CONCLUDING REMARKS
SYMPOSIUM
Ms Patience Stephens
Special Advisor on Education
UN Women
Mr David Atchoarena
Director
Division for Policies and Lifelong
Learning Systems
UNESCO
Gender equality in Education
• An unfinished business
• Significant progress since 2000
• But gender gaps persists. Not only an issue for
developing countries; a global issue
Mobile Penetration Offers
Opportunities for Education
What mobile technology can offer
• Ubiquity
• Mobility
• Affordability
How can mobile learning help
improve
• Access
• Skills development
• Literacy
• Gender responsive content and pedagogy ?
Access
• Affordability: use low cost devices and SMS delivered content,
promote PPP and inter-Ministerial cooperation (infrastructure
development, cost of communication)
• Capacity development: abilities and engagement in the design and
use of technology
• Special attention to rural areas
• Access to technology, via TVET, as a tool for women’s
empowerment
• Policy is key (UNESCO’s guidelines for mobile learning )
• Advocacy and partnerships
Skills development
•
Mobile learning increases the motivation to learn
– consider studies and careers in STEM
•
Providing skills for life and work
– technology can enable girls and women express their views and share knowledge to
improve their daily lives on topics such as health, agriculture and other sustainable
development issues
– Enhancing the employability of women
•
Skills for entrepreneurship a strategic way to empowerment
– Integrated services: skills, career guidance, access to credit…
•
Opening up new LLL pathways and oportunities
•
Teachers need to be supported in order to become digitally competent and
‘true’ mentors
Literacy
• Capitalize on women’s needs and imperatives
• Skills relevant for the community
• From functional
empowerment
literacy
to
• Targeting (parents, the community)
• Promoting decentralized solutions
literacy
for
Literacy (ctd.)
• Involving women in developing the technology
(designing the devices, developing the applications and
the content)
• Mobility: appropriate for flexible learning and adult
learning
• Fostering connectivity to peers and local communities
• Scaling up literacy programmes
Gender Sensitive Content
• Content matters ! (shaping the mind of learners)
• Need to change the balance of gender in
education resources
• From addressing « things girls like» to «things»
that challenge the traditional stereotypes
• Mobile technology increases the richness of
content (multimedia)
Gender Sensitive Pedagogy
• Facilitate project based learning, game based
learning
• Combining social media with academic sources
• Gender sensitive teaching, privacy concerns
• Access, skills development, literacy need to be
provided to progress towards gender sensitive
content and pedagogy
Towards women’s
empowerment
Technology
EDUCATION
Skills Knowledge
Recognition/power
The way forward
• A MLW portal?
• The policy
financing)
environment
(Technology,
education,
• Monitoring, Evaluation and Research
• MLW findings as a foundation for further debate in
other fora (NY)
• DARE (Development Abilities Resources Environment)