The New Digital Education Policy Landscape: From Education Systems to Platforms

This book provides a scholarly investigation of the new era we have entered, in which platforms can replace or profoundly modify educational systems, and questions the role of educational policy in this new stage of platform-based digital technology. The contributors explore important questions around who controls these transformations, what form they are taking, what the balance between national education policies and Big Tech education solutions should be, as well as whether there should be a public platform in every education system that digitally expands learning, and what evidence there is that learning will be more efficient using these platforms. The first part provides a selection of empirical studies on the new digital educational policy, and an analysis of the real opportunities and concerns that governments face in this regard, while the second offers reflections on the processes of platformization and the role of the state in this new digital world. Uniquely examining the temporal evolution of these changes and taking a theoretical, political, and epistemological approach, it crucially opens pathways for dialogical and diverse critical thinking about profound problems and possibilities. Gathering purposeful thinking that creates space for design solutions and rethinking educational systems considering these new technological artefacts, it will appeal to researchers and specialists in the fields of educational technology and educational policy.

Cristóbal Cobo is a Senior Education and Technology Specialist at the World Bank.

Axel Rivas is a Professor, Researcher, and Dean of the School of Education at the Universidad de San Andrés, Argentina.