of Web of Science database, and excludes other databases, conference papers, editorials and other publications, which may ignore some scientific research and original opinions in the field of digital technology education and application research. In addition, although this study used professional software to carry out bibliometric analysis and obtained more objective quantitative data, the analysis and interpretation of data will inevitably have a certain subjective color, and the influence of subjectivity on data analysis cannot be completely avoided. As such, future research endeavors will broaden the scope of literature screening and proactively engage scholars in the field to gain objective and state-of-the-art insights, while minimizing the adverse impact of personal subjectivity on research analysis.

Data availability

The datasets analyzed during the current study are available in the Dataverse repository: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/F9QMHY

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Zhejiang Provincial Social Science Planning Project, “Mechanisms and Pathways for Empowering Classroom Teaching through Learning Spaces under the Strategy of High-Quality Education Development”, the 2022 National Social Science Foundation Education Youth Project “Research on the Strategy of Creating Learning Space Value and Empowering Classroom Teaching under the background of ‘Double Reduction’” (Grant No. CCA220319) and the National College Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship Training Program of China (Grant No. 202310337023).

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Wang, C., Chen, X., Yu, T. et al. Education reform and change driven by digital technology: a bibliometric study from a global perspective. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 11 , 256 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-02717-y

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Rick Hess Straight Up

Education policy maven Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute think tank offers straight talk on matters of policy, politics, research, and reform. Read more from this blog.

What the Last Two Decades Have Taught Us About School Reform

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At the end of last year, my colleague Ilana Ovental and I took a deep look into the media coverage of education during the pandemic. Part of that analysis asked whether—and how—coverage changed over time. So, we used Lexis Nexis to track the attention devoted to leading K-12 topics over the past couple decades. If you want to see the results for yourself, check it out here .

I was struck by how neatly the past two decades can be broken out into three (or perhaps three and a half) eras of school reform—a framing that can help us understand where we are and how we got here. Especially in a time when pandemic, political strife, hyperactive news cycles, and culture war can make six months seem like a lifetime, it’s worth taking a moment to step back in search of context.

If you’ll eyeball the peaks in the above graph, you’ll note that the 21 st century seems to order itself pretty neatly into a series of successive eras. The first of these, spanning roughly the length of the Bush administration, was the decade long rise and fall of No Child Left Behind. It took a couple years for NCLB to settle into the public consciousness, but, before long, it was the ubiquitous framing for all matters K-12. “Achievement gaps” became the lingua franca of advocates and funders; “AYP” (adequate yearly progress) became the measure of success.

By the dawn of the Obama years, amid concerns about excessive testing, high-stakes accountability, and a “race to the bottom,” NCLB had started to collapse under its own weight. In response, there was bursting interest in Obama’s Race to the Top, though attention to that was dwarfed by the rapid ascendance of its most controversial element: the Common Core State Standards.

The emphasis on testing and accountability shifted to academic standards. There was heated debate about new math, the status of fiction, and whether standards were a stealth mechanism for increasing federal control. Talk of “international benchmarking” and “systems interoperability” became the mantra for would-be reformers and enthusiastic funders.

So, we’d gone from federally driven testing and accountability to federally encouraged/subsidized/mandated (choose your verb) efforts to standardize reading and math standards. And then—as Checker Finn and I observed last year in “The End of School Reform?”—these efforts ran afoul of the populist wave that swept the nation in the 2010s. From the Tea Party to Occupy Wall Street to Black Lives Matter to the Trump/MAGA phenomenon, there was a multipronged attack on established institutions.

Thus, it’s not all that surprising that no new program rose to prominence as the Common Core lost altitude. Instead, there emerged a half-peak for school choice—perhaps the single education reform most aligned with a populist skepticism of institutional power. At the same time, this was less a case of choice exploding to prominence and more a case of steady growth amid something of a vacuum. Even with the determined, controversial efforts of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, school choice got barely half the media attention that NCLB and Common Core did at their peaks.

And more recently, we’ve seen the explosive, culture clash-fueled rise in attention to race-based curriculum and pedagogy (all playing out under the banner of critical race theory). Whether this third, culture war-driven wave will have the staying power of the wonkier previous waves remains to be seen.

Looking over two decades, I see the larger shift from slow-building policy debate to the rapid emergence of cultural conflict being noteworthy, even if I’m not sure what to make of it. For starters, I’ve no idea whether it’s a cyclical thing or something more permanent, or whether it tells us more about shifts in the schooling, media, public debate—or something of each.

One final thought: After doing this work for several decades, I can’t help but notice how seamlessly advocacy groups, associations, and other activists will pivot to reflect the zeitgeist of the day. So, in 2007, mission statements were all about “closing achievement gaps.” Five years later, they’d morphed into celebrating the importance of common standards. Today, the language has morphed again.

Some of this, I’m sure, is inevitable and even healthy. But chasing currents can also make organizations look unprincipled, feed cynicism, and leave them chasing every spin of the wheel. Keeping in mind that these tides ebb and flow might just give educators, leaders, and advocates more confidence to hold tight to the things they really value and more pause when they feel that pressure to chase the crowd.

The opinions expressed in Rick Hess Straight Up are strictly those of the author(s) and do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of Editorial Projects in Education, or any of its publications.

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What Changes to the U.S. Education System Are Needed to Support Long-Term Success for All Americans?

With the pandemic deepening inequities that threaten students’ prospects, the vice president of the Corporation’s National Program provides a vision for transforming our education system from one characterized by uneven and unjust results to one that puts all students on a path to bright futures 

At no point in our nation’s history have we asked so much of our education system as we do today. We ask that our primary and secondary schools prepare all students, regardless of background, for a lifetime of learning. We ask that teachers guide every child toward deeper understanding while simultaneously attending to their social-emotional development. And we ask that our institutions of higher learning serve students with a far broader range of life circumstances than ever before.

We ask these things of education because the future we aspire to requires it. The nature of work and civic participation is evolving at an unprecedented rate. Advances in automation, artificial intelligence, and social media are driving rapid changes in how we interact with each other and what skills hold value. In the world our children will inherit, their ability to adapt, think critically, and work effectively with others will be essential for both their own success and the well-being of society.

At Carnegie Corporation of New York, we focus on supporting people who are in a position to meet this challenge. That includes the full spectrum of educators, administrators, family members, and others who shape young people’s learning experiences as they progress toward and into adulthood. Our mission is to empower all students with the tools, systems, knowledge, and mindsets to prepare them to fully participate in the global economy and in a robust democracy.

All of our work is geared toward transforming student learning. The knowledge, skills, and dispositions required for success today call for a vastly different set of learning experiences than may have sufficed in the past. Students must play a more active role in their own learning, and that learning must encompass more than subject-matter knowledge. Preparing all children for success requires greater attention to inclusiveness in the classroom, differentiation in teaching and learning, and universal high expectations.

This transformation needs to happen in higher education as well. A high school education is no longer enough to ensure financial security. We need more high-quality postsecondary options, better guidance for students as they transition beyond high school, and sufficient supports to enable all students to complete their postsecondary programs. Preparing students for lifelong success requires stronger connections between K–12, higher education, and work.

The need for such transformation has become all the more urgent in the face of COVID-19. As with past economic crises, the downturn resulting from the pandemic is likely to accelerate the erosion of opportunities for low-skilled workers with only a high school education. Investments in innovative learning models and student supports are critical to preventing further inequities in learning outcomes. 

An Urgent Call for Advancing Equity 

The 2020–21 school year may prove to be the most consequential in American history. With unfathomable speed, COVID-19 has forced more change in how schools operate than in the previous half century.

What is most concerning in all of this is the impact on the most underserved and historically marginalized in our society: low-income children and students of color. Even before the current crisis, the future prospects of a young person today looked very different depending on the color of her skin and the zip code in which she grew up, but the pandemic exposed and exacerbated long-standing racial and economic inequities. And the same families who are faring worst in terms of disrupted schooling are bearing the brunt of the economic downturn and disproportionately getting sick, being hospitalized, and dying.

Our mission is to empower all students with the tools, systems, knowledge, and mindsets to prepare them to fully participate in the global economy and in a robust democracy.

Every organization that is committed to educational improvement needs to ask itself what it can do differently to further advance the cause of educational equity during this continuing crisis so that we can make lasting improvements. As we know from past experience, if the goal of equity is not kept front and center, those who are already behind through no fault of their own will benefit the least. If ever there were a time to heed this caution, it is now.

We hope that our nation will approach education with a new sense of purpose and a shared commitment to ensuring that our schools truly work for every child. Whether or not that happens will depend on our resolve and our actions in the coming months. We have the proof points and know-how to transform learning, bolster instruction, and meet the needs of our most disadvantaged students. What has changed is the urgency for doing so at scale.

Our starting place must be a vision of equal opportunity, and from there we must create the conditions that can actually ensure it — irrespective of how different they may look from the ones we now have. We need to reimagine the systems that shape student learning and put the communities whose circumstances we most need to elevate at the center of that process. We need to recognize that we will not improve student outcomes without building the capacity of the adults who work with them, supporting them with high-quality resources and meaningful opportunities for collaboration and professional growth. We need to promote stronger connections between K–12, higher education, and employment so that all students are prepared for lifelong success.

The pandemic has deepened inequities that threaten students’ prospects. But if we seize this moment and learn from it, if we marshal the necessary resources, we have the potential to transform our education system from one characterized by uneven and unjust results to one that puts all students on a path to bright futures.

In a pandemic-induced moment when the American education system has been blown into 25 million homes across the country, where do we go from here?

We Must Learn to Act in New Ways

These are not controversial ideas. In fact, they constitute the general consensus about where American education needs to go. But they also represent a tall order for the people who influence the system. Practically everyone who plays a part in education must learn to act in new ways.

That we have made progress in such areas as high school completion, college-going rates, and the adoption of college- and career-ready standards is a testament to the commitment of those working in the field. But it will take more than commitment to achieve the changes in student learning that our times demand. We can’t expect individuals to figure out what they need to do on their own, nor should we be surprised if they struggle to do so when working in institutional structures designed to produce different outcomes. The transformation we seek calls for much greater coordination and a broader set of allies than would suffice for more incremental changes.

Our starting place must be a vision of equal opportunity, and from there we must create the conditions that can actually ensure it — irrespective of how different they may look from the ones we now have.

Our best hope for achieving equity and the transformation of student learning is to enhance adults’ ability to contribute to that learning. That means building their capacity while supporting their authentic engagement in promoting a high-quality education for every child. It also means ensuring that people operate within systems that are optimized to support their effectiveness and that a growing body of knowledge informs their efforts.

These notions comprise our overarching strategy for promoting the systems change needed to transform student learning experiences on a large scale. We seek to enhance adult capacity and stakeholder engagement in the service of ensuring that all students are prepared to meet the demands of the 21st century. We also support knowledge development and organizational improvement to the extent that investments in these areas enhance adult capacity, stakeholder engagement, and student experiences.

Five Ways We Invest in the Future of Students

These views on how best to promote systems change in education guide our philanthropic work. The strategic areas of change we focus on are major themes throughout our five investment portfolios. Although they are managed separately and support different types of initiatives, each seeks to address its area of focus from multiple angles. A single portfolio may include grants that build adult capacity, enhance stakeholder engagement, and generate new knowledge.

New Designs to Advance Learning

Preparing all students for success requires that we fundamentally reimagine our nation’s schools and classrooms. Our public education system needs to catch up with how the world is evolving and with what we’ve come to understand about how people learn. That means attending to a broader diversity of learning styles and bringing what happens in school into greater alignment with what happens in the worlds of work and civic life. We make investments to increase the number of innovative learning models that support personalized experiences, academic mastery, and positive youth development. We also make investments that build the capacity of districts and intermediaries to improve learning experiences for all students as well as grants to investigate relevant issues of policy and practice.

Pathways to Postsecondary Success

Lifelong success in the United States has never been more dependent on educational attainment than it is today. Completing some education beyond the 12th grade has virtually become a necessity for financial security and meaningful work. But for that possibility to exist for everyone, we need to address the historical barriers that keep many students from pursuing and completing a postsecondary program, and we must strengthen the options available to all students for education after high school. Through our investments, we seek to increase the number of young people able to access and complete a postsecondary program, with a major focus on removing historical barriers for students who are first-generation college-goers, low-income, or from underrepresented groups. We also look to expand the range of high-quality postsecondary options and to strengthen alignment between K–12, higher education, and the world of work.

Leadership and Teaching to Advance Learning

At its core, learning is about the interplay between teachers, students, and content. How teachers and students engage with each other and with their curriculum plays a predominant role in determining what students learn and how well they learn it. That’s not to say that factors outside of school don’t also greatly impact student learning. But the research is clear that among the factors a school might control, nothing outweighs the teaching that students experience. We focus on supporting educators in implementing rigorous college- and career-ready standards in math, science, and English language arts. We make investments to increase the supply of and demand for high-quality curricular materials and professional learning experiences for teachers and administrators.

Public Understanding

As central as they are to the education process, school professionals are hardly the only people with a critical role to play in student learning. Students spend far more time with family and other community members than they do at school. And numerous stakeholders outside of the education system have the potential to strengthen and shape what happens within it. The success of our nation’s schools depends on far more individuals than are employed by them. 

We invest in efforts to engage families and other stakeholders as active partners in supporting equitable access to high-quality student learning. We also support media organizations and policy research groups in building awareness about key issues related to educational equity and improvement.

Integration, Learning, and Innovation

Those of us who work for change in education need a new set of habits to achieve our vision of 21st-century learning. It will take more than a factory-model mindset to transform our education system into one that prepares all learners for an increasingly complex world. We must approach this task with flexibility, empathy for the people involved, and an understanding of how to learn from what’s working and what’s not. We work to reduce the fragmentation, inefficiencies, and missteps that often result when educational improvement strategies are pursued in isolation and without an understanding of the contexts in which they are implemented. Through grants and other activities, we build the capacity of people working in educational organizations to change how they work by emphasizing systems and design thinking, iteration, and knowledge sharing within and across organizations.

Two recent surveys by Carnegie Corporation of New York and Gallup offer insights into how our education system can better help all Americans navigate job and career choices

Join Us in This Ambitious Endeavor

Our approach of supporting multiple stakeholders by pulling multiple levers is informed by our deep understanding of the system we’re trying to move. American education is a massive, diverse, and highly decentralized enterprise. There is no mechanism by which we might affect more than superficial change in many thousands of communities. The type of change that is needed cannot come from compliance alone. It requires that everyone grapple with new ideas.

We know from our history of promoting large-scale improvements in American education that advancements won’t happen overnight or as the result of one kind of initiative. Our vision for 21st-century education will require more than quick wins and isolated successes. Innovation is essential, and a major thrust of our work involves the incubation and dissemination of new models, resources, and exemplars. But we must also learn to move forward with the empathy, flexibility, and systems thinking needed to support people in making the transition. Novel solutions only help if they can be successfully implemented in different contexts.

Only a sustained and concerted effort will shift the center of gravity of a social enterprise that involves millions of adults and many tens of millions of young people. The challenge of philanthropy is to effect widespread social change with limited resources and without formal authority. This takes more than grantmaking. At the Corporation, we convene, communicate, and form coalitions. We provide thought leadership, issue challenges, and launch new initiatives. Through these multifaceted activities, we maximize our ability to forge, share, and put into practice powerful new ideas that build a foundation for more substantial changes in the future.

We encourage everyone who plays a role in education to join us in this work. Our strategy represents more than our priorities as a grantmaker. It conveys our strong beliefs about how to get American education to where it needs to be. The more organizations and individuals we have supporting those who are working to provide students with what they need, the more likely we are to succeed in this ambitious endeavor. 

LaVerne Evans Srinivasan is the vice president of Carnegie Corporation of New York’s National Program and the program director for Education.

TOP: Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, a lower-school substitute teacher works from her home in Arlington, Virginia, on April 1, 2020. Her role in the school changed significantly due to the pandemic. Whereas she previously worked part-time to support teachers when they needed to be absent from the classroom, amid COVID-19 she now helps teachers to build skills with new digital platforms so they can continue to teach in the best way for their students and their families. (Credit: Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images)

Women have been largely sidelined from negotiations, even as they bear the brunt of violence. Where are conditions for women worsening, improving, or static?

Judy Woodruff moderates a conversation with Spencer J. Cox, governor of Utah (R), and Wes Moore, governor of Maryland (D), about how to depolarize our country, the role that national service can play, and how to disagree better

15 of the best opinion pieces on education reform that we read in 2023

Ø   Schools and teachers should drop the “leave to succeed” narrative. — Sharif El-Mekki, Education Week  

President, Thomas B. Fordham Institute

Michael J. Petrilli  is president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute , research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution , executive editor of Education Next , editor in chief of the…

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How 20 Years of Education Reform Has Created Greater Inequality

How standardized testing, gentrification, school choice, and economic downturn have widened inequality to create an existential threat to democracy.

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By Michael A. Seelig Jun. 18, 2020

When the latest Program for International Assessment (PISA) results were released in December 2019, many who saw the United States’ ranking continue to stagnate behind its global competitors conceded that the last 20 years and billions of dollars spent on education reform had done essentially nothing . But the rankings don’t tell the whole story. While American students remain roughly the same on aggregate , compared to their international counterparts, the top quarter of American students have been improving their performance on the exam since 2012, even as the bottom 10th percentile lost ground . In other words, something has happened: the achievement gap is widening, a consolidation that is beginning to mimic the increasing consolidation of wealth and opportunity in America.

This statistic is a product of the fact that education policy is not designed to elevate and educate every child. Since the 1990’s, quick and unsustainable schooling reforms have been prioritized that show a disregard for the wider economic realities in America. As schools and parents struggle to make ends meet, billions of dollars have enhanced opportunities for the best students at the cost of opportunities for struggling students. As a result, public education—historically an economic equalizer—has instead helped widen an educational divide that is beginning to mirror the nation’s economic divide.

How We Got It Wrong

Around the turn of the millennium, four major forces converged to shape how the school reform movement would widen inequality: standardized testing, gentrification, school choice, and household economic downturn.

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The first, standardized testing, evolved out of a number of mandates in the wake of 1983’s A Nation at Risk report to increase learning standards and verify they were being met. Standardized testing remains a deeply problematic practice, but good policy that focused on growth and thoughtful administration that enabled greater support could have mitigated the damage. For example, a student that entered 10th grade English reading at the 5th-grade level, could progress—with the help of a talented teacher—three to four years in a single year, but under the existing policy, that teacher would not be rewarded: they would only be deemed ineffective for not getting a child to read at the 10th-grade level. As states pushed mandates to tie proficiency rates to teacher evaluations, many teachers learned to focus on test preparation, above true learning, while the most talented teachers let the market guide them away from schools that needed their abilities most.

The second factor was a renewed interest in urban real estate. As middle-class twenty-somethings, disenchanted with the alienation of the suburbs, began heading to places like Chicago’s Northwest side, Williamsburg in Brooklyn, Northeast Philadelphia, Eastern Washington DC, the Arts District in Los Angeles and similar gentrifying enclaves across the U.S., developers quickly followed. But development needed those free-spirited twenty-somethings to stick around once they became family-focused thirty-somethings, a decision driven by schools. And since city councilmembers, administrators, and mayors were also hungry for the continued development—to increase the real estate tax base and improve budgets—both public and private forces demanded schools get better to keep pace with gentrification. And it had to be quick.

In this context, mayors often bargained with their constituencies to plant roots. Chicago’s Rahm Emanuel, for example, pleaded with middle-class families to not flee to the suburbs by promising better options for their children: “Don’t head for the doors when your kid’s in fifth grade or sixth grade—for the suburbs—because the city of Chicago is going to give you a high-quality life with a high-quality education for your children.” But making this happen required the third force: school choice.

Whereas testing and real estate were more or less natural evolutions of policy and economic cycles, school choice was air-dropped in to bring education up to pace with the market economy. The idea had been around since the 1950s but had been put in a drawer when it was shown to be used to sustain segregation in the wake of the 1954 Brown v Board of Education decision. However, in 1990, it was rebranded in a now-famous book by John Chubb and Terry Moe called Politics, Markets and America’s Schools.

The way it was presented in urban schools was relatively simple: young, predominantly white families moving to these gentrifying neighborhoods had no public option but the neighborhood schools, so—when the existing schools were insufficient—a new school would have to be created that provided a “good” choice, in most cases a charter school or, in fewer cases, a district-operated selective enrollment school. Both relied upon the tactic of pushing out neighborhood children and importing high-scoring, high-ability children from surrounding areas. Since traditional schools were seen as responsible for the existing state of schools, parallel alternatives would need private operators in charge, because of their profitable business track records.

This moment represented a unique shift in city governance. Gentrification was nothing new, but what was shifting was how city governments viewed their purpose: referred to as “third-wave gentrification,” city halls changed their mission from supporting the neediest to supporting development and offering tax breaks and abatements on new construction. As the generation that embraced New Deal and Great Society philosophies was retiring, it was replaced by a new breed of managers bearing a new business-friendly ideology, which naturally forced cities to compete for people, companies, and business. For schools, this typically took the form of a public-private partnership like the Center City Schools Initiative in Philadelphia or the Chicago Commercial Club, which shaped policy around market-driven education that could then be enacted through the city or state governments.

Between the testing requirements that emerged with No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and the need to improve neighborhood optics for increasing real estate revenues, the sudden need for schools to perform presented a new frontier for the industry. Charter schools had begun springing up through the 1990s in Minnesota, Colorado, California, Massachusetts and Michigan, but after the passage of NCLB they went supersonic. NCES data shows fewer than 2,000 charter schools in the US in the year 2000 but by 2017 that number had grown to over 7,000. And that only counts the ones that had survived: thousands more disrupted school districts and countless lives but shut down due to mismanagement or enrollment problems. The Heritage Foundation, a strong proponent for charter schools, cites an average year-to-year growth of 10-15% nationally during this period, generating the sort of critical mass that moved now-noticeable numbers of children out of the traditional system and leaving it with sizable funding and population gaps that required a serious reorganization of priorities. During this period, charter enrollment grew from around 450,000 students to over three million.

School districts worked to stop the bleeding by reforming neighborhood schools as magnet, testing, or selective enrollment—which guaranteed a high-performing school—but only by displacing students from the neighborhood, who may have viewed that school, problematic as it was, as one of the only stable things in their lives. If “improvement” just meant “skimming the best kids from around town,” public schools could do that too: selective enrollment schools grew from around 1,400 schools in 2000 to nearly 3,200 over the same period, with their student grab growing from 1.2 million to 2.5 million students.

Many charter schools were unquestionably able to post drastically improved test scores and even offer cleaner, modernized facilities compared to the traditional neighborhood schools. And some operators, especially early on, remained true to the original idea of charter schools, one that was originally put forth by the teacher’s union, of all groups, where a limited number of experimental schools could serve as test laboratories with lessened restrictions. But these few were quickly drowned out by the operators who embraced the competitive ethos of the new city governments and saw an opportunity to tap a well of steady government funding with few restrictions and very little oversight. Some were guided by an even greater desire to leverage schools as a weapon in what sociologists describe as the “revanchist” motivations of gentrification, taking revenge on those groups thought to be at fault for the recessions of the 1970s and early 1990s that lost billions in revenue for the owner and donor class. Some, on the more extreme wing of libertarianism, even sought to destroy traditional schools altogether, leaving charters as the only feasible alternative.

School choice at a large scale was predicated on a deeply flawed understanding of how schools behave. School choice doesn’t necessarily drive schools to compete for best practices; it more often drives them to compete for the best kids, the students who are easiest—and cheapest —to teach. Charter operators often deny such practices , but it’s been well documented by both national and local media. By 2013, Washington D.C. charter schools were expelling students at rates 28 times greater than the traditional schools . Chicago charters, in 2014 were found to expel at 12 times the rate of traditional schools . In some instances, incomplete paperwork was sufficient means for expulsion to the traditional school, who, while also requiring all paperwork to be on file, do not have the liberty to remove a student when it is missing. Moreover, the expulsion tactic was usually carefully administered to ensure the school had already received funding for pre-purge counts, while the traditional school would see an increase in enrollment without any additional funding.

Such cherry-picking doesn’t even include the hundreds of stories in local media, from Newark to Los Angeles, about the families that have been kept out altogether through tactical gate-keeping techniques like refusal to participate in the free and reduced lunch program even when eligible, and more popularly, parent contracts that required donations of cash and volunteering that are near impossible for poor families and single parents who work multiple jobs.

The flip-side of these practices meant a disproportionate number of students with disabilities, discipline problems, unstable housing or home life, social-emotional issues, non-English speakers― the unchosen ―would all begin to accumulate in the traditional schools while choice and selective enrollment curated the lowest cost students into their freshly painted classrooms. As a veteran teacher in Flint, Michigan, put it : “We have a school district where all that’s left are damaged kids who are being exposed to other damaged kids, and it’s causing more damage.”

Such competition for the easy to teach happens at all levels. When initiatives like Race To The Top connected test scores to teacher evaluations, English and Math departments fought over AP and Honors classes, as those were the classes in which students would score higher on standardized tests regardless of the teacher’s abilities as a teacher, guaranteeing better marks on their annual evaluations

When schools are asked to compete, the greatest factors impacting outcomes are what happens when children are not at school. As a result, “choice” did not, in fact, incentivize better schooling, but mostly shuffled kids around an already existent bell curve, guided by parents’ abilities to navigate the intentionally complex dual school system.

Temple University researcher Maia Cucchiara concludes that “while the goals of [choice] policy may be ostensibly worthy, one of its consequences is to reinscribe existing status positions and inequalities.”

The fourth factor created a natural limitation to the capacity of choice: household economic downturn. What renders so many education reform efforts futile from the outset—so much so that we avoid talking about it—is the fact that a student’s academic achievement, with few exceptions, is completely tethered to the family’s income and the opportunities it can provide. Many reformers debate the exceptions to the rule and envision reform as merely the scaling of those exceptions. But the exceptions almost always rely on truly unique circumstance: an unexpected source of social capital for a child or a truly rare, once in a lifetime teacher like Jaime Escalante (who still wasn’t successful with every child and utilized tactics that were not scalable, caveats that don’t make for good movies). Just as an inspiring uncle or family friend cannot be recreated at scale in a school, a proficient student cannot be manufactured through coaching alone. Family income creates numerous intangibles that just help a child do better in school. It’s why the SAT performance graph each year continues to show an indisputable correlation between family income and achievement .

During the 1990s and 2000s, despite what the stock market reported, life for the middle class across the nation, and particularly in cities, was not getting better. City governments turned away from supporting the needy, and the economy shifted from manufacturing to a new tech-focused economy that had no place for low-skilled work. NAFTA, the recession and automation are estimated to have lost America nearly 5 million jobs, since the 1990s many of which paid union wages and benefits. Phenomena, such as the jobless recoveries aided owners’ bottom lines but not workers, many of whom found work that paid below a living wage or more recently, in gig work. Meanwhile, average home prices (adjusted for inflation) between 1970 and 2016 have doubled , the cost to raise a child increased 23 percent, and healthcare costs increased 136% - leaving many families without coverage. Wages, however, have stagnated, and the number of two-parent homes decreased by nearly 20 percent, with more than 60 percent of parents citing quality childcare as being very difficult to find and afford. Americans have compensated with household debt, which has exploded to approximately 90 percent of GDP today.

The impact this has had on children is staggering: UNICEF’s 2012 report on Child Well-Being in Developed Countries ranked American children 26th out of 29 countries across the dimensions of education, health and safety, housing, and material well-being. The U.S. is 28th out of 29 in relative poverty rankings, while the country we like to hold as the high watermark for quality education, Finland, is unsurprisingly at number one. American children do rank first for childhood obesity, yet they are among the least likely to eat breakfast. And they are among the most likely children in the world to witness violence or homicide. Research at Johns Hopkins and Washington University has now drawn definitive links between poverty and depression, citing a 37% increase among teens since 2005. Meanwhile, budget cuts to schools have ballooned not just teacher-student ratios, but counselors and nurses as well. In 2017, counselors topped-out at 903:1 in Arizona, while one school nurse in some parts of Michigan was responsible for over 4,000 students at a time when tap water in the region was deemed toxic.

When the reform strategy was predicated on competing for capable kids from stable homes—and these kids were becoming fewer each year—how could the strategy do anything but reshuffle the deck?

It’s important to understand that a school is much more than a building with a bunch of teachers and desks in it. A school is a place where young people forge relationships, establish norms and habits, learn to deal with conflict, identify role models and understand how to interact with adults and people from different cultures and backgrounds. It is these things that build a school community: finding a friend who helps you in science and who you help in English. Finding a group of people who introduce you to new books, movies, music, ideas, and worlds. A school is also the parents who make costumes and sets for the play, volunteer on field trips, chaperone dances, host fundraisers, donate books to the library, speak to the class on career day, and are around when someone else’s parents are not. They let you come to their house after school because they know your house is empty. Sometimes they let you stay for dinner. They look out for you.

Imagine a system where those kids and parents from your neighborhood are all systematically chosen out, to be grouped together somewhere else.

Now imagine being in the school with the kids who were left behind.

Conclusions

The Program for International Assessment (PISA) results show the learning damage that is happening as a result of our approach to education reform over the last 20 years. Reforms have aided the improvement of the best students while creating a deep accumulation of human debt at the bottom, resulting in a reciprocal relationship with the wider gulf of opportunity and income inequality in America.

There are four chief conclusions that need to be understood.

First, choice and the market approach to schooling violates a critical rule of democracy: that you can’t have a market of winners and losers dictated by the capacities of the able and self-interested few in a system designed to serve the collective interests of a nation’s many. Like the healthcare industry, market-based education helps some people get better, but leaves many to die, both literally and figuratively. As long as quality learning is available primarily to those that are the chosen, the growing inequality seen in the PISA will continue to widen.

Second, the current model tethers learning success to middle-class advantages and so the failure of the economy to create wider prosperity makes the failure of the broader education system inevitable with only a small subset able to post gains. Had the free-market fable of prosperity for all actually come to fruition, schools would have an unlimited supply of constantly regenerating strong, healthy students to sustain the system in whatever form it took. Then again, were this the case, education may never have been seen as having a crisis in the first place, which brought the call for reforms. As wealthy social democracies around the world show, once society is funded and provided for, other problems may persist while education is more a process of tinkering around the edges and tuning-up an otherwise effective system.

Third, while politicians spend time and effort fighting free-riders on entitlement programs such as welfare and Medicaid, the irony of recent education reform is that our current education system is the greatest creator of an entire underclass of future free-riders through its ongoing consolidation of opportunity and wealth. This raises a fundamental question about the future of American society: What will happen to the aforementioned unchosen? People across the political spectrum are rarely able to offer an answer beyond “not my problem” or moving these children from place to place in a human shell game before they eventually vanish within the messiness of the system. But if you live in America, it’s very much your problem. In an economy that no longer has a place for low-skilled labor, the uneducated of today become the unemployed and unpurposed of tomorrow. They are the costly outcasts, the prison population that costs taxpayers billions of dollars each year, and the marginalized who are managed by costly forms of social aid, police, fire, medical care, social work, yet still cause violence, crime and overall declining quality of society. As the saying goes, it’s much easier to teach young boys than to repair broken men.

This approach to education is the very definition of an unsustainable practice and emblematic of the types of “solutions” that the government has foisted upon Americans since the 1970s. And it is these very types of approaches to government that make 20- and 30-year-old Americans so frustrated with previous generations of leadership. Their frustration is not unfounded. Government leaders have consistently sacrificed long-term improvement, solving only the optics of problems without addressing the underlying issues, creating even more complex problems that just resurface in a few years’ time for future generations to solve.

Fourth, and most importantly, social impact work often done in the non-specific service of “improving education” has shown that the private innovation space for education has been unable—or perhaps unwilling—to distinguish between moving a social organization forward and moving society forward, an excellent example of the question Kania and Kramer address in their Collective Impact work: Are we who work in this space, despite the success of driving performance indicators in our respective work, aware of the wider collateral damage being created in our wake?

If not, there needs to be a serious dialogue about the way social innovation proceeds, how it measures impact, and what it truly incentivizes to avoid wider systemic destruction. On the other hand, if we are, in fact, aware of the collateral damage, then there are some deep ethical questions to be answered about the way our work could actually be sabotaging democratic institutions to serve individual interests under the guise of social good.

It seems naïve to imagine that in an environment of competition, no one anticipated schools trying to get ahead by only taking the children that helped them and marginalizing those that didn’t. It’s not hard to imagine that as a probable outcome of forcing schools to compete for their livelihood, rewarding the winners and sanctioning the losers, at a time when the core foundations of what helps people find success in a society—jobs, income, social programs, and community programs—were being systematically stripped away.

Nonetheless, this new reality cannot be unseen and it has profound implications for our society, in the present and for the future. Operators in the social innovation space have some important decisions to make. Either, we accept the new structure where unelected, wealthy organizations get to drive the outcomes of a society which, as the last 20 years have shown us, prefers outcomes that are inherently unequal and oftentimes racist and classist, or we have to decide that we want to sustain a flourishing democracy and work to restore its institutions and drive the indicators that demonstrate this wider impact.

What Can We Do?

Educators are always asked what is wrong with education, and there are two completely opposite ways to answer the questions. Everything, it’s a total mess is more commonly heard before the subject is changed. But the second, which takes a lot of energy and explanation actually engages ongoing dialogue: Nothing: it’s working exactly as it was designed.

Education’s current design is the problem and it was not built with an end in mind—or it was built to an end that is unacceptable for purposes of a healthy functioning society.

First, we need to reframe our thinking about schools and understand them in the wider context of promoting equality measurable on broad, national, and global indicators. This means establishing a clear, re-defined purpose for public education and a mission for schools that cannot be manipulated for the gain of individual units at the cost of the wider effort. We must separate our business mind—which requires competition—from our social mind, which requires cooperation.

Second, we need much better measurement of organizational performance that both recognizes the wider geography of schools and communities and accounts for the collateral damage we are leaving in the wake of our efforts. Just like we can’t assess coal production or fracking solely on their abilities to create energy, we too need to better understand what damage is being caused to the social ecosystems we inhabit. We need to use the lever of education to promote greater equality and opportunity as measured by these broader economic and well-being indicators, not those that naturally go up by picking the right kids.

This focus should be the guiding light for social impact ventures in the coming years. We do not yet have the measurement tools and systems to truly understand this, but we do have broad indicators like the UNICEF survey, the PISA results, and a host of other well-being focused metrics. They are helpful but insufficient. Thankfully we have some very smart people in our foundations, universities, think tanks, nonprofits and social services who are hopefully willing to shift their attention to thinking deeply on these problems.

Lastly, we must recognize the existential threat a system that enhances inequality poses to democracy and need to push through the inevitable fatigue that emerges when we see something before us as too big or too ambitious. We must stop saying things like “this is just the current reality” and be bold in our attempt to change the conversation about how we define success. We must be unapologetic about our focus on society even if that means an indicator or metric doesn’t make us look immediately good. We have led the conversation that changes federal and state regulations multiple times in the past and it’s time we lead it again. This must become the new conversation in education. American democracy depends on it.

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2023 education highlights: Keeping up the momentum to transform learning

International Day of Education 2023 dedicated to Afghan girls and women

UNESCO dedicated this year's International Day of Education on 24 January to girls and women in Afghanistan who have been deprived of their right to pursue secondary and higher education. The Organization renewed its call to immediately restore their fundamental right to education. “No country in the world should bar women and girls from receiving an education,” said UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay. “The international community has the responsibility to ensure that the rights of Afghan girls and women are restored without delay. The war against women must stop.” 

In Afghanistan’s Logar province, most girls and women are illiterate. Even before the decision of the de-facto authorities to suspend girls’ access to beyond primary education, most families did not let their girls go to school. Today, over 1,000 women and young girls aged 15 to 45 are learning how to read, write and calculate for the first time in their lives through UNESCO’s Community-based Basic General Literacy Classes. During UNESCO’s visit to two literacy classes , women and girls shared their motivations, challenges and inspirations for attending the classes. Nationwide, the Organization is currently reaching over 40,000 illiterate and semi-literate youth and adults – over 60% of whom are women – in 20 provinces. 

Supporting learners and teachers in Ukraine

UNESCO and Ukraine’s Ministry of Education and Science launched an online training in digital pedagogy for 50,000 teachers, while the education of many Ukrainian students is still disrupted by the war. They are also training 15,000 school psychologists to withstand the impact of the war on the mental health of Ukrainian learners and teachers. “Since February 2022, UNESCO has continuously supported Ukrainian teachers to ensure that students continue learning in the midst of war,” said UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Education Stefania Giannini. “I pay tribute to their work, resilience and continued dedication. As the new academic year has just begun, UNESCO reaffirms its commitment to them. Because education is the cornerstone on which Ukraine's future is built.”   Read more    

Monitoring country commitments made at the Transforming Education Summit

The latest UNESCO data shows that the global number of out-of-school children has risen by 6 million since 2021 and now totals 250 million. The figures, compiled by the Global Education Monitoring Report and the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, reveal that education progress continues to stagnate globally. The annual finance gap for helping low and lower-middle income countries achieve their national education targets is almost US $100 billion. UNESCO remains committed to supporting countries and partners to acquire the financing needed to meet their goals. The Organization is also monitoring country commitments made at the UN Transforming Education Summit in 2022 through its new dashboard . Read more

Urgent call for appropriate use of technology in learning and global guidance on generative AI in education

UNESCO’s 2023 Global Education Monitoring Report on technology in education highlights the lack of appropriate governance and regulation. It urges countries to set their own terms for the way technology is designed and used in education so that it never replaces in-person, teacher-led instruction, and supports the shared objective of quality education for all. The report proposes four questions that policy-makers and educational stakeholders should reflect upon as technology is being deployed in education. Read more

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools have far-reaching implications for education and research. Yet the education sector today is largely unprepared for the ethical and pedagogical integration of these powerful and rapidly evolving technologies, as UNESCO Assistant Director-General Stefania Giannini reiterated in her think piece . UNESCO developed the first-ever global guidance on GenAI in education. Launched during UNESCO’s flagship Digital Learning Week , it calls on countries to quickly implement appropriate regulations, policies, and human capacity development, for ensuring a human-centred vision of GenAI for education and research. Read more

UNESCO calls for an upgrade of teachers’ status to reduce the global shortage

“We must better value, better train and better support,” said UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay on World Teachers’ Day (5 October). UNESCO and the Teacher Task Force’s first global report shows that globally, 44 million teachers are still needed to achieve the goal of providing primary and secondary education for all by 2030. This includes a demand for seven out of ten teachers at the secondary level and a need to replace over half of the existing teachers leaving the profession. The problem is not only one of funding, but also the unattractiveness of the profession. Read more

UNESCO adopts landmark guidance on education’s cross-cutting role in promoting peace

On 20 November 2023, the 194 UNESCO Member States adopted the Recommendation on Education for Peace, Human Rights and Sustainable Development at UNESCO’s General Conference . This is the only global standard-setting instrument that lays out how education should be used to bring about lasting peace and foster human development through 14 guiding principles. For the past two years, UNESCO has been revising this visionary tool to ensure it responds to today's greatest challenges and future shocks. Read more  

UNESCO at COP28: Making education the long-term solution to the climate crisis

UNESCO is accelerating climate change education and greening initiatives through its coordinating role of the  Greening Education Partnership  and extensive work on  education for sustainable development . At COP28, UNESCO played a key role in the various dialogues on accelerating climate change education and emphasized the significance of sustainable learning in fostering long-term solutions for the climate crisis. The Organization presented at the COP the drafts of two new normative and groundbreaking resources: A global curriculum guidance for climate change education; and a green schools quality standards, which will be finalized and rolled-out next year. A major highlight of the gathering was launch of the Declaration for Climate Change and Education , focused on adaptation, mitigation and investment – which was signed and endorsed by 41 countries. Read more  

Exploring how rights should adapt as education evolves

The world has considerably changed since the key treaties on the right to education were conceived and adopted over half a century ago. Education can no longer be only confined to traditional classrooms and textbooks but has expanded to encompass lifelong and life-wide learning. UNESCO's Initiative on the evolving right to education launched its formal dialogue in December to explore how international human rights instruments can be reinforced and further developed to address today's needs and challenges. Read more  

Looking into 2024, the  International Day of Education will be celebrated on 24 January under the theme “learning for lasting peace”. The world is seeing a surge of violent conflicts paralleled by an alarming rise of discrimination, racism, xenophobia, and hate speech. An active commitment to peace is more urgent today than ever: Education is central to this endeavor, as underlined by the  UNESCO Recommendation on Education for Peace, Human Rights and Sustainable Development .

Key UNESCO publications on education in 2023

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Four of the biggest problems facing education—and four trends that could make a difference

Eduardo velez bustillo, harry a. patrinos.

In 2022, we published, Lessons for the education sector from the COVID-19 pandemic , which was a follow up to,  Four Education Trends that Countries Everywhere Should Know About , which summarized views of education experts around the world on how to handle the most pressing issues facing the education sector then. We focused on neuroscience, the role of the private sector, education technology, inequality, and pedagogy.

Unfortunately, we think the four biggest problems facing education today in developing countries are the same ones we have identified in the last decades .

1. The learning crisis was made worse by COVID-19 school closures

Low quality instruction is a major constraint and prior to COVID-19, the learning poverty rate in low- and middle-income countries was 57% (6 out of 10 children could not read and understand basic texts by age 10). More dramatic is the case of Sub-Saharan Africa with a rate even higher at 86%. Several analyses show that the impact of the pandemic on student learning was significant, leaving students in low- and middle-income countries way behind in mathematics, reading and other subjects.  Some argue that learning poverty may be close to 70% after the pandemic , with a substantial long-term negative effect in future earnings. This generation could lose around $21 trillion in future salaries, with the vulnerable students affected the most.

2. Countries are not paying enough attention to early childhood care and education (ECCE)

At the pre-school level about two-thirds of countries do not have a proper legal framework to provide free and compulsory pre-primary education. According to UNESCO, only a minority of countries, mostly high-income, were making timely progress towards SDG4 benchmarks on early childhood indicators prior to the onset of COVID-19. And remember that ECCE is not only preparation for primary school. It can be the foundation for emotional wellbeing and learning throughout life; one of the best investments a country can make.

3. There is an inadequate supply of high-quality teachers

Low quality teaching is a huge problem and getting worse in many low- and middle-income countries.  In Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, the percentage of trained teachers fell from 84% in 2000 to 69% in 2019 . In addition, in many countries teachers are formally trained and as such qualified, but do not have the minimum pedagogical training. Globally, teachers for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects are the biggest shortfalls.

4. Decision-makers are not implementing evidence-based or pro-equity policies that guarantee solid foundations

It is difficult to understand the continued focus on non-evidence-based policies when there is so much that we know now about what works. Two factors contribute to this problem. One is the short tenure that top officials have when leading education systems. Examples of countries where ministers last less than one year on average are plentiful. The second and more worrisome deals with the fact that there is little attention given to empirical evidence when designing education policies.

To help improve on these four fronts, we see four supporting trends:

1. Neuroscience should be integrated into education policies

Policies considering neuroscience can help ensure that students get proper attention early to support brain development in the first 2-3 years of life. It can also help ensure that children learn to read at the proper age so that they will be able to acquire foundational skills to learn during the primary education cycle and from there on. Inputs like micronutrients, early child stimulation for gross and fine motor skills, speech and language and playing with other children before the age of three are cost-effective ways to get proper development. Early grade reading, using the pedagogical suggestion by the Early Grade Reading Assessment model, has improved learning outcomes in many low- and middle-income countries. We now have the tools to incorporate these advances into the teaching and learning system with AI , ChatGPT , MOOCs and online tutoring.

2. Reversing learning losses at home and at school

There is a real need to address the remaining and lingering losses due to school closures because of COVID-19.  Most students living in households with incomes under the poverty line in the developing world, roughly the bottom 80% in low-income countries and the bottom 50% in middle-income countries, do not have the minimum conditions to learn at home . These students do not have access to the internet, and, often, their parents or guardians do not have the necessary schooling level or the time to help them in their learning process. Connectivity for poor households is a priority. But learning continuity also requires the presence of an adult as a facilitator—a parent, guardian, instructor, or community worker assisting the student during the learning process while schools are closed or e-learning is used.

To recover from the negative impact of the pandemic, the school system will need to develop at the student level: (i) active and reflective learning; (ii) analytical and applied skills; (iii) strong self-esteem; (iv) attitudes supportive of cooperation and solidarity; and (v) a good knowledge of the curriculum areas. At the teacher (instructor, facilitator, parent) level, the system should aim to develop a new disposition toward the role of teacher as a guide and facilitator. And finally, the system also needs to increase parental involvement in the education of their children and be active part in the solution of the children’s problems. The Escuela Nueva Learning Circles or the Pratham Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) are models that can be used.

3. Use of evidence to improve teaching and learning

We now know more about what works at scale to address the learning crisis. To help countries improve teaching and learning and make teaching an attractive profession, based on available empirical world-wide evidence , we need to improve its status, compensation policies and career progression structures; ensure pre-service education includes a strong practicum component so teachers are well equipped to transition and perform effectively in the classroom; and provide high-quality in-service professional development to ensure they keep teaching in an effective way. We also have the tools to address learning issues cost-effectively. The returns to schooling are high and increasing post-pandemic. But we also have the cost-benefit tools to make good decisions, and these suggest that structured pedagogy, teaching according to learning levels (with and without technology use) are proven effective and cost-effective .

4. The role of the private sector

When properly regulated the private sector can be an effective education provider, and it can help address the specific needs of countries. Most of the pedagogical models that have received international recognition come from the private sector. For example, the recipients of the Yidan Prize on education development are from the non-state sector experiences (Escuela Nueva, BRAC, edX, Pratham, CAMFED and New Education Initiative). In the context of the Artificial Intelligence movement, most of the tools that will revolutionize teaching and learning come from the private sector (i.e., big data, machine learning, electronic pedagogies like OER-Open Educational Resources, MOOCs, etc.). Around the world education technology start-ups are developing AI tools that may have a good potential to help improve quality of education .

After decades asking the same questions on how to improve the education systems of countries, we, finally, are finding answers that are very promising.  Governments need to be aware of this fact.

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The Education Crisis: Being in School Is Not the Same as Learning

First grade students in Pakistan’s Balochistan Province are learning the alphabet through child-friendly flash cards. Their learning materials help educators teach through interactive and engaging activities and are provided free of charge through a student’s first learning backpack. © World Bank 

THE NAME OF THE DOG IS PUPPY. This seems like a simple sentence. But did you know that in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, three out of four third grade students do not understand it? The world is facing a learning crisis . Worldwide, hundreds of millions of children reach young adulthood without even the most basic skills like calculating the correct change from a transaction, reading a doctor’s instructions, or understanding a bus schedule—let alone building a fulfilling career or educating their children. Education is at the center of building human capital. The latest World Bank research shows that the productivity of 56 percent of the world’s children will be less than half of what it could be if they enjoyed complete education and full health. For individuals, education raises self-esteem and furthers opportunities for employment and earnings. And for a country, it helps strengthen institutions within societies, drives long-term economic growth, reduces poverty, and spurs innovation.

One of the most interesting, large scale educational technology efforts is being led by EkStep , a philanthropic effort in India. EkStep created an open digital infrastructure which provides access to learning opportunities for 200 million children, as well as professional development opportunities for 12 million teachers and 4.5 million school leaders. Both teachers and children are accessing content which ranges from teaching materials, explanatory videos, interactive content, stories, practice worksheets, and formative assessments. By monitoring which content is used most frequently—and most beneficially—informed decisions can be made around future content.

In the Dominican Republic, a World Bank supported pilot study shows how adaptive technologies can generate great interest among 21st century students and present a path to supporting the learning and teaching of future generations. Yudeisy, a sixth grader participating in the study, says that what she likes doing the most during the day is watching videos and tutorials on her computer and cell phone. Taking childhood curiosity as a starting point, the study aimed to channel it towards math learning in a way that interests Yudeisy and her classmates.

Yudeisy, along with her classmates in a public elementary school in Santo Domingo, is part of a four-month pilot to reinforce mathematics using software that adapts to the math level of each student. © World Bank

Adaptive technology was used to evaluate students’ initial learning level to then walk them through math exercises in a dynamic, personalized way, based on artificial intelligence and what the student is ready to learn. After three months, students with the lowest initial performance achieved substantial improvements. This shows the potential of technology to increase learning outcomes, especially among students lagging behind their peers. In a field that is developing at dizzying speeds, innovative solutions to educational challenges are springing up everywhere. Our challenge is to make technology a driver of equity and inclusion and not a source of greater inequality of opportunity. We are working with partners worldwide to support the effective and appropriate use of educational technologies to strengthen learning.

When schools and educations systems are managed well, learning happens

Successful education reforms require good policy design, strong political commitment, and effective implementation capacity . Of course, this is extremely challenging. Many countries struggle to make efficient use of resources and very often increased education spending does not translate into more learning and improved human capital. Overcoming such challenges involves working at all levels of the system.

At the central level, ministries of education need to attract the best experts to design and implement evidence-based and country-specific programs. District or regional offices need the capacity and the tools to monitor learning and support schools. At the school level, principals need to be trained and prepared to manage and lead schools, from planning the use of resources to supervising and nurturing their teachers. However difficult, change is possible. Supported by the World Bank, public schools across Punjab in Pakistan have been part of major reforms over the past few years to address these challenges. Through improved school-level accountability by monitoring and limiting teacher and student absenteeism, and the introduction of a merit-based teacher recruitment system, where only the most talented and motivated teachers were selected, they were able to increase enrollment and retention of students and significantly improve the quality of education. "The government schools have become very good now, even better than private ones," said Mr. Ahmed, a local villager.

The World Bank, along with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the UK’s Department for International Development, is developing the Global Education Policy Dashboard . This new initiative will provide governments with a system for monitoring how their education systems are functioning, from learning data to policy plans, so they are better able to make timely and evidence-based decisions.

Education reform: The long game is worth it

In fact, it will take a generation to realize the full benefits of high-quality teachers, the effective use of technology, improved management of education systems, and engaged and prepared learners. However, global experience shows us that countries that have rapidly accelerated development and prosperity all share the common characteristic of taking education seriously and investing appropriately. As we mark the first-ever International Day of Education on January 24, we must do all we can to equip our youth with the skills to keep learning, adapt to changing realities, and thrive in an increasingly competitive global economy and a rapidly changing world of work.

The schools of the future are being built today. These are schools where all teachers have the right competencies and motivation, where technology empowers them to deliver quality learning, and where all students learn fundamental skills, including socio-emotional, and digital skills. These schools are safe and affordable to everyone and are places where children and young people learn with joy, rigor, and purpose. Governments, teachers, parents, and the international community must do their homework to realize the promise of education for all students, in every village, in every city, and in every country. 

The Bigger Picture: In-depth stories on ending poverty

UN chief calls for ‘dramatic shift’ to transform education worldwide

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The global crisis in education needs a “dramatic shift” to shape a more peaceful, sustainable and just world, the UN Secretary-General said on Thursday.

António Guterres was taking part in a  Special Event on Transforming Education – part of the on-going High Level Political Forum ( HLPF ) and looking ahead of the upcoming  Summit of the Future in September.

The event was a call to action, with the UN chief calling on all countries to make a concerted effort to establish genuine learning environments that will provide learning opportunities from childhood to adult stages.

“ Given the stakes, the world cannot afford to short-change education ,” Mr. Guterres said . “But by nearly every measure, that is exactly what we are doing.”

Global challenges

The UN chief said that around 84 million children are set to remain out of school by 2030 - unless action is taken to transform education worldwide.

That means that Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4) which aims to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” is unlikely to be reached.

Currently, only a sixth of countries are on courses to achieve the SDG4 target of universal access to quality education.

Mr. Guterres also noted that completion rates at a secondary level are rising far too slowly, learners are not equipped with the skills they need to succeed in a changing world, and early childhood and adult learning are often seen as optional.

“It’s truly shocking that some 70 per cent of children in sub-Saharan Africa are unable to read a basic text by age 10,” he said.

Financial roadblocks

The Secretary-General said that financing to provide quality education is also insufficient to meet the challenge.

In 2023, the UN Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization ( UNESCO ) estimated that developing nations would need to invest $100 billion annually to achieve SDG4 . This amount increases by about 50 per cent when costs for the digital transformation of education are considered.

Further, Mr. Guterres said that four of every 10 people globally live in nations where governments spend more on debt servicing than on education or health.

He said that over 140 countries committed to turning this crisis around at the Transforming Education Summit in 2022.

But “progress is far too slow and uneven. Something has to change. ”

Poverty and gender

President of the General Assembly, Dennis Francis, echoed the Secretary-General’s statements on the need for transformation.

He recalled recent visits to South Sudan where he said he learned about the “dire poverty of education evident from the fact that at least 70 per cent of eligible children are out of school.”

He also noted that the denial of a girl’s right to education in Afghanistan and the inability to access education in Ukraine and Gaza due to constant attacks are clear indicators of an intractable crisis.

“Beyond access, we must ensure quality education for all fostering inclusive, equitable and lifelong learning opportunities that empower every individual to thrive in a rapidly changing world,” Mr Francis said. “We must combine our political will, with clear targeted actions to decisively address these urgent needs.”

‘Let’s start walking the talk’

Secretary-General Guterres has a four-point plan at the special event on education to end the global education crisis and build momentum towards achieving SDG4 by 2030.

This includes closing the financing and access gap nationwide, supporting teachers on the frontlines of education and and revolutionising education systems, the UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed said.

“Education has got to be in the mix to shape that,” Ms. Mohammed said.

“ The message today is clear: Education is intrinsic to the achievement of our common goals in sustainable development, peace and human rights ,” she concluded, adding that education speaks to the very fabric of our societies and it has an essential contribution to make.

Mr. Guterres said, “ Education is the single-most important investment any country can make . In its people. And in its future,” in his closing remarks.

“So, let’s start walking the talk. Let’s come together to end the global crisis in education.”

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The Supreme Court Reform That Could Actually Win Bipartisan Support

The supreme court’s most dramatic term in decades has reignited calls for various types of court reform..

For an interesting opinion piece written by Jeffrey L. Fisher, a Stanford Law School professor, regarding term limits on U.S. Supreme Court justices, please see the following article:

“The Supreme Court Reform That Could Actually Win Bipartisan Support” 

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/07/21/supreme-court-reform-term-limits-00046883

The Supreme Court’s most dramatic term in decades has reignited calls for various types of court reform. Many proposals have an overt, or at least implicit, partisan slant. Progressives, after all, are searching for ways to blunt the court’s sharp rightward shift. 

There is one idea, though, that has longstanding bipartisan support, a proven record of success, and practical wisdom behind it: term limits. Imposing term limits on Supreme Court justices would be good for the country and the court. It would help ease the bitterness of the confirmation process and make the court more representative of the public’s views. And while conservatives might currently balk considering their 6-3 majority, it’s a change that would not necessarily advantage either side over the long run.

The most common version of this reform contemplates justices serving nonrenewable 18-year terms, staggered so that one term ends every two years. This would mean that presidents would get to nominate new justices in the first and third years of their own administrations. Retirements and nominations would occur like clockwork. The result would be a court whose membership, at any given time, would reflect the selections of the past 4 1/2 presidential administrations. 

Because Article 3 of the Constitution confers life tenure upon all federal judges, term limits would likely require a constitutional amendment. Yes, constitutional amendments are hard to enact. We have not amended our Constitution since 1992, and we have done so only once in the past half-century. But there is reason — even in these politically polarized times — to believe that constitutional reform is possible.

To start, multiple voices from across the ideological spectrum have endorsed the concept of term limits on Supreme Court justices. One of the earliest proponents of the concept was Northwestern professor Steven Calabresi, one of the co-founders of the conservative Federalist Society. Other academics of all stripes — from conservative luminary Michael McConnell (a former federal judge and my colleague at Stanford) to Erwin Chemerinsky, a leading liberal and dean of Berkeley Law School — have since joined the chorus. Various think tanks and their scholars — from Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute to Ilya Shapiro, now of the Manhattan Institute, to the Center for American Progress — have also backed the notion. And three justices themselves — Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Elena Kagan and former Justice Stephen Breyer — have suggested at various points in their careers that they see potential benefits in the idea.

What is more, almost every state in the union imposes term limits on its state supreme court justices, a mandatory retirement age, or both. Only Rhode Island has a system of life tenure akin to the federal model. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that when the National Constitution Center held an exercise in 2020 for drafting new constitutions, both the conservative and progressive teams adopted 18-year limits.

A preference for term limits prevails beyond our shores as well. Most constitutional democracies impose term limits, and other major democracies (such as the United Kingdom) impose age limits. The United States, in fact, is the only major constitutional democracy in the world to impose neither term nor age limits.

Of course, our federal government is different in certain ways from state governments, and American exceptionalism is sometimes justified. But here, all signs suggest that our system of life tenure for Supreme Court justices is, at best, an outdated relic of bygone times. Throughout the first 200 years of our history, justices served an average of 15 years on the court. Since 1970, the average tenure has almost doubled. Justices appointed today who are in their 40s or early 50s can be expected to serve between 30 and 40 years — maybe even longer. In this sense, the proposed “reform” of 18-year term limits is, in the words of a law review article by Calabresi and co-author James Lindgren, “ultimately a very Burkean and conservative call for reform because all (it) would do is move the Justices back toward an average tenure that is similar to what the average tenure of Justices has been over the totality of American history.”

This restoration of normalcy would be only the beginning of the upside of term limits. Such limits would also make Supreme Court appointments less random and more closely tied to electoral outcomes. (If we had term limits today, our court would consist of one Biden appointee, two Trump appointees, four Obama appointees and one Bush appointee.) There is no inherent good served when one president gets zero appointments and the next gets several. Nor is there any discernible benefit of having justices serve more than two decades, ever more removed from the commercial and cultural vibrations of our nation. Eighteen years is plenty of time to become settled into the role and to exercise the power of a Supreme Court justice.

Indeed, term limits would enhance the odds of justices serving on the court during the time when we would expect peak performance from them — that is, the optimal mixture of experience, wisdom and mental acuity. Why would we want to maintain a system that incentivizes presidents to put forth ever younger nominees? Under a system of term limits, the public would likely expect justices to be nominated in their late 50s or early 60s and to serve into their 70s.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, there is good reason to think that term limits would reduce the political incentives (not to mention the rancor) surrounding retirements, appointments and the confirmation process. When justices are perceived — rightly or not — as trying to time their retirements so that presidents of particular parties can replace them, the public cannot help but think that Supreme Court voting patterns must be tied to politics, not law. By establishing known endpoints to justices’ terms, we could reinvigorate an apolitical feel to the comings and goings of justices.

By the same token, a system under which election to the presidency automatically carries with it two Supreme Court appointments would make such nominations seem less momentous — and, thus, less cause for extreme political machinations. Arguments, for instance, that the confirmation of any new justice should await the next election should be political nonstarters.

To be sure, so long as the Senate retains its constitutional “advice and consent” role, it would seemingly retain the power simply to block any presidential nominee not to its liking. One would hope that the public, under a system of regularized term limits, would not stand for any exertion of such raw political authority. But if any such practice developed (or if there were sufficient reason in advance to think it would), a further constitutional tweak may be in order.

Skeptics of term limits have raised a few other concerns. First, they argue that increased turnover on the court (compared to the past few decades) will lead to less stable law. But the converse seems just as likely: A steady stream of justices who are fresh to the institution might generate more deference to the institution itself. Putting aside the conservative movement to overrule Roe v. Wade , new justices are historically more willing to accept precedent as they find it. Moreover, if the reform indeed produces appointees that are somewhat older than those in recent years, the greater seasoning that often comes with age would likely produce justices in future years with more measured, and less revolutionary, views.

Some also worry that justices under a system of term limits might become less independent because they might perform their duties with an eye toward a professional career beyond their service on the Supreme Court. Again, age is a mitigator here. If justices aren’t appointed until their late 50s or 60s, serious post-judicial careers seem unlikely. 

Lastly, one might reasonably wonder why in the world we should favor a system that would result in more confirmation hearings. Have we learned nothing, one might ask, from recent history? In response, I will end where I began. The whole point of term limits would be to regularize the appointment and confirmation process; to make the nominations of new justices more unremarkable; and generally, to lower the temperature regarding the court and its personnel. The reform would not be a panacea. But it would curb our worst instincts and tendencies that have developed in this realm. And that can only benefit the American people and the rule of law.

The framers expected that their grand structural design would be adjusted as our democracy and norms evolved. Such adjustments have proven to be a vital means of sustaining our republic. The original Constitution, for instance, called for state legislatures to select U.S. senators. In 1913, however, we amended the Constitution to give the people the right to elect their senators directly, having learned that legislative selection was prone to deadlock (and thus prolonged vacancies) and capture by special interests. In 1951, we capped the number of terms the president may serve at two, recognizing that periodic turnover at the top of the executive branch better served our country. 

It is past time to attend to our third branch — that is, to modify the rules governing the tenure of Supreme Court justices. The ongoing health of our tripartite form of government may depend on it.

Global education trends and research to follow in 2022

Subscribe to the center for universal education bulletin, emily gustafsson-wright , emily gustafsson-wright senior fellow - global economy and development , center for universal education helen shwe hadani , helen shwe hadani former brookings expert kathy hirsh-pasek , kathy hirsh-pasek senior fellow - global economy and development , center for universal education maysa jalbout , maysa jalbout nonresident fellow - global economy and development , center for universal education elizabeth m. king , elizabeth m. king nonresident senior fellow - global economy and development , center for universal education jennifer l. o’donoghue , jennifer l. o’donoghue deputy director - center for universal education , senior fellow - global economy and development brad olsen , brad olsen senior fellow - global economy and development , center for universal education jordan shapiro , jordan shapiro nonresident fellow - global economy and development , center for universal education emiliana vegas , and emiliana vegas former co-director - center for universal education , former senior fellow - global economy and development rebecca winthrop rebecca winthrop director - center for universal education , senior fellow - global economy and development.

January 24, 2022

• 12 min read

As the third calendar year of the pandemic begins, 2022 promises to be an important one—especially for education. Around the world, education systems have had to contend with sporadic closures, inequitable access to education technology and other distance learning tools, and deep challenges in maintaining both students’ and teachers’ physical and emotional health. At the same time, not all of the sudden changes precipitated by the pandemic have been bad—with some promising new innovations, allies, and increased attention on the field of global education emerging over the past three years. The key question is whether 2022 and the years ahead will lead to education transformation or will students, teachers, and families suffer long-lasting setbacks?

In the Center for Universal Education, our scholars take stock of the trends, policies, practices, and research that they’ll be closely keeping an eye on this year and likely in the many to come.

More than ever, in 2022 it will be critical to focus on strengthening the fabric of our global education system in order to achieve positive outcomes—particularly through an increased focus on data-informed decisionmaking. We have seen a renewed focus on different forms of data that are critical to enhanced education outcomes, such as real-time performance data, which allow teachers and other decisionmakers to course-adjust to the needs of learners to better support their educational journeys. Additionally, high-quality program cost data are needed for decisionmakers to plan, budget, and choose the most cost-effective interventions.

One way we are seeing these areas strengthened is through innovative financing for education, such as impact bonds , which require data to operate at full potential. This year, pooled funding through outcomes funds—a scaled version of impact bonds—should make a particularly big splash. The Education Outcomes Fund organization is slated to launch programs in Ghana and Sierra Leone, and we also expect to see the launch of country-specific outcomes funds for education such as OFFER (Outcome Fund For Education Results) in Colombia, the Back-to-School Outcomes Fund in India, and another fund in Chile. At the Center for Universal Education, we will be following these innovations closely and look forward to the insights that they will bring to the education sector.

As we look ahead to 2022, one continued challenge for many families is navigating the uncharted territory of supporting children’s learning with a growing number of school closures . But while the pandemic forced an abrupt slowdown in modern life, it also provided an opportunity to reexamine how we can prioritize learning and healthy development both in and out of school. Moreover, the cascading effects of the pandemic are disproportionally affecting families living in communities challenged by decades of discrimination and disinvestment—and are very likely to widen already existing educational inequities in worrisome ways.

One innovative approach to providing enriching learning opportunities beyond school walls that address the inequities in our current systems is Playful Learning Landscapes (PLL) —installations and programming that promote children and families’ learning through play in the public realm. A current focus for PLL at Brookings is measuring the impact of these spaces to show that PLL works and to garner greater investment in them. To that end, Brookings and its partners developed a framework and an initial set of indicators from both the learning science and placemaking perspectives to help assess the positive effects of PLL on learning outcomes , as well as its potential to enhance social interaction and public life in revitalized spaces. The framework will continue to evolve as we learn from communities that are testing the expansion and adaptation of PLL—this important work is just beginning.

The pandemic highlighted several trends in education that promise to be the focus of future policy and practice in 2022 and beyond: the importance of skills that supplement the learning of content, systemic inequities in education systems, and the role of digital technology in the education of the future. It has become increasingly clear that the memorization of content alone will not prepare children for the jobs and society of the future. As noted in a Brookings report “ A new path for education reform, ” in an automated world, manufacturing jobs and even preliminary medical diagnoses or legal contracts can be performed by computers and robots. Students who can work collaboratively—with strong communication skills, critical thinking, and creative innovation—will be highly valued. Mission statements from around the globe are starting to promote a “whole child” approach to education that will encourage the learning of a breadth of skills better aligning the education sector with needs from the business sector.

The past year also demonstrated weaknesses and inequalities inherent in remote learning that I’ll be closely tracking in the years to come. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggested that virtual learning presents risks to social-emotional learning . Further, research suggests that academic progress during the pandemic slowed such that students demonstrated only 35 to 50 percent of the gains they normally achieve in mathematics and 60 to 68 percent in reading. The losses are not experienced uniformly , with children from underresourced environments falling behind their more resourced peers.

The failure of remote learning also raises questions about the place of digital learning in the classroom. Learning will become more and more hybrid over time, and keeping an eye on advances in technology—especially regarding augmented reality and the metaverse—will be particularly important, as both have real consequences for the classrooms.

In 2022, I’ll be focusing on one group of children in particular–refugees–who are among those children who have historically had the least access to preprimary education. The pandemic has affected them disproportionally , as it pushed them and their families into poverty and deprived them from most forms of education during the school closures.

While much more investment in early childhood education research and evaluation is needed to improve evidence and channel scarce resources effectively, there are a few important efforts to watch. A report commissioned by Theirworld last year provided an overview of the sector and focused on a critical gap and opportunity to address the inequity of access to early childhood education in refugee settings by better supporting teachers and community workers. This year, Theirworld and partners will pursue two of the report’s recommendations–making the science of early childhood brain development widely accessible in refugee communities and building the evidence base on what works in supporting early childhood education teachers and the young refugee children they teach.

The report was informed by existing initiatives including Ahlan Simsim, which in 2017 received the largest known grant to early education in a humanitarian context. While the evaluation of Ahlan Simsim will not be complete until two more years, the Global Ties for Children research center, Sesame Workshop, and the International Rescue Committee will share critical insights into their learning to date in a forthcoming episode of the podcast the Impact Room .

This coming year I’ll be focused on how education systems can prepare for future disruptions, whatever the cause, with more deliberateness. The past two years of the COVID pandemic have seen education systems throughout the globe struggle to find ways to continue schooling. Additionally, there have been other public health crises, natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, and severe storms, and wars and terrorism in different parts of the world that have gravely tested school systems’ ability to minimize the cost of catastrophes on students and teachers. Finding safer temporary learning places outside the school and using technologies such as radio, TV broadcasts, and online learning tools have helped, but quick fixes with little preparation are not effective approaches for sustaining and advancing learning gains.

In the age of broadcast and digital technologies, there are many more ways to meet the challenges of future emergency situations, but life- and education-saving solutions must be part of the way school systems operate—built into their structures, their staffing, their budgets, and their curricula. By preparing for the emergencies that are likely to happen, we can persevere to reach learning goals for all children.

By the close of 2021, a number of studies began to document the impact of COVID-19 on girls’ educational trajectories across the Global South. These studies point to promising trends –lower than expected dropout rates and reenrollment rates similar to (if not greater than) those of boys–while still highlighting the particular challenges faced by adolescent girls and girls living in poverty , conflict, and crisis .

In 2022, it will be critical to continue to generate more nuanced evidence—carefully considering questions such as “for which girls,” “where,” “when,” and “why.” And then we must put this knowledge to use to protect and promote girls’ and young women’s rights not just to education, but to participate and thrive in the world around them. Ensuring that marginalized girls and young women become transformative agents in improving their lives and livelihoods—as well as those of their families and communities—requires us to develop new strategies for learning and acting together.

At the Center for Universal Education, this means strengthening our work with local leaders in girls’ education: promoting gender-transformative research through the Echidna Global Scholars Program ; expanding the collective impact of our 33 Echidna alumni; and co-constructing a learning and action community to explore together how to improve beliefs, practices, programs, and policies so that marginalized adolescent girls’ can develop and exercise agency in pursuing their own pathways.

Going into year three of COVID-19, in 2022 I’m interested to see whether countries will transform their education systems or largely leave them the way they are. Will leaders of education systems tinker around the edges of change but mostly attempt a return to a prepandemic “normal,” or will they take advantage of this global rupture in the status quo to replace antiquated educational institutions and approaches with significant structural improvement?

In relation to this, one topic I’ll be watching in particular is how countries treat their teachers. How will policymakers, the media, parent councils, and others frame teachers’ work in 2022? In which locations will teachers be diminished versus where will they be defended as invaluable assets? How will countries learn from implications of out-of-school children (including social isolation and child care needs)? Will teachers remain appreciated in their communities but treated poorly in the material and political conditions of their work? Or will countries hold them dear—demanding accountability while supporting and rewarding them for quality work?

I’m interested in learning more about how pandemic lockdowns have impacted students. So far, we’ve only gotten very general data dealing with questions that are, in my opinion, too simple to be worthwhile. It’s all been about good and bad, positive and negative, learning loss and achievement. But I’ll be watching for more nuanced studies, which ask about specific ways increased time away from school has impacted social-emotional development. How do those results differ between gender, race, socioeconomic status, and geographic location? I suspect we’re going to learn some things about the relationship between home environment and school environment that will challenge a lot of our taken-for-granted assumptions.

In 2022, I’ll be tracking emerging evidence on the impact of the COVID-19 school closures on children and youth. Several researchers, including my co-authors and me , have provided estimates of the school closures’ impact on student learning losses, unemployment, future earnings, and productivity globally. But only recently are researchers analyzing actual evidence of learning losses , and an early systematic review finds that “Although robust and empirical research on COVID-19-related student learning loss is limited, learning loss itself may not be.”

Likewise, there is little rigorous reviews of remote learning tools’ and platforms’ impact on student learning during the school closures. After the pandemic, it is almost certain that remote and hybrid learning will continue—at a minimum occasionally and often periodically—in primary, secondary, and post-secondary education. It is urgent that we build the evidence base to help education decisionmakers and practitioners provide effective, tailored learning experiences for all students.

Finally, a key issue for education is how to redesign curricula so that this generation (and future generations) of students gain a key set of skills and competencies required for technologically-advancing labor markets and societies. While foundational literacy and numeracy skills continue to be essential for learning, a strong foundational knowledge of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics is ever more important in the 21st century, and I look forward to contributing research this year to help make the case for curricula redesign efforts.

I will be interested to see how parent-teacher relationships progress after the pandemic has (hopefully) faded into the background. COVID-19 has had an inescapable impact on the way we deliver education globally, but none more so than on how education leaders and teachers interact with students and their families.

For the past three years, I have been studying family-school collaboration. Together with my colleagues and partners, we have surveyed nearly 25,000 parents and 6,000 teachers in 10 countries around the world and found that the vast majority of teachers, parents, and caregivers want to work together more closely. Quality family-school collaboration has the potential to significantly improve educational outcomes, spur important discussions on the overall purpose of school, and smooth the path for schools and families to navigate change together. From community schools in New Mexico  to text message updates from teachers in India , new innovations are popping up every day—in every corner of the world. I’m excited to see what the future holds for family-school collaboration!

Education Technology Global Education

Global Economy and Development

Center for Universal Education

Magdalena Rodríguez Romero

September 10, 2024

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Mebrahtom Tesfahunegn

September 5, 2024