Survey Data on the Impact of COVID-19 on Parental Engagement Across 23 Countries

This data article describes the dataset of the International COVID-19 Impact on Parental Engagement Study (ICIPES). ICIPES is a collaborative effort of more than 20 institutions to investigate the ways in which, parents and caregivers built capacity engaged with children's learning during the period of social distancing arising from global COVID-19 pandemic. A series of data were collected using an online survey conducted in 23 countries and had a total sample of 4,658 parents/caregivers. The description of the data contained in this article is divided into two main parts. The first part is a descriptive analysis of all the items included in the survey and was performed using tables and figures. The second part refers to the construction of scales. Three scales were constructed and included in the dataset: ‘parental acceptance and confidence in the use of technology’, ‘parental engagement in children's learning’ and ‘socioeconomic status’. The scales were created using Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Multi-Group Confirmatory Analysis (MG-CFA) and were adopted to evaluate their cross-cultural comparability (i.e., measurement invariance) across countries and within sub-groups. This dataset will be relevant for researchers in different fields, particularly for those interested in international comparative education

Survey data on the impact of COVID-19 on parental engagement across 23 countries

This data article describes the dataset of the International COVID-19 Impact on Parental Engagement Study (ICIPES). ICIPES is a collaborative effort of more than 20 institutions to investigate the ways in which, parents and caregivers built capacity engaged with children's learning during the period of social distancing arising from global COVID-19 pandemic. A series of data were collected using an online survey conducted in 23 countries and had a total sample of 4,658 parents/caregivers. The description of the data contained in this article is divided into two main parts. The first part is a descriptive analysis of all the items included in the survey and was performed using tables and figures. The second part refers to the construction of scales. Three scales were constructed and included in the dataset: 'parental acceptance and confidence in the use of technology', 'parental engagement in children's learning' and 'socioeconomic status'. The scales were created using Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Multi-Group Confirmatory Analysis (MG-CFA) and were adopted to evaluate their cross-cultural comparability (i.e., measurement invariance) across countries and within sub-groups. This dataset will be relevant for researchers in different fields, particularly for those interested in international comparative education

Digital inequalities across higher education in the global south and global north since the start of COVID-19: A review of the literature

Higher Education has been repeatedly thought of as critical for the development of the skills, knowledge and expertise considered fundamental for social and economic development (Schuller et al., 2004). More recently, it has been positioned as a crucial space for democratisation to flourish, with increasing pressures on elite social institutions to widen participation (Morley et al., 2009) and to “actively seek to address social inequality and promote equity and social justice” (Mbati, 2019, p. 254). Nonetheless, social inequalities hampering choice, representation and participation in higher education continue to exist based on class, race, gender, socioeconomic and geographical backgrounds (Devkota, 2021). In part, this can be attributed to the technocratic ‘consciousness’ (Fischer, 1990) of elite institutions, which among other conventions, standardise the use of digital systems and structures, which often are inaccessible or unfamiliar to students from socially disadvantaged backgrounds (Timmis & Muhuro, 2019). Since the beginning of the Covid- 19 pandemic in 2020, a sharp transition to online platforms has been observed in the Higher Education sector. Such exponential reliance on digital means has not only exacerbated the pre-existing inequalities but forged new ones, particularly for those already marginalised (Atherton, 2020; Timmis & Muhuro, 2019). This situation demands universities’ urgent attention to identifying the many forms in which the digital transformation of education has disrupted learners’ engagement and the increasing inequalities emerging as a result of the transition to emergency online learning. This report sets out the findings from an international literature review of empirical research exploring how the expansion of digitalisation in higher education has transformed and disrupted students’ access and participation during the pandemic. In doing so, it draws attention to spatial, social, material, and educational inequalities for undergraduate and postgraduate students across a wide range of countries from all continents. In attempting to draw attention to pre-existing power imbalance dynamics, access, and resources across the breath of contexts reviewed, we adopt the macro categories ‘Global South’ and ‘Global North’. The use of South-North terminology has grown exponentially over the last 15 years, becoming a well-received way of framing research questions (Haug et al., 2021). It has marked a shift from the earlier attention to (under)development by placing the emphasising on more complex geopolitical relations (Waisbich et al., 2021). Despite this shift, making use of the ‘Global South’ and ‘Global North’ categorisation is far from ideal and continues to be a contested topic. One of the main criticisms relates to the reductionist nature of binary definitions that oversimplify the vast contextual differences across and within countries as if they were homogeneous (Skupien & Rüffin, 2020; Waisbich et al., 2021). Furthermore, such distinctions might reinforce the idea that countries in the "North" offer the key to enhancing educational and research quality of the "South" whereas those in the "South" are either trying to catch up or are merely recipients of the wisdom and expertise of the "North" (Sabzalieva et al., 2020). Whilst acknowledging their imperfect and overly dualistic nature, these terms are far preferable in our view, to outmoded, derogatory, and deficit terminology such as 'developing' and 'third world' countries. We have therefore adopted the Global North/South categorisation cautiously to acknowledge spatial inequalities in relation to higher education and to reflect on the contrasting experiences of students across these broad ‘global societies’ (de Sousa Santos, 2016) whilst acknowledging the risk of oversimplifying the complexity of a global environment as well as inequalities at an intra-national level and within universities (Trahar et al., 2020). Within each of these contexts, we place considerable attention on the experiences of students who have been exposed to the most exclusionary pressures and marginalisation. In doing so, we explore the ways in which inadequate processes to ensure participation, presence, and achievement (Ainscow et al., 2006) of vulnerable students can lead to exacerbated forms of marginalisation. Hence, this report, through an international review of recent literature, teases out the different forms of intersecting inequalities experienced by students while engaging in online emergency education. This report adopts a sociological lens that allows us to explore the local, spatial and cultural divides that contribute to exacerbated digital inequalities. In doing so, we draw attention to the multiple ways in which online learning as a practice embedded in wider sociocultural contexts can be made inaccessible for students. Hence attention is not paid only to students’ availability of digital devices or connectivity, as earlier discourses of the ‘digital divide’ (Lembani et al., 2020) have done. Beyond these more evident inequalities, we look into the social dynamics framing students learning practices

Sociodigital futures of education::reparations, sovereignty, care, and democratisation

As EdTech industries grow in reach and power it is imperative to motivate conditions for ethical challenge and contestation, always remaining attentive to the kinds of education futures that dominant imaginaries of technology foreclose. In this©paper, we explore how the multiple lenses of reparations, sovereignty, care and democra- tisation can offer resources for envisaging alternative sociodigital futures of education. We identify how these ideas can disrupt dominant EdTech modalities, exploring how they foreground dif- ferent kinds of educational relationships and priorities for educa- tion/social justice. The paper explores examples of how sociodigital futures-in-the-making have begun to materialise in range of loca- tions and how they urge new agendas for research, redesign and regulation in relation to EdTech. Whilst the power of the EdTech industry can be overwhelming, we suggest that critiques work from a position of abundance: there are always already many ways to radically reimagine sociodigital futures of education. We argue for the importance of recognising, surfacing, and working with these potentialities in ongoing debates about EdTech precisely to keep the future of education open

Integrating Parental Phenotypic Data Enhances Prediction Accuracy of Hybrids in Wheat Traits

Genomic selection (GS) is a methodology that is revolutionizing plant breeding because it can select candidate genotypes without phenotypic evaluation in the field. However, its practical implementation in hybrid prediction remains challenging since many factors affect its accuracy. The main objective of this study was to research the genomic prediction accuracy of wheat hybrids by adding covariates with the hybrid parental phenotypic information to the model. Four types of different models (MA, MB, MC, and MD) with one covariate (same trait to be predicted) (MA_C, MB_C, MC_C, and MD_C) or several covariates (of the same trait and other correlated traits) (MA_AC, MB_AC, MC_AC, and MD_AC) were studied. We found that the four models with parental information outperformed models without parental information in terms of mean square error by at least 14.1% (MA vs. MA_C), 5.5% (MB vs. MB_C), 51.4% (MC vs. MC_C), and 6.4% (MD vs. MD_C) when parental information of the same trait was used and by at least 13.7% (MA vs. MA_AC), 5.3% (MB vs. MB_AC), 55.1% (MC vs. MC_AC), and 6.0% (MD vs. MD_AC) when parental information of the same trait and other correlated traits were used. Our results also show a large gain in prediction accuracy when covariates were considered using the parental phenotypic information, as opposed to marker information. Finally, our results empirically demonstrate that a significant improvement in prediction accuracy was gained by adding parental phenotypic information as covariates; however, this is expensive since, in many breeding programs, the parental phenotypic information is unavailable

Efficacy of plant breeding using genomic information

Abstract Genomic selection (GS) proposed by Meuwissen et al. more than 20 years ago, is revolutionizing plant and animal breeding. Although GS has been widely accepted and applied to plant and animal breeding, there are many factors affecting its efficacy. We studied 14 real datasets to respond to the practical question of whether the accuracy of genomic prediction increases when considering genomic as compared with not using genomic. We found across traits, environments, datasets, and metrics, that the average gain in prediction accuracy when genomic information is considered was 26.31%, while only in terms of Pearson's correlation the gain was of 46.1%, while only in terms of normalized root mean squared error the gain was of 6.6%. If the quality of the makers and relatedness of the individuals increase, major gains in prediction accuracy can be obtained, but if these two factors decrease, a lower increase is possible. Finally, our findings reinforce genomic is vital for improving the prediction accuracy and, therefore, the realized genetic gain in genomic assisted plant breeding programs

Survey data on the impact of COVID-19 on parental engagement across 23 countries

This data article describes the dataset of the International COVID-19 Impact on Parental Engagement Study (ICIPES). ICIPES is a collaborative effort of more than 20 institutions to investigate the ways in which, parents and caregivers built capacity engaged with children's learning during the period of social distancing arising from global COVID-19 pandemic. A series of data were collected using an online survey conducted in 23 countries and had a total sample of 4,658 parents/caregivers. The description of the data contained in this article is divided into two main parts. The first part is a descriptive analysis of all the items included in the survey and was performed using tables and figures. The second part refers to the construction of scales. Three scales were constructed and included in the dataset: 'parental acceptance and confidence in the use of technology', 'parental engagement in children's learning' and 'socioeconomic status'. The scales were created using Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Multi-Group Confirmatory Analysis (MG-CFA) and were adopted to evaluate their cross-cultural comparability (i.e., measurement invariance) across countries and within sub-groups. This dataset will be relevant for researchers in different fields, particularly for those interested in international comparative education