If there is one concrete fact that the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated, it is that the digital divide is a tangible, genuine, and significant reality. One basic element among the various challenges is the digital divide: not only as regards connectivity and access to devices but also, in most cases, as regards the dearth of available and accessible educational content. For example, according to a recent report by UNICEF (2021), children with disabilities in Latin America and the Caribbean total some 19 million. During the current COVID-19 pandemic, the existing challenges and inequalities have been exacerbated. Although the use of technology was one of the strategies deployed to address school closures in the Americas, the digital divide revealed the limitations of a traditional approach focused exclusively on infrastructure and devices.

A study of 12 of the region’s countries by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) reports the following findings: 81% of households in the highest income quintile (fifth quintile) have an internet connection, while the corresponding figures for households in the first and second quintiles are 38% and 53%, respectively.

Promoting a culture of digital accessibility is an ongoing process that must be based on concrete data about regulations, laws, programs, initiatives, common factors and differentiating elements, constructive contributions, and the challenges faced by the public policies and programs in place in the region.

UNICEF and the International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP-UNESCO), in their Study of digital policies in education in Latin America (Soletic and Kelly, 2022), offer a pedagogical perspective in their analysis of the advances and discontinuities of ICT policies in the region’s education systems and of the role played by technologies and pedagogical approaches, and they conclude by identifying some lessons learned and changes needed to manage the wholesale integration of technologies into education systems.

The report Challenges and opportunities in incorporating technologies into educational practices. An analysis of inspiring cases (Carina Lion, 2019, UNESCO-IIPE) explores strategies for incorporating ICTs into schools in six of the region’s countries and recommends public actions for political decision-making on social and digital inclusion in education. This document is part of the series produced by the Information System on Educational Trends in Latin America (SITEAL). SITEAL is an online observatory project that provides a database of education policies and regulations, research on education policies, and statistics. These are used to produce documents that systematize and interpret the information in order to monitor the situation of education in the Latin American region.

Special mention should be made of crosscutting, multidimensional analyses of the interplay between education and technology; the need to understand how political and public policy positions determine the place and role given to technology and, accordingly, to its integration in the classroom; and, of course, the pedagogical assumptions that, in one way or another, define conceptions of teaching, learning, and educational systems. Finally, two types of elements should be emphasized in the recommendations made: (1) efforts for social inclusion, addressing gaps and accessibility, and (2) efforts for digital inclusion, addressing citizenship, practices, curriculums, and competence. In this way, it is essential to guarantee the support and adjustments required by students in their educational path, in order to respond to their particularities and the diversity of the context in which they develop.

Investments in technology for education systems have increased steadily in the region over the past 20 years. Those investments do not necessarily yield the same levels of significant impact on teachers’ teaching processes or on student learning outcomes. The evidence—augmented by the even deeper gaps emerging in the post-pandemic period—seems to show that programs and projects focused on the provision of equipment or software do not by themselves resolve the digital divide.

This hemispheric program proposes reflecting on and analyzing, from a framework of critical literacy, the impact of digital technologies in the pedagogical and educational transformation of education systems that include all education community sectors and actors. Accelerating digital accessibility processes for all people without exception, based on their diversity, including the most disadvantaged, in order to reduce the digital and educational gap in key areas.

In keeping with the lines of work established by the authorities of the CIE in their methodology and building on the current contexts, the proposed outcomes and learnings are the following:

• Create a space where countries can exchange successful initiatives to help advance frameworks for action and public policies by encouraging and supporting the design and implementation of post-pandemic public policies.
• Support the transformation mechanisms that education systems need in order to address widening inequality gaps through technical cooperation and capacity-building.
• Generate the necessary inputs for public policy decision-making and programmatic action through a line of research on key issues.

Expected outcome: Regional Guidelines and Hemispheric Protocol on Education in Digital Environments (PH-EED)

Topics and areas of action

• Integration of technologies into the region’s teaching and learning processes and education systems, creation of a repository of the Americas

This topic encompasses inclusion policies for access, support for educational trajectories and teacher training processes, as well as proposals for the incorporation into the curriculum of competencies related to the integration of technologies.

• Good use of the internet, coexistence, prevention of violence and prevention of possible digital crimes and hate speech in digital media

This topic deals with policies and programs for the prevention of violence and hate speech in digital media and the mechanisms that can be deployed to reinforce basic learning that has not yet been consolidated. These actions must be evidence-based, built on the analysis of previous successful implementations, and highlight the challenges encountered in implementation.

• Training for teachers in digital skills, promoting evaluation and research in educational practices

This line of action provides an overview of how to promote and strengthen the development of policies and programs that promote critical literacy within a framework of access to, permanence and educational achievement in the framework of quality, inclusive, and equitable education.

This hemispheric program is part of Working Group 1 on Systemic Approach for Building Resilient Education Systems within the framework of the Inter-American Committee on Education (CIE).