Film and fashion icon Audrey Hepburn once said: “A quality education has the power to transform societies in a single generation, provide children with the protection they need from the hazards of poverty, labor exploitation and disease, and give them the knowledge, skills and confidence to reach their full potential.” 

Quality education, in other words, provides a pathway for children to achieve all of these goals and is the surest way to attain the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Without quality education, a community will not be able to escape the cycle of poverty, reduce inequality, reach gender equality, develop society, achieve social justice and live more prosperous and sustainable lives. 

It is important to understand that quality education, especially in the context of a networked environment, presupposes many intricate interwoven factors, not just simply acquiring knowledge and applying it outside school contexts, despite the fact that this knowledge is vital for students in improving civic participation, political engagement and society’s critical consciousness.

There are more things to consider than just simply the acquisition and application of knowledge. To begin with, the essence of a good education is that it inspires, motivates and patiently guides students to be conscious of their own potential and to use this potential for the sake of the society’s common good. This echoes William Butler Yeats’ dictum that “education is the lighting of a fire, not the filling of a pail”. Yeats was an Irish poet and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature.

Even in the advent of the digital era typified by the so-called information superhighway, inspiration and motivation are of significance in fostering the attainment of quality education. Technologically well-equipped schools will not guarantee good education if the use of it is not balanced with endeavors to boost the professional development of staff and teachers.

 However, because technology has now dominated almost all of life’s domains, it is tempting to surmise that schools must prepare students to be tech-savvy to compete globally and that technological prowess must become the eventual goals of modern educational practices. In fact, most schools have ardently responded to this emerging phenomenon by integrating technology into school subjects.  

While this conjecture is well-founded, given that technology facilitates educational processes in a positively significant way, we should not lose sight of the fact that technology can by no means replace humans’ involvement in any educational practice. Technology serves as a means, not an end in itself. Its positive impacts on and benefits for education cannot be taken at face value but need to be critically and thoroughly evaluated. 

The term “critical digital literacy” has been used recently to make both teachers and students become more critical about the use of technologies and their impacts on themselves as users, as well as on society at large.

This term holds relevance in attaining quality education in the context of digital technology. Being digitally critical means going beyond the full mastery of the use of technology in solving problems, interacting, collaborating and communicating virtually.

It encompasses the ability to conduct a critical self-reflexive analysis of the social, cultural and political impacts of technologies on society. It views networked learning environment as not only a neutral pedagogical site but also a place for political participation, where students in collaboration with teachers can exert control over the incessant flow of information generated in digital environments and assess its credibility and trustworthiness in light of their real social and political contexts.  

Another important factor that barely has any mention in any discussion about quality education in the context of the digital age is the psychology of a networked learning environment. As education is an ongoing process that undergoes long stages, a learning ambiance must be created so that both teachers and students feel safe, comfortable and motivated.     

No matter how much knowledge students acquire in school and how adeptly they apply technologies in everyday life, this will not be retained as a meaningful experience in their life, provided that they are never motivated and inspired by their teachers to discover their genuine potentials in themselves.

Obviously, with the assistance of teachers and professional staff, technology plays a role in motivating and inspiring students to unearth their talents and creative minds. Research on the use of technology in education has revealingly shown that teachers’ and students’ participation in digital social networks has contributed to high levels of motivation and to the development of positive attitudes toward teachers and courses. 

  While it is true that some parents expect their children to get a quality education that makes them knowledgeable in certain areas of studies and implement their competences and skills through various real-life activities such as exploration, experimentation and interaction with the community through both online and offline environments, there are also parents who look for a school with a high-quality education that will assist them in nurturing their children with positive character building.

The latter want their children to be directly supervised by teachers, learn values and social norms, and be provided with resources that they can utilize in this rapidly changing world. This is often carried out through extracurricular activities where students face a real-life situation in translating these values and norms they learn through textbooks in the classroom. 

Yet quality education by no means suggests the separation of responsibility between school and parent’s involvement and teacher-to-teacher collaboration. Efforts to provide children with sound knowledge, positive values, critical thinking, meaningful social engagement and real-life experiences — traits often associated with quality education — will be for naught unless there is a solid partnership between school and parents, and among school teachers.

Again, networked environments have made it possible to facilitate this partnership through, for example, a digital platform like WhatsApp messaging groups where they can share and exchange useful information related to issues such as students’ academic achievements, learning progress, learning and teaching problems, and parental sources that might provide additional information for teachers to conduct ongoing academic assessments in schools.

Everyday digital practices through a collaborative networked community such a this can certainly support schools’ efforts in their pursuit of quality education.

Finally, of no less significance in attaining quality education is the governments’ strong commitment to providing support and resources needed by educational institutions of all levels.

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The writer is a professor of English at the Graduate School of Applied English Linguistics, Atma Jaya Catholic University of Indonesia, Jakarta. He can be reached at Setiono.sugiharto@atmajaya.ac.id.

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Unearthing and developing learners’ genuine potentials

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