COVID and digital transformation - history of global organisations’ visions for the future of education

with Choah Park (UCL) 

21 March, 5-6:30pm 

EH19, Essex House, University of Sussex (Campus Map)/ Zoom 

COVID evoked ambivalent stories of learning crisis and opportunities to transform the education system with the proven promise of technologies. COVID allowed not only established but also new global actors to promote their visions through global partnerships and development aid, aspiring to the UN’s sustainable development goals. UNESCO, the OECD, and the World Bank have long competed with their visions of education and international development since the post-war period. Their visions and governing strategies have been intertwined with historical and power relations. However, these historical and international relations have not been explored in depth regarding their digital transformation of education initiatives in the comparative and international education field. My research explores global organisations’ visions for the future of education responding to COVID in terms of their historical legacies, the politics of their governing strategies, and underlying agendas and ideologies. This seminar focuses on exploring what visions of education and development global organisations promoted before COVID and how they promoted them. It will discuss how their vision and strategies for the future were interrelated to geopolitical relations across time of key global events including the Sputnik crisis, the 1970s’ oil crises, the fall of the Berlin wall, and the global financial crisis. The seminar further asks about the historical legacies seen in the global organisations’ current digital transformation of education movement.

Choah's Bio 

I am a PhD Candidate in the Education, Practice, and Society Department at UCL Institute of Education. My PhD project is titled, 'COVID and Global Organisation's Socio-technical Imaginaries for the Future of Education.' I explore what visions of education global organisations promote for the future responding to COVID and how, focusing on the digital transformation of education (UNESCO/OECD/World Bank). During my PhD, I worked as a Graduate Teaching Fellow in the School of Education, Communication & Society at King's College London. Before graduate school, I worked as a training coordinator at Microsoft and General Electric in South Korea, assisting in training and cultural initiatives in the 4th industrial revolution context. These work and study experiences led me to have interests in the future of education and international relations underlying the digital transformation movement. My current research areas of interest are comparative and international education, global education governance, and socio-technical imaginaries.