Written by: D Belluigi (Queen’s University Belfast), L Czerniewicz (University of Cape Town), S Khoo (National University of Ireland, Galway), A Algers (University of Gothenburg), LA Buckley (National University of Ireland, Galway), P Prinsloo (University of South Africa), E Mgqwashu (North West University), C Camps (University of South Wales), C Brink, R Marx (University of Edinburgh), G Wissing (University of the Witwatersrand), N Pallitt (Rhodes University)
Introduction
Higher education institutions (HEIs) across the globe have turned to online technologies in a bid to address the unprecedented disruption to their educational function, created by physical restrictions implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic. Educators, learning professionals, administrators, managers - all have had to muster the courage and determination to salvage what their infrastructure and means have allowed.
A certain shift in mind-set has occurred. Over-simplified and over-generalised perhaps, but a clear directive was given that ‘this has to be done online’, in consequence of which the stance changed from ‘this can’t be done online’ to ‘how can this be done online?’ This was the watershed moment. Even the fiercest opponents of anything technology have been engaging in the shift to online.
While such commitment has been generative in actions within the initial period of negotiating the practical problem-solving of the ‘pivot online’, any self-congratulation and relief should be tempered with critical consideration of the ways in which emergency measures impact on equity in HE.
This article offers reflections-in-action by 21 contributors from 18 institutions whose scholarship and/or practice in academic development (broadly conceived) spans 7 countries[1]. As individuals, we were drawn together through networks of existing concerns about equity[2]. Informed by critical traditions of scholarship and practice largely underpinned by a political ethos of social justice in the micro-curriculum, the thematic analysis in this paper outlines contributors’ critical deliberations during the initial “firefighting” of this “watershed moment” where the “equality debate now overlaps much more with the digital transformation debate”.
The piece makes key assertions about what matters for equity at this pivotal moment: the conditional, spatial and institutional matters of context.
Context matters: Conditional
At the time of recording the reflections, the impact of the pandemic was due to restrictions, not (yet) from illness or loss of life in each of the contributors’ contexts. Recorded when “developments are still so fluid that I, for one, do not have sufficient clarity”, the heterogeneous nature of these insider perspectives generated concerns rather than offering vantage points into varied institutional and national contexts - including high to low resource; high to low participation; high to low national status and global ranking; residential and distance education; countries in the global North and global South. The challenges and opportunities for equity were intertwined within larger geopolitics born from socio-economic legacies, colonial relations and their continuation in cold war and neoliberal global capital dynamics, in which the HE sector is situated and contributes.
Pre-existing conceptions of equity at a national level shaped early responses. For instance, when commenting about mainstream discourses of research-intensive universities in the UK, one contributor expressed that where “equality barely features, equity [is] far far behind”. Such notions trickled down to daily practice, where another UK-based contributor found they had “to say words to the effect of ‘but what you are proposing to do will exclude some of your students’ to blank looks of zero understanding almost every day”. In contrast, the Swedish academy’s emphasis on norm-critical approaches was described by a contributor as enabling the identification and problematizing of power structures that construct inequality. The prevalence of discussion around equity and COVID-19 in South Africa was because it has also been normalised as a principle within South African curriculum discourses in an attempt to redress the colonial and apartheid education legacies.
Adding to its affordances as a high-resource high-participation context, Sweden’s “enviable starting point” of high digitization and manageable targets of whom was affected, served as a foil to all other contributors’ narratives of managing the changes brought upon by restrictions to campus. Most starkly different was South Africa, where the country’s pre-existing principle implementation gaps from economic inequity were exacerbated by the restrictions. The national rhetoric that all was being done to ‘leave no child behind’, could not match the “very real problems” of the majority of its students, staff and institutions. For instance, contributors shared that many of those “students who live in remote areas, not only have limited access” to devices and data needed for online learning, “but also basic electricity and an appropriate support network and means at home”. A “multi-pronged approach” to provide access was adopted depending on students’ existing means. This included multi-modal solutions (such as low-tech, remote options, a/synchronous online, hardcopy) and multi-temporal flexibility (such as postponements). For many of the South African contributors, this raised the question about “when to act in the interests of an individual student or in the interests of a bigger group”, because the risk was that “the most vulnerable students may well fall out of the sector entirely”. In the face of the starkly racialized economic and spatial inequalities in that society, one contributor called for resisting:
talk about equity-based quality HE as a newly designed Hallmark card of care and condolences [that] ignore the intergenerational and structural arrangements that got us to where we are in the first place.
While the rhetoric at the outset was that COVID-19 was a disease which would affect all people, a contributor in Ireland asserted that “the risks are always with the already-disadvantaged with more burdens and less freedoms – the students and staff who rely on the affordances of the university to get by”.
Pre-existing conditions shaped whom institutions defined as ‘targets’ for equity, and whom they failed to identify. In the global North, these included students “labelled equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) and widening participation (WP)”; those with special needs; BAME students and staff; those with family or caring responsibilities which placed demands on their time and space; and those without recourse to savings or salaries due to restrictions where “the issue may be whether they can afford to eat”. Contributors from the global North were concerned about problematic assumptions about those not usually identified, such as students with mental health concerns, functional impairment, refugees and migrant students at institutions which do “not entertain their financial problems”. An example of the latter was where changes to registration for international students “funded by much poorer governments” were made “without consideration of the impact on students from funder sanctions and lost opportunities for employment, adding to widening institution-student and international inequalities”. The scale of who was at risk was markedly different in the global South – where the focus was on the majority of students, whose access to residential universities usually mitigated the impact of the low socio-economic conditions of their home environments, as discussed in more detail below. Unsurprisingly, geopolitical imbalances revealed how contextual matters of economic and social justice are inevitably intertwined.
Context matters: Spatial
Within each country, contributors wrote about how “barriers that existed before” are “only being made visible by the current situation” because participants “do not share the same physical location” while interacting virtually. These related to the socio-economic conditions endured in the daily spatial experiences of students and staff when off campus.
The residential campus is in some ways luxurious, because it offers quiet spaces, access to devices and the internet, and for international migrants, the same time zone and visa compliance. When it comes to learning and mental health, much “student support systems [are] often geared to on-campus support”. When restricted, the campus showed itself as a central, bounded place which to some extents levelled the playing field.
‘Places of learning’ for our student cohort differ extensively. Large proportions of the student cohort have the privilege of a home environment that provides opportunity for continuous engagement with studies. However, many students live in circumstances which are not conducive.
For some South African contributors, the impact of restrictions to campus ruptured the “perverse social mobility mirage of the residential approach” with “the structural inequalities of the country laid bare”.
The current crisis blows away the attempts in South Africa at levelling the playing field for students by providing the campus (for residential universities) as a white cube which removes the stresses and demands on students that their lives insert. So students are back to all the demands of their actual lives in their communities, and can no longer ‘pass’ as one of the affluent or autonomous.
Across all contexts, contributors shared how the complications brought on by the proximity of personal-public space “has stumped some academics and students [because it] introduces a host of other barriers like socio economic status, dwelling and family setup”. By constructing these as ‘barriers’ to unfettered access, the ways in which learning engagements have been decontextualized from the everyday lives of the student and staff emerged. Common to nearly all traditions of adult education (Usher & Johnston 1997), such ‘othering’ of supposedly ‘non-academic’ space was further affirmed in the illusion of academics as omniscientists above the material needs of society, remnant figures of the university as ivory tower. Many contributors’ reflections indicated how the crisis had rendered these notions delusional, such as this articulation by a UK contributor.
… pre-existing differences (deprivation, disability, and dis/advantage) may become more pronounced. This applies to both students and staff – does someone really have to point out what a problematic distinction that is?
Ignoring such realities led to a number of problematic assumptions, including that all students and staff had access to devices and the internet when away from campus. Instead, restrictions revealed that “access is dependent on unequal connectivity”. Planning for remote learning revealed gaps in knowledge about students’ conditions both in the developing and developed countries. The response below, for instance, was from a contributor based at a prestigious institution in the UK.
Some students have become invisible and have simply dropped off the radar. We don’t know if they are in a geographical, political, psychological, social, economic situation that is preventing engagement online.
Another assumption was about domestic environments. For instance, insights revealed the overwhelming lack of impact which western liberal feminism has had in addressing masculinist dynamics within academics’ and students’ private lives within UK and Ireland.
Caregiving for children or elders or others is still overwhelmingly a female responsibility.
However, the removal of expectation for in-person participation by Syrian women academics in Turkey, which posed particular challenges in relation to gendered norms, meant that more opportunities were created for their participation in the virtual programme offered by an NGO. Similarly, a South African colleague noticed how the "safe distance created by the virtual space" enabled changes to the interactional dynamics between colleagues, with marginalised academics developing the confidence to express convictions online that would not have been entertained in tea rooms or staff meetings. All contributors pointed to examples of how virtual space(s) created unexpected possibilities, not only problematics.
Context matters: Institutional responses
Underpinning contributors’ discussions of institutional responses, were both insights into how these responses were shaped by pre-existing conditions, and how the crisis forced deeply entrenched cultures to be disrupted. This led to both shifts in ways of thinking and doing, as these examples show.
Responsiveness was affected by prior exposure to shock and change. The COVID-19 crisis was yet another of a wave of crises to have impacted campus access in South Africa (from unrest, protest, electricity outages, drought, illness from HIV/AIDs), with a degree of resilience from which the sector was able to draw. Similarly, the differences in the Northern countries responsiveness were seemingly reflective of their prior capacity and consciousness in responding to austerity. However, as many of the solutions were to ‘pivot online’ through atomised reaction and not communal interactions, this necessitated drawing on existing resources within institutional and home environments that were not distributed evenly across agents, institutions and countries - revealing the multi-tiered nature of the ‘digital divide’.
Because “responses which have been put into place are all digitally-mediated”, those institutions and programmes with pre-existing capacity for blended learning, online learning and distance education, demonstrated less of a culture shock with the online aspects of the pivot. Many South African contributors noted the previous misrecognition of those institutions which had used such means to address barriers to access for the majority, within that stratified HE sector (as across Sub-Saharan African, World Bank, 2020).
… institutions that despised remote and distance education, and looked down on online learning, suddenly embraced online, remote and distance learning as if they were long lost cousins, albeit from the poorer side of the family.
Within institutions, some described how interaction between different role players had led to joined-up thinking, much capacity building for staff, and “over-and-above” support for students which “was commendable and demonstrated a shared vision”. However, in some instances “bureaucratic hurdles” for quality assurance as “control” were threatening to show further “ossification of obstructive, formulaic administrative gatekeeping”. This included issues such as requiring documentation for visas or exceptional circumstances from outside of the institutions, through to assessment matters which trumped the list of bottlenecks within the micro-curriculum. Contributors were aware that these issues had implications for students and staff, regardless of the institution’s chosen (and sometimes blinkered) vision. For instance, while the educational aspects were given consideration in the global North:
The academic administrative and management units see international students as a source of money and reputation, but management are not involved providing support for students and researchers, so they do not automatically have research objectives or researchers’ interests in mind.
Where fissures emerged within institutions, was where it came to equity. Many contributors painted rather dismal vignettes of institutional dynamics where “HEIs may be prioritising reputational concerns over student equity”.
There is a lack of empathy and ignorance [of the lived experience] that will need to be addressed at a broader institutional level that speaks to the lack of a shared institutional culture - values of equity and social justice only exist at a superficial level if it does not extend to change in practices.
There seemed a dearth of capacity to respond to the affective impact of the dread of death, illness and falling behind in one’s studies or job security as “whole lives were turned upside down”. With the blurring of ‘appropriate’ norms as staff were “unable to ‘perform as professional’ from home spaces”, the online space eroded constructions of private/public, mind/body, cognitive/affective dualities. One contributor in Ireland described:
… a strong sense of disconnection and displacement, increased stress and anxiety, increased need for reassurance (both staff and students), and in some cases (particularly staff, including myself) a sense of futility / search for meaning.
Role conflict from projections about weakened quality control and financial constraints “created inequities and frustrations between management and administration on one side and researcher and supervisors on the other”. Some contributors pointed to “ungenerous” dynamics and distrust within institutions, and observing that those colleagues who took initiative often had to negotiate pre-existing “toxic environments”.
Some institutions were seen to exhibit action in the “quest for understanding the context of lecturers and students” for the first time.
It is one thing to plan something, but to plan for a more specific reality is often not done. The institution attempted to make informed and realistic plans through consultation and also surveys.
In some cases, institutions sent out online questionnaires asking about problems students experienced in their access to online spaces, as if oblivious to the many lessons learnt about the challenges of online participation in empirical research. To some, this demonstrated “a clear sign that assumptions are made that everyone, somehow, has access to email”. Recognising that it is vital that actions are informed by the participation of the students and staff most vulnerable to inequity, some institutions attempted to address this barrier by using a range of methods. Changes in such information-seeking endeavors bode well for the future.
However, contributors also cautioned about “initiatives done with good intention” to address the needs and challenges of access, having observed the limitations of decontextualized benevolence. An example from the South African context is cited below:
While there are many students who have indicated that they do not have a laptop, many have also indicated that under no circumstances should a laptop be delivered as it will be sold to put food on the table.
While access to devices were both called for and appreciated by many students, such insights reveal how attempts to address student digital inequities cannot be divorced from socio-economic realities.
Concluding cautions
As the pandemic and its ensuing crises unfold, the risks and opportunities of educational responses are coming into focus simultaneously. What has become clear by the momentum created by the restrictions, was that the “intrinsic drive” for innovation was “not always prevalent during the ‘norm’”.
This essay reveals how geopolitical inequalities were reflected in the scale of the ‘digital divide’ at the early stages of the pivot online, due to the very unequal nature within and between societies, where those “who are most vulnerable and in need of immediate support in terms of the technical or educational requirements, do not receive it ‘just-in-time'”. Scholar-practitioners should exercise their agency during this time to (in)form educational practice and decision-making during the crisis. As academic developers mediate the systems and actors who engage with the pivots to access learning, it should be remembered that they are in key position to observe, hear about and attempt to address challenges faced by those within the system who are most ‘at risk’, in addition to those working to address the educational conditions of inequity.
What is assumed, imagined, problematized, implemented and ignored at the early stages of such emergencies, is likely to have long term consequences. This essay records concerns about how the contextual matters of pre-existing conditions, space and institutional cultures played a role in shaping and reshaping the manner in which equity was considered, and possibly entrenched, within and across the HE sector. Aside from glib predictions and hopeful aspirations, there can be little certainty about what will happen after the pandemic, nor when that sense of closure might be. What the pandemic has made near impossible to ignore, are equity considerations in HE.
Reference list
Kinash, Shelley, and Kayleen Wood. 2013. “Academic Developer Identity: How We Know Who We Are.” International Journal for Academic Development 18 (2): 178–89.
Land, Ray. 2001. “Agency, Context and Change in Academic Development.” International Journal for Academic Development 6 (1): 4–20. doi:10.1080/13601440110033715.
Usher, R & Johnston, R. 1997. Reconfiguring the other. Self and experience in adult education. In: Adult education and the postmodern challenge. Learning beyond the limits. R. Usher, I. Bryant, & R. Johnston, Eds. London: Routledge.
World Bank. 2020. Covid-10 Response: Sub-Saharan Africa: Tertiary Education. Retrieved from http://pubdocs.worldbank.org/en/468171590785443097/One-Africa-TE-and-Covid-05292020.pdf
[1] Common to all is a commitment to equity in education everywhere, which is exercised through various aspects of academic development practice and/ or scholarship for students and academics in South Africa, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Sweden and for displaced Syrian academics in Turkey. A number of the contributors are themselves migrant academics. 'Academic development' within this text is used expansively, as inclusive of development at the micro-curriculum of teaching-and-learning for students and staff, in addition to research development of staff and larger institutional structures related to the university’s educational functions. The contributors were heterogeneous in how they perceive and are positioned institutionally and intellectually, where some may be visible as “higher education leaders’ (Kinash and Wood 2013, 178) or as scholars, others provide on-the-ground 'support' which easily goes unremarked when it comes to educational change (Land 2001).
[2] Ethical conduct was practiced, with all contributors invited to participate in the interpretative process, authorship and/ or critical readings of this paper. Extracts of individual responses are indicated through quotation. The authors acknowledge that the paper originates from the project “B-Cause: Building Collaborative Approaches to University Strategies against Exclusion in Ireland and Africa: pedagogies for quality higher education and inclusive global citizenship" funded by the Irish Research Council’s COALESCE programme [COALESCE/2019/88].