The Futures of Education in the Global Context: Sustainable Distance Education

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue of Sustainability focuses on a topic that is demanding increasing attention because of the many lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic, including the significance of emergent distance education and sustainable distance and online education. The articles in this Special Issue will target the many futures of education in which “learning to become” is the main goal. As the COVID-19 pandemic continued to escalate, educators around the world were encouraged to move to online and distance learning. However, these practices could be regarded as emergency distance education, which differs from planned practices, such as distance learning, online learning, and their derivations. In terms of educational processes, the interruption, or rather the disruption, of education has underlined the importance of openness in education and has highlighted many issues that must be taken into account, such as alternative assessment approaches, safety, ethics, privacy, monitoring, and evaluation methods. An appropriate response requires the promotion of learning and reflection on the need to invest in innovative and creative solutions that will enable high-quality, efficient, and personal sustainable distance education to ensure that no one is left behind both now and in the future.

UNESCO’s Sustainability Goals (SDGs) for 2030 have been adopted as a special SDG for Education (SDG4), as growth and sustainability are crucial for education in the future. The cornerstones of SDG4, which are aimed to achieve quality education for all, are access, equity, gender equality, inclusion, democracy, and lifelong learning. The only way to reach these goals is through opening up education, which was emphasized in the Cape Town Declaration 10+ through the following means: open access (OA), open educational resources (OER), open pedagogy, empowering learners, and open communication. UNESCO now has a new global initiative for 2050: Futures of Education: Learning to Become. Going beyond the SDG, this initiative is aimed at reimagining how knowledge and learning can shape the future of humanity and the planet.

Connected to this initiative is the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), which has changed the way we live our lives, work, perform, communicate, relate, conduct business, and learn. However, educational systems and organizations are among the last institutions to change or adapt. Instead, they could be at the forefront of the 4IR by being proactive and taking the lead in both practice and research in this field. However, although the 4IR involves a technical and digital revolution or transformation, to a much greater extent it concerns changing mindsets about people, ethics, values, norms, and attitudes.

As the COVID-19 pandemic continued to escalate, educators around the world were encouraged to move to online and distance learning. Most governments around the world temporarily closed their educational institutions in the effort to contain the pandemic. According to UNESCO, more than 1.6 billion students and young people around the world have been affected, which is 91% of the total number of enrolled learners (April 20, 2020). This pandemic has accelerated the demand for the transition from traditional education to its online equivalent, while maintaining the fair continuity of learning, which is a human right.

The question around the globe has been how to ensure that learners continue to learn at all levels, wherever they are. Most countries have offered online distance education as an alternative. Attempts have been made to create solutions to ensure the provision of active online learning, online student interaction, and e-assessment and e-evaluation. These practices could be regarded as emergency distance education, which differs from planned practices, such as distance learning, online learning, and their derivations. These emergency practices have led to a better understanding of the opportunities offered by online learning among university managers, teachers, and learners. However, these measures have also highlighted the gaps and systemic limitations in existing educational systems that are highly dependent on the simultaneous presence of students and teachers in the same place. Educational systems founded in previous centuries have been based on the traditional paradigms of learning and developing competences for active citizens. A recent research article in Asian Journal of Distance Education described what was happening in many countries around the globe; A global outlook to the interruption of education due to COVID-19 pandemic: Navigation in a time of uncertainty and crises.

Although there has been tremendous growth worldwide in the supply of education at all levels during the last 50 years, including distance education, the COVID-19 pandemic is the greatest challenge yet faced by expanded national education systems. The World Economic Forum (WEF) (April 13, 2020) noted that the education system is now in crisis and that our current education system is becoming irrelevant. The pandemic has accelerated digital transformation, as it has forced archaic systems and processes to be overhauled. Educational institutions in all countries have become aware that this unprecedented situation will lead to a paradigm shift in near future. This shift will lead to sustainable change. However, no shortcuts are allowed in digital transitions and distance education. Nonetheless, the good news is that most educational institutions are in the process of moving forward toward a sustainable educational ecosystem that are relevant to people, products, and processes as well as leadership, management, and infrastructure. The lesson learned during the COVID-19 pandemic is that education is much more than content, exams, and delivery modes. It concerns not only social and emotional relationships, empathy, feelings, ethics, and the joy of learning but also social justice, access equality, inclusion, quality, and lifelong learning, as emphasized by SDG4. It has become explicit that social injustice, inequality, inequity, and the digital divide have worsened during the pandemic, requiring unique and targeted measures if they are to be addressed. In addition, in learning to become, learning must be personalized according to wherever and whoever learners are.

In terms of educational processes, the interruption, or rather the disruption, of education has underlined the importance of openness in education and has highlighted many issues that must be taken into account, such as alternative assessment, safety, ethics, privacy, monitoring, and evaluation methods. An appropriate response requires the promotion of learning and reflection on the need to invest in innovative and creative solutions that will enable high-quality, efficient, and personal sustainable distance education to ensure that no one is left behind both now and in the future.

Prof. Dr. Ebba Ossiannilsson
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Aras Bozkurt
Guest Editors

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• futures of education
• open online learning ecosystems
• innovation in educational technology
• sustainable development
• globalization in online hybrid education