Interview with Ainara Zubillaga, COTEC Foundation

1. In March 2020, schools closed practically overnight. What challenges did this situation bring to light?

The closure of schools made visible the seams of the educational system. Problems that did not exist did not emerge, but it did put the magnifying glass on the structural deficits that already existed, just as it has accelerated trends that were knocking on the door.

The impact of the closure of educational centers has been twofold: educational and social. From the educational perspective, it has revealed the overload of our curriculum, a volume of content that is not capable of being addressed under normal conditions, which further complicated development in a remote education setting. Digitization has been the great challenge that schools and teachers have faced: from lack of resources (platforms, applications, digitization of materials, etc.), to little teacher training that has been forced to migrate their activity daily teacher to a format and a channel that many were unaware of how it works and how to take advantage of it didactically.

And from the social perspective, the closure of schools has made the educational gap visible, which has been shown to the general public through the digital gap. It is not only reduced to it, but it is what has allowed everyone to see the problems of equity and educational segregation beyond the classroom. The data are clear: it is fundamentally the socioeconomic level, the variable that affects the three digital gaps -access, use and center-, above comparisons with other countries or between Autonomous Communities.

2. When reviewing the educational policies of the different Autonomous Communities, what aspects could help to alleviate the different gaps detected and also avoid disparities between territories?

The most obvious seems to be any action linked to the reduction of the digital divide, but in its broadest sense, that is, we are not only talking about the provision of devices and the guarantee of connectivity, but also about digital competence and the didactic use of technologies.

And the other great aspect, without a doubt, are all the school reinforcement and support programs. The first data that we began to have on the impact of school closings in terms of learning loss clearly show that there is a significantly higher incidence on the most vulnerable students. The gaps that already existed, therefore, are widening, and it is necessary to reverse the trend.

3. In what way can open data drive improvements in the education sector that help overcome these challenges?

The proposals that have been submitted to the contest are an example of those trends that have accelerated and that I discussed earlier. They are clear examples, for the most part, of solutions aimed at the personalization of learning, which is undoubtedly one of the lines of development of digitization in education, and is thus also included in the Educa en Digital program of the Ministry of Education itself.

The personalization of the learning process is a clear example of the added value that technology brings to education: not only does it allow adjusting what is taught and how to the student and their needs, but also frees the teacher from routine monitoring functions, allowing you to focus on a more personalized attention, especially in those students who need more support.

5. You have just started the project La escuela, lo primero, what can you tell us about it?

La escuela, lo primero” is an innovation project whose objective is to offer the Administration, educational centers, teaching staff, and other institutions, the necessary tools to face the challenges faced by the educational system, the different scenarios and situations - face-to-face and at a distance - derived from the Covid-19 pandemic.

We started in July, with the first edition of the teaching innovation laboratories, and we have had the participation of more than 200 teachers from all over Spain, who have generated more than thirty proposals, all of them innovative solutions that include games, guides, decalogues or virtual resources, valid to be applied in any school.

The practical proposals address, among other challenges, the transfer of active methodologies to the virtual environment, the organization of times and spaces in a flexible way, the promotion of collaborative remote work, promoting student autonomy, reinforcing special educational needs or promoting coexistence.

"La escuela, lo primero" is an innovation project that offers tools to face the challenges faced by the educational system.

6. What other projects related to the educational field have you started or are you planning to develop?

We continue with our work of analysis and design of solutions and proposals aimed at responding to all the challenges that have arisen from the pandemic. The teaching laboratories at La Escuela Lo Primero are not only continuing, but will be completed with follow-up others that allow us to evaluate the implementation of the proposed solutions: what has worked and what has not, how has this peculiar course evolved, what new Challenges have arisen… and all this aimed at defining the lines of that school that we want to build.  

And from the dimension most linked to public policies, we are working on the preparation of a Digitization Plan, which we hope will give guidance to both the Administration and the centers, in this process that is sometimes not being approached in the most appropriate way.  

7. The COTEC Foundation prepares a report each year on the I+D situation in Spain. This year's report shows that R&D has gained weight in the production structure for the second consecutive year. What are we doing well in Spain? What is left to do?

If we look at the country as a whole, the data tell us that we are not a particularly innovative country (we occupy middle positions in international rankings, which do not correspond to the positions we have as an economic or scientific power).

Now, if our point of view goes down from the country scale to the individual scale, from the institutional to the personal, the perspective changes. In both the public and private sectors, innovative initiatives are proliferating increasingly, driven by strong creativity and individual enthusiasm. And to this is added that many of them are being developed in environments and through channels outside the classical structure of the science, technology and university system. Therefore, I believe that we are good individually, in projects that act as catalysts, but that, lacking a properly defined, articulated, connected and coordinated system, we lose strength in collective change.

And something similar happens in education: we have a gap between an innovative vocation of a large part of the teaching staff, reflected in this multitude of pilot projects and experiences, and the innovative performance of schools and the system as a whole. And that slows down the transformation of the educational system as a whole.

8. This year's COTEC report also highlights that Spain has a higher rate than the European average in STEM graduates, but with a much wider gender gap, what can we do to reverse this situation?

It seems clear that there is a gap between technology and women (and I emphasize technology because, for example, it is not produced in the health field, which is also another STEM, scientific area, but it does have a significant female presence). I think that this distancing is generated by the discourse underlying technology, which is focused on the device (the what), not on the process (the what for). We need to clearly link the purpose of technologies, contextualize them, give them a greater sense and social focus, and I believe that in this way we would minimize the distance that the general population and women in participating have towards technology. It would allow approaching the problem from another perspective: it is not about bringing women closer to technology, but about bringing technology closer to women.