The last few years have seen a huge number of online tools and platforms launched to deliver top quality education for free. Whether it’s MOOCs or the likes of Khan Academy or Wikipedia, there has seldom been a time when knowledge has been available more readily.
Despite this apparent golden age however, research suggests that most users of these services are those who already have an education rather than those who are denied such opportunities.
It’s what’s known as the Matthew Effect, whereby projects that are designed to help the disadvantaged and therefore close the inequality gap, actually do the opposite and result in the gap getting larger.
Social learning, not social mobility
The study, by researchers from Georgia Institute of Technology, found that children with low-income parents were less likely to use the free resources available to them. What’s more, when they did use them, they tended to do so less effectively.
“A key goal for low-income parents is making sure their children stay in school, so often they are more focused on monitoring whether their kids are doing homework and going to class,” the authors say. “Their attention is directed towards school and not what could happen outside the classroom.”
The analysis suggests that higher-income parents act as a kind of learning broker for their children. They do this by hunting down extra resources for their children outside of school, whether this is a MOOC, a book or some other extra curricular activity.
Challenges to overcome
The paper found that low-income parents tend to face a number of challenges, even when accessing free resources online. For instance, they may lack the technical skills to both find and make effective use of the tools. Even if they did have the requisite skills, they would often downplay them.
The first step to overcome this is to appreciate the challenges that exist, and then try and work with parents to overcome them and therefore help their children access the tools.
This in itself can be difficult however, as the study found that lower-income parents had particular difficulties in asking for help with parenting.
“Most parents are worried about saving face when asking for help with parenting. But this study shows it might be worst for low income parents,” the authors say.
Social networking
These differences were not confined to MOOCs and the like. The study also discovered differences in how standard social networking tools were used for education. For instance, there would be little discussion of education on social networks by lower-income parents, with most attempts to find such tools done via physical visits to their school.
By contrast, higher-income parents would use Google and social media to learn about the latest tools, and there was a much more collaborative environment with mothers sharing tips with one another.
This shouldn’t be taken to mean that wealthier parents are more passionate about education, for that was fairly consistent across the board. What it does show however is that this passion does not always translate into effective outcomes.
The team hope to setup a portal to help lower-income parents overcome some of the challenges outlined, but they also hope that their findings will prompt a redesign of the online tools themselves so that they are more accessible to lower-income families.
