Emma Harden-Wolfson

Over the course of the past few years, I’ve had the privilege to be involved with a cross-national research project studying the impact of distance education on educational access and quality in Central Asia. This highly topical research was conceived during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, when students, educators, families, and politicians alike were faced with fundamental questions about how to continue with education if schools were closed and how to ensure pre-existing educational inequalities did not worsen as a result.

Led by the brilliant Kyrgyz public foundation Taalim-Forum, a team of partners in Mongolia and Tajikistan was convened, and a major grant secured from the Global Partnership for Education and the International Development Research Centre through the GPE/KIX programme. Starting in 2021, the team undertook desk research to establish the policy context, and then carried out extensive field research across multiple sites in each country. This involved focus group discussions with students, parents, and teachers; interviews with school administrators, local government officials, IT experts and more; a survey of teachers and students covering thousands of students; and participant observation, whereby researchers lived with local families to observe the day-to-day dynamics of education in a time of huge disruption.

Along the way, the research team engaged with an extensive knowledge mobilization strategy, working both behind the scenes with government and other stakeholders as well as in the public eye through webinars, presentations (see here for my write-up of one such panel) and conferences. The two international conferences organized by the team combined opportunities to present ongoing research findings with hands-on teacher professional development opportunities and sessions addressing educational digitalization in broader context. For example, I spoke at the 2022 conference on the digital future and academic mobility, and at the 2023 conference on artificial intelligence and education (video also dubbed into Kyrgyz and Tajik).

As the project draws to a close, a final round of presentations is sharing the overall results and lessons learned from this research. While the context is quite different now from the depths of the pandemic in 2020, its imprint on education continues to be strongly felt. It was little surprise, therefore, that the Kyrgyz Deputy Minister of Education was in the room to hear about the Kyrgyzstan results, with a ministerial press release accompanying the event and setting out the government’s next steps in digitizing education. Forthcoming events in Mongolia and Tajikistan promise to attract an equally high level of interest.

For each country, a final report and policy brief has been prepared. The policy briefs (prepared by me) are also available in English, providing a quick entry point into the much richer data from this project. Here’s the Kyrgyzstan policy brief:

I’ll share the other policy briefs once they’re published.

In the meantime, check out the KIX/GPE website for other updates from this important research.