The Digital Learning Divide: responding to the access needs of citizens

McAleavy, G.J., Donegan, T., O’Hagan, C.

Introduction

The emergence of digitalisation and the digital economy as the basis for the development of an information society (Lyon, 1988; Hill, 1999) offers a vision where all communities have access to information and, consequently, power over their lives.  The view is infused with protean optimism since such perspectives may tend to mystify the impact of such new worlds on society, particularly on communities most in need.  Widening participation strategies in education in the UK have recently focused on activities such as UK Online, and promotion of information societies and community projects which offer further learning opportunities to young and adult learners.  In addition there is evidence (eg Parker, 2000) that clearly demonstrates the positive aspects of such opportunities at economic, social and civic levels  It is important, however, to remain vigilant regarding the effects of new media on our minority communities accepting that the idea of digitalisation presenting a barrier to community participation and learning is something that cannot be ignored (Cullen, 2003). 

The digital divide between those who have and do not have access to electronic networking, in the context of increasing social disadvantage in the UK, can be perceived as a further disenfranchisement of communities already suffering from various forms of marginalisation.  

Since the mid 1970s, the endpoint of the post war consensus on equality, the proportion of households in the UK earning less than half the average wage has tripled (Howarth, Kenway and Palmer, 2001).  There is now increasing evidence that disadvantaged populations are becoming aware of the degree to which their capacity to reach out to the broader society has been curtailed by the restricted trajectories available to them in a society increasingly characterised by inequality (). 

This paper will examine the needs of digital learning communities that have evolved in response to both economic and social pressures, reviewing the negative effects of information and societal exclusion and the continued use of information and communication technologies as a means of increasing aspirations for learning and opportunities for communal advancement and employment.  It will offer evidence of community need and make recommendations for the advancement of educational provision and support for digital progression among citizens.

Background

There is an evolving debate about the alienation which some communities experience in relation to the internet and the reasons for the socio-economic disadvantage found to be associated with non-access (Cullen, 2003).  Clearly this can be explained in terms of accessibility to information and the internet but also in light of the social deprivation faced by many in our societies and as a consequence the cultural attitudinal inheritance of those experiencing such disadvantage in society (Collins et al, 2003).  The Gartner Group (2000, 2001) for example suggests that minorities are disadvantaged in terms of accessibility to the internet (a defining principle of the digital age) as a result, not least of low income opportunities but also their ability to comprehend and use the internet due to lower levels of educational opportunities and the limitations for employment among such groups.  

The use of IT requires certain access amenities and capabilities.  It is necessary to consider more broadly how other types of disadvantage present barriers to social opportunities [including education and employment] by examining the issues of poverty, employment deficits and cultural living environments, including attitudes and isolation among neighbourhoods and the challenge IT presents to such disadvantaged communities.

Poverty and Exclusion

In 1995-96 there were twice as many poor children in working families than in 1979 (Shropshire and Middleton, 1999).  Increases in part-time work and wage inequalities have been among some of the reasons for the greater dispersion of the ‘working poor’ (Gregory, 2000:161-176). In 2000-01, 21% of children in the UK lived in households with below 60% of median income before housing costs, 31% after housing costs (Shropshire and Middleton, op cit).

While poverty and exclusion have existed throughout history, there are strong indications that modern developments in accessibility, through both the growth of private transport and the use of information technology [IT], while enhancing possibilities for some sections of the population are acting to further disadvantage others (Kuk, 2002; Cullen, 2003; Gartner Group, 2001).  In order to participate in society, to purchase goods, manage finance, obtain work, become educated, access health facilities or even to make friends, citizens require the capacity to reach out, either through having the possibility to travel or, alternatively, through the use of information and communication technologies to access information services and resources  (Kuk, op cit).  An example of the way in which citizens can be deprived of access is the fact that, while Northern Ireland is a major agricultural producer, capacity to purchase affordable fresh food has become a problem for disadvantaged communities both in urban and even rural areas.  

Research by the Armagh and Dungannon Health Action Zone (2003) revealed that low income households would have to spend 25% more of their disposable income on food if they could not access a superstore or street markets and the increasing movement of supermarkets to out-of town locations has led to the creation of ‘food deserts’.   Since cheap and varied food is only available to those who have access to private transport or can access supermarkets through IT, the health of disadvantaged populations is likely to be at risk  (Collins et al, 2003).

The negative effects of such exclusion has been charted by the Health and Personal and Social Services Department (HPSS, 2002):
“Within Northern Ireland… Inequalities in health can be seen in almost every available health index. Infant death rates are almost 50% higher in the most deprived group of our population compared to the least deprived. …..Inequalities in health persist into adulthood. Men and women of working age in the less well of groups are twice as likely to die prematurely as those who are well off. The electoral wards which have the highest death rates also have the highest levels of deprivation”.

Employment and Exclusion

The increasing relocation of workplaces (Lloyd et al, 2000) particularly out of inner city areas and the resulting migration of workers has also meant that individuals and households are less likely to undertake employment unless they have private transport while the increasing rationalisation of education and health facilities has meant that opportunities for access are also dependent on transport (Collins et al, 2003). 

European research suggests that economic development supported by ICT is essential for progression towards a globally sustainable work economy (World Employment Report, 2001).  There continues, however, to be pessimism among researchers about the resulting inequalities among marginalized and minority groups (Pritchard and McManus, 2000; Burnley and Murphy, 2003).  It is suggested that gaps and imbalances among those of poorer communities will increase along with educational disadvantage and the likelihood of a marginalised workforce remains (International Labour Review, 2001).

Living Environments, Attitudes to Learning and Neighbourhoodism

The effects of IT on the development of life chances also needs to be considered within a context where communities are increasingly losing control over their living environments and where capacities for gaining access to the necessities of life are being differentially distributed across real and virtual space.  Space syntax theory (Hillier and Hanson, 1984) is concerned with a critique of static notions of communities and their boundaries replacing this with a concept of the analysis of the dynamic nature of actual community trajectories across space (‘natural movement’).  Similarly (Lefebre, 1991) distinguishes between ‘abstract space’ which he conceives as an instrumental and impositional notion and ‘social space’ that entails ‘encounter, assembly, simultaneity’.  Clearly the advent of virtual networks offers opportunities for communities to become reconstituted if they are able to access further amenities and gain control of available facilities within their own terms.

For comparison, the rapid uptake of internet access has created a situation where around half the population have access to the internet and, similarly, half have access to a car.  While further research will be needed to determine the overlap between car owners and internet access, it can be seen that a nation where half the citizens have both physical and virtual access to a vast range of facilities while the other half do not has grave implications for social inclusion and, inevitably the development and sustainability of a more stable and meaningful democracy. 

For example, research carried out by the authors for the Society of St Vincent de Paul (2003) demonstrated that many persons in minority communities are solely disadvantaged as a result of disengagement and poverty related exclusion.  Social Europe (Lucifora, 1999) aims to alleviate human inequalities, in particular through the reduction of income and low-pay disadvantage and ‘in-work’ poverty for those typically from single-earner (usually the male in a coupled family) households (Gregory, 2000:161-176) or lone-parent households (Shropshire and Milddleton, 1999).  Research has demonstrated the value of educational achievement as a prerequisite for employment.  The fact that individuals with low levels of attainment are less likely to gain employment (Wood, 1994; Nicholl and Bell, 1995) is not simply the issue; it is rather the complex nature and effect of ‘joblessness’, which in some countries exceeds unemployment, may have further long-term deprivational outcomes such as poverty, isolation and exclusion (Roberts, 2001; Shropshire and Milddleton, op cit).  

Exclusion from employment may not always result solely from joblessness; often there are other ‘shutters’ (Roberts, op cit), which disable individuals from entering or re-entering the labour market.  Such barriers may include underachievement and low levels of skill attainment or ‘qualifications’ (Gregory, op cit), particularly competencies in IT (International Labour Review, op cit) together with many conditions which form impediments that include social, cultural, geographic, political and psychological barriers (Roberts, op cit).  The contributing factors include both familial and personal obstacles (O’Boyle, 1998) where unemployment or joblessness will affect both sets of impediments in the transition in to and out of poverty.  

The SVP project demonstrated the impact financial exclusion has had on such groups, becoming increasingly important as financial institutions move out of disadvantaged areas and vendors increasingly require transactions to be made through bank accounts, imposing premiums on purchasers who do not have access to services such as direct debit or electronic ordering.  There are, therefore, increasingly heavy costs encountered by citizens whose reach has been diminished by decisions taken by large corporate bodies to effectively penalize those who do not have access to IT.  The study showed, however, that financial exclusion was being addressed by the remarkable growth of the Credit Union movement. The total membership of Credit Unions in Northern Ireland (total population 1.6 million) has more than doubled between 1988 (134,226) and 1998 (281,614) and the total shareholding has expanded six-fold in the same period.  

In order to provide an effective service, however, citizens in communities have networked to ensure that Credit Unions can share their expertise in IT systems for accounting and use of compatible systems.  While many Credit Union volunteers do not have formal qualifications, they have acquired significant knowledge and skills in informal settings.  These achievements may be unrecognised by formal educational institutions but the volunteers have been remarkably successful in running a community credit business in some of the most disadvantaged areas.  The Registrar’s report notes that the default rate for Credit Unions is 0.5%.  In relation to the skills acquired by volunteers it was recommended (McAleavy et al, 2001) that: 

“ A programme of co-operative business education should be initiated, building on current formal and informal modes of learning and delivered through flexible methodologies, including the use of Information and Communication Technologies, experiential learning and with appropriate opportunities for progression”.

The reality, therefore, is that communities have taken on board the need to use IT productively to provide an essential service despite the lack of any government support or any significant interest from the formal educational sector.  Penn’s comments in relation to environmental design  (Penn, 2001) are relevant in terms of pointing to different paradigms for finding resolutions to complex issues through valuing and recognising existing procedural knowledge devised in informal settings: 

 “ The solutions are intensely pragmatic…. They replace the products of apparently sophisticated theory with apparently simple, often normative, rules of thumb. The rules have been developed and applied not through rigorous analysis and logic, but often through the intuition and experience of designers on the ground looking at specific problems and trying to solve them”.

The challenge in enabling provision of IT to disadvantaged communities is, then, to afford adequate recognition and value to the collective knowledge created by citizens who are actively working to ensure that their communities remain viable.  This will entail a radical rethinking of many assumptions regarding the need to ‘deliver’ basic IT skills to disadvantaged areas and an acceptance that power will have to be shared with communities, including the power to decide what is and is not valid knowledge.  While government bureaucracies have come to accept, in principle, the concept of social capital, the current emphasis of the education system is the individual knowledge acquired through human capital.  The concept of social capital can be defined within the structuralist-materialist paradigm (e.g. Downie, Tannahill and Tannahill, 1996) or the view of Bourdieu (1986) which is that social capital consists of assets and resources that communities acquire through the fostering of networks of mutual advantage.  Contained within the latter paradigm is the recognition that the identification of social capital is dependent on the willingness to accept the definitions of communities rather than attempting to pre-define the limits of social knowledge.

Educational Needs of Excluded Societies

As young people move up the age range they are confronted with a society where further and higher education has become the norm for nearly half of all school leavers.  Entry to higher education is, therefore, at the highest level ever, in historical terms (a generation ago the rate was around 6%) but participation varies depending on a range of factors.  In research carried out at the University of Ulster, based on a sample (N= 753) derived from the Belfast Education and Library Board Area we found that a typical ‘non-progressor’ was likely to have some of the following characteristics:  

be a male protestant who lived close to the school in postcodes BT13, BT14 or B15, have attended a secondary school where a high percentage of pupils claimed free school meals, did less that one hour of homework at night, was less involved in school activities, had no internet access, was less likely to ‘get on’ with other pupils, less likely to have received much information on progressing to further/higher education, want to go to work as soon as possible, and less likely to have been talked to by teachers or parents about progressing.

Education has become a more complex activity and pupils often, nowadays require access to the internet for the project work which is a common feature of many subjects.  In addition, the pupils cited above could possibly have benefited from access to information on progression if their homes had internet access.  Recent debates in relation to the amount of course work in GCSEs have focused on the concern that middle class pupils may benefit from having greater access to IT than pupils from disadvantaged areas.  The picture of a typical non-progressor suggests a young person in a family where financial circumstances are difficult and where social skills may be lacking and more care needs to be paid to the needs of the young person.  This suggests that addressing poverty now entails that education poverty and the contributing factors are fully recognized as constituting a major challenge for communities and policy-makers as it is now becoming more difficult for young people to emerge from impoverished backgrounds to take their place in the workforce and become more socially mobile.  

Increasingly, the effect of lack of education on the possibilities for employment can be seen.  In the U.K., men with no qualifications had an unemployment rate of 30% in 2000 as opposed to 4% in 1979 (Economist, September 8th 2001).  In Northern Ireland, 30% of unemployed respondents in the N.I. Health and Social Well-being Survey (HPSS, 2002) appeared to have a mental health problem, compared with 16% of those in employment.

In the St Vincent de Paul study (N=360), however, it was apparent that the parents had a high awareness of the importance of education as 82.2% recognised the importance of education and its role in getting a job.  Significantly, no individuals in the 18-30 age group without qualifications were employed.  In interviews, it was notable that most respondents raised the issue of IT when asked what would improve their lives and the lives of their children.  They drew attention to the increasing need for computers and access to the internet for their children to obtain information for school work.  Typical comments were as follows:

“Having a computer isn’t a problem at the minute because they are too young, but when they get older that will be a problem”

“I am doing a course and my brother gave me a computer but I have no printer”

“Computers and breaks” [Things you are missing out on]

“I couldn’t afford a computer”

“We do have a computer but can’t access the internet as it is too expensive”

“ [Child] would love to have a computer and the internet  - but it is impossible for me to do that.  Sometimes I could cry, I feel that I am not as good a provider as say some of my neighbours ”

“If the kids want to use the internet or computer they would have to go to a friend’s house or the library.  We would love to have it but can’t afford it”

Conclusion

The increasing use of computers and the internet for study appears to be pointing towards a situation where students will find it necessary to have access, given the curricular trend for children to research topics, even at the primary level of education.  Currently, as one respondent in the SVP project indicated, it is possible to have access if you are a member of a public library.  The problem faced by many parents is that it may be difficult to access the library owing to transport difficulties and this may be compounded greatly in rural areas where distances are likely to be large.  Again this emphasises the need to consider issues concerning reach in terms of both physical and virtual access, since community allocation of access points will only be effective if the potential users can get to the contact point.  

Division in society is a complex concept and. inevitably further work is needed in order to illuminate the persistent problems regarding access to IT and social connectivity.     All of these complex issues, which contribute to the existing and continuing marginalisation of communities, may be addressed by advanced technologies and the opportunities they bring to societies.  Internet and computer access continue to be viewed as essential (Gartner, 2000); however the development of educational opportunities is an essential pre-requisite for supporting accessibility and productivity through community based intervention.  

The recommendation from this SVP research was that the key issue that needs to be addressed in terms of considering the provision of learning opportunities among these groups, possibly on a collaborative basis, was for internet access in housing estates where access is feasible or through homework clubs in schools or other convenient premises.  Equally, in facilitating social learning needs and the development of sustainable communities, voluntary bodies are considering whether it may be necessary to provide computers to disadvantaged homes and to consider them as essential items in the same way as a washing machine or television is now considered to be necessary.

Given that many researchers (Nulden, 2001) point to the existence of distributed cognition that is the result of collaborative learning within a shared context, it is also important to examine how existing learning partnerships in disadvantaged areas can be supported by the use of IT.  For example, SVP runs breakfast clubs for children in schools in West Belfast and the Society volunteers have found that the club offers not only the opportunity for improved nutrition but the chance for school children to interact positively with adults, forming relations seen to possibly advantage poorer children in terms of the transgenerational isolation felt among such families.  In addition, older youths who have left school and have no perceived future prospects either as a result of low levels of achievement or inherited attitudinal affiliations with employment and progress often attend and use the opportunity to discuss their problems with the volunteers.  

By building on these partnerships that already exist, there are possibilities for introducing IT as a further facility for enabling young people to continue their learning in a non-threatening and supportive setting.

Education must be central to the continued development of such connective partnerships as a means of building both confidence and competence among those most in need.

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