This document discusses sustainable development goals and digital inclusion. It addresses several topics: 1) Social inclusion and how education has progressed to be more inclusive over time in countries like England. 2) How distance education aims to be democratic and dialogic through student support approaches like guided conversation and addressing transactional distance. 3) The long history of education and technology and how digital resources and communications are changing learning. 4) Different perspectives on development, including the Millennium Development Goals and new Sustainable Development Goals. 5) How sustainability has become a core goal for education systems, focusing on environmental, social and economic domains.

1. Sustainable development goals and
digital inclusion
Alan Tait
Professor of Distance Education and Development,
The Open University
Visiting Professor, Aalborg University
alan.tait@open.ac.uk
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2. Digital –Dialogic – Democratic - Development
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3. Structure
• Inclusion and agency?
• Democratic and dialogic: supported by digital?
• Education and technology: a long marriage?
• Development: how to define?
• Sustainable: what does it mean for education?
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5. Social inclusion: why?
• A model of social inclusion
‘The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them high and lowly,
And ordered their estate’
1848, Mrs Cecil Alexander, hymn for the Church of England
• Also in 1848: Revolutions in Italy, France, Germany, Denmark,
Hungary etc.
• Movement towards democracy began to diminish expectation in
Europe that poor could only expect to be poor
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6. Education, democracy and inclusion in
England
• Trades Unions legalised: 1824
• Non-Church of England students permitted entry to Oxford and Cambridge
Universities: 1854/5
• Universal primary education: 1880
• Women allowed to own property: 1882
• Universal secondary education (up to 14 ): 1918
• Votes for all men: 1918
• Votes for all women: 1928
• Race Relations Act (outlawed discrimination on grounds of colour or race): 1965
• Sexual Offences Act (decriminalised ‘homosexual acts’): 1967
• Sex Discrimination Act: 1975
• ‘Reasonable adjustment’ for disabled people in workplace: 1995
• Repeal of ‘Section 28’ law forbidding teaching of acceptability of homosexuality:
2003
• Gay marriage permitted: 2014
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7. 1819: Peterloo massacre: image 1
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8. Inclusion
• Openness: a step forward
• Positive programmes of action to include
‘outreach’
• Affirmative action: preference given to
minorities
• Granted or conceded?
• Rights or permissions?
• Outcome of struggles and campaigns
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9. World Bank on social inclusion
• Social inclusion aims to empower poor and
marginalized people to take advantage of
burgeoning global opportunities.
• It ensures that people have a voice in decisions
which affect their lives
• that they enjoy equal access to markets, services
and political, social and physical spaces.
• http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/socialdevelopment/brief/social-inclusion
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10. University of London
• 1828: University of London first to be open to
all religious denominations
• 1858: University of London External Studies:
first university to be open to place
• 1878: University of London: first university to
be open to women taking degrees
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11. Distance education and politics
• Soviet Correspondence system
• Open University UK
• UNED, Spain
• Open University of China
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12. 2: ‘democratic and dialogic’?
• Supported or diminished by digital?
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13. Student support in distance and online
education
• 1970 on from elite to mass Higher Education
system in Europe
• 2015-2030 Higher Education planned to
expand from 250m-400m places
• ODEL will have core role
• Will ODEL be dialogic and democratic?
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14. Guided didactic conversation
• Borje Holmberg of Hermods, and
Fernuniversität, Germany, 1960’s
• Correspondence teaching as new educational
practice
• Scaffolding of student learning through
written interaction
• Empathy
• Fiction in 18th century: empathy for lives of
others
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15. Transactional distance
• Michael Moore, Pennsylvania State University,
1971
• The separation of learner and teacher in
distance education creates a psychological and
communications space that has to be crossed
to avoid misunderstanding and isolation
• Interaction and role of tutor to diminish
transactional distance
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16. Behaviourism and programmed
learning
• Romiszowski 1970’s
• Perfectly designed learning materials would
channel learners without difficulty
• ‘auto-instructional systems’
• No need for student support
• Battle of ideas at Open University in 1970’s
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17. Student support at the Open
University
• Tait 1990
• 3 dimensions to student support
• Cognitive
• Affective
• Systemic
• Tutor role in mediation of course materials, to
support individual and local engagement
• Tutor role to mitigate potential ideology of mass-
produced course materials
• Student support integral not marginal
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18. Constructivism
• Vygotsky’s ideas from 1930’s
• From 1990’s in ODEL literature
• Construction of learning by student
• Tutor role in scaffolding learning, facilitating
learning
• Tutor role is essential element, not marginal
• Social constructivism insists on social not one
to one learning
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19. Connectivism
• Manuel Castells
• Rise of the Networked Society 1996
• More widely from 2005 with World wide web
• Web replicates neural networks
• Learning through resources and
communications potential of web
• Pluralism of ideas implicit in Connectivism
• Tutor role is skilled facilitator and guide
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20. 3: Education and technology
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21. The library of Alexandria
3rd century BCE
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22. The book: technology for mobile
learning
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23. The transition to the mobile world,:
decentering learning
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24. Education and technology: a long
marriage
• Technology has supported learning for 5000 years
• has always reshaped human experience and
understanding
• Is now reshaping society as fundamentally as
industrialisation in England in the early 19th
century
• Has potential for much good and some bad
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25. Specific to the digital revolution in
education
Resources
• News
• Libraries
• Archives
• Markets
• Services
• Audio and video
• Citizen and peer produced
Communications
• Flexible
• Mobile – with 4G and wifi
• Immediate and
asynchronous
• Networks
• Social networks
• Local-national-global
• Access and inclusion
• Exclusion: poor-rural-
elderly-disabled
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26. 4: Development?
• Purposeful intervention for change in society
for ethical purposes
• Inclusion rests on values, ethical and political
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27. Millennium Development Goals
• MDG’s: reduce poverty and hunger; achieve
universal primary education; promote gender
equality; reduce child and maternal deaths;
combat HIV, malaria and other diseases;
ensure environmental sustainability; develop
global partnerships.
• Considerable progress, by no means complete
• For poor countries
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28. MDG 2: achieve universal primary
education for girls and boys
• By 2012 gender participation rates had been achieved in all
developing regions
• Critique: participation not quality has been focus
• 200-2012: primary participation increased from 83-90% in
developing regions
• Sub Saharan Africa moved from 52% to 78%, from 62m to
149m. In same period primary school population increased
by 35%.
• In 2012: 58 million children of primary age out of school in
developing regions, esp conflict zones
• 1 in 4 children in developing regions drop out of primary
school
MDG report 2014, UN NY
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29. Sustainable Development Goals
17 SDGs and 169 targets in total, 2015-2030
• SDG 4 ‘Ensure inclusive and equitable quality
education and promote lifelong learning
opportunities for all’
• Sustainability runs through most
• Also ‘safe, secure and resilient’ societies
• Widespread consultation
• For all countries, only only poor countries
• To be agreed September 2015
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30. 5: Sustainability
Sustainability has become core overarching global goal
‘Wholesale change in the way we think and the way we
act’
What does it mean for education?
UNESCO Roadmap for Implementing the Global Action Programme for Education for Sustainable Development,
UNESCO 2014, p8
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32. Sustainability
• ‘sustainable development is development that
meets the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generations
to meet their own needs’
• Brundtland Commission, UN, 1987
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33. Domains of sustainability
• Environment
• Human consumption
• Economics
• Society
• ‘greater regard for social justice, notably
equity between rich and poor within and
between countries; intergenerational equity’
Wikipedia, entry on sustainability, visited August 12 2015
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34. Education and Sustainability
• To create a world that is more just, peaceful
and sustainable, all individuals and societies
must be equipped and empowered by
knowledge, skills and values’
UNESCO Roadmap for Implementing the Global Action Programme for Education for Sustainable Development,
UNESCO 2014, p8
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36. Conclusion
• Inclusion involves agency and voice
• ODEL and digital must be significant part of
expansion of post-secondary capacity for 2030
• Dialogic and democratic practice is integral
• Need to rethink Sustainability as core
organising principle
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