General programme, activity sheet

Friday 29 October, 2021 09:30 to 10:00

Sesión 3:

"La importancia del capital humano para la enseñanza en un mundo digital."

Speaker: Gregorio Giménez Esteban, Universidad de Zaragoza, Profesor Titular de Economía

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have changed the world. In the last decades, both work and leisure, have undergone a profound transformation. Today, it is difficult to conceive life without computers, cell phones, social networks and permanent access to information. Everything has become accessible and instantaneous. Education has not been immune to this profound transformation in the last decades. Computers, at first, and access to knowledge through the Internet, later, were identified as revolutionary educational tools. Computers and connectivity would make possible, definitely, to democratize and universalize education. The teaching and learning applications available would allow to standardize quality. Following these premises, policy makers in education have been investing, during the last decades, huge amounts of resources in making schools more technological and facilitating access to new technologies for students (Comi et al., 2017; Fernández-Gutiérrez et al., 2020; González-Betancor et al., 2021; Spiezia, 2010). This interest has grown even further since the COVID-19 pandemic, as many countries are accelerating the incorporation of ICT into education (White & McCallum, 2021). However, it is clear that digital transformation is coming at a cost. Digitization is meaning an increasing human beings’ dependence on technological devices, and even its advantages in terms of productivity and efficiency are being questioned, as there is a discrepancy between measures of investment in information technology and measures of output (Turban et al., 2004). This critical vision has become very evident in the educational field, where the effectiveness of new technologies in learning is increasingly questioned. The impact of ICT on educational achievements has become a controversial issue, and scientific evidence has not clearly found that the use of ICT in the classroom has a positive effect on learning (Bulman & Fairlie, 2016; Falck et al., 2018; Fernández-Gutiérrez et al., 2020; Giambona & Porcu, 2015; Hu et al., 2018). One major motive is that the empirical studies carried out have paid little attention to the potential role of country characteristics in shaping the relationship between the use of ICT and educational achievement (Hu et al., 2018). Among these characteristics, the stock of human capital, and specifically the interaction between it and the use of new technologies, emerges as a factor of singular importance. Economic literature has highlighted the important complementarities that surge between human capital accumulation and technology adoption (Barcenilla et al., 2019; Benhabib & Spiegel, 2005; Giménez et al., 2015; Lentini & Gimenez, 2019; López-Pueyo et al., 2018; Vandenbussche et al., 2006). Following this line, in the present article, we formulate the hypothesis that the outcome of ICT use on learning varies when we consider differences in the countries’ stock of human capital. We conjecture that the countries with greater stock of human capital can benefit more from the use of ICT in learning. In the next subsections, we explain what the literature has found about the relationship between ICT and learning success and why we think that this can be conditioned by the stock of human capital. The goal of the present study is to provide a theoretical and empirical underpinning towards a better understanding of the role of the stock of human capital in the successful use of ICT in the learning process. To do so, we estimate an education production function that empirically establish the relationship between the student’s outcomes, in the form of tests’ scores in mathematics, reading and science (output), and a wide set of explaining variables (inputs), among them, the subject-related ICT use in schools. In the function, we include the stock of human capital and its interaction with the subject-related ICT use, to assess whether, and how, human capital has a moderator-effect on the relationship between ICT use and students’ outcomes. This approach constitutes, as far as we now, a novelty in the literature. We find that, although subject-related ICT use in schools has a negative relationship with students’ outcomes, when we consider the moderator-effect of the stock of human capital in the estimations, this relationship turns positive. The relationship between subject-related ICT use in schools and students’ outcomes is greater (more positive) the higher the level of the stock of human capital is. The higher the stock of human capital one economy has, the more benefits can be got from the investment in ICT for learning. Similarly, the higher the subject-related ICT use, the greater (more positive) the result of the stock of human capital on students’ outcomes. References Barcenilla, S., Gimenez, G., & López-Pueyo, C. (2019). Differences in total factor productivity growth in the european union: The role of human capital by income level. Prague Economic Papers, 28(1), 70–85. https://doi.org/10.18267/j.pep.689 Benhabib, J., & Spiegel, M. M. (2005). Chapter 13 Human Capital and Technology Diffusion (pp. 935–966). https://doi.org/10.1016/S1574-0684(05)01013-0 Bulman, G., & Fairlie, R. W. (2016). Technology and Education: Computers, Software, and the Internet. In E. A. Hanushek, S. Machin, & L. Woessmann (Eds.), Handbook of the Economics of Education (Vol. 5, Issue 1, pp. 239–280). North Holland. Comi, S. L., Argentin, G., Gui, M., Origo, F., & Pagani, L. (2017). Is it the way they use it? Teachers, ICT and student achievement. Economics of Education Review, 56, 24–39. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2016.11.007 Falck, O., Mang, C., & Woessmann, L. (2018). Virtually No Effect? Different Uses of Classroom Computers and their Effect on Student Achievement. Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 80(1), 1–38. https://doi.org/10.1111/obes.12192 Fernández-Gutiérrez, M., Gimenez, G., & Calero, J. (2020). Is the use of ICT in education leading to higher student outcomes? Analysis from the Spanish Autonomous Communities. Computers and Education, 157(July). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2020.103969 Giambona, F., & Porcu, M. (2015). Student background determinants of reading achievement in Italy. A quantile regression analysis. International Journal of Educational Development, 44, 95–107. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2015.07.005 Giménez, G., López-Pueyo, C., & Sanaú, J. (2015). Human capital measurement in OECD countries and its relation to GDP growth and innovation. Revista de Economia Mundial, 2015(39). González-Betancor, S. M., López-Puig, A. J., & Cardenal, M. E. (2021). Digital inequality at home. The school as compensatory agent. Computers and Education, 168(March). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2021.104195 Hu, X., Gong, Y., Lai, C., & Leung, F. K. S. (2018). The relationship between ICT and student literacy in mathematics, reading, and science across 44 countries: A multilevel analysis. Computers & Education, 125(June), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2018.05.021 Lentini, V., & Gimenez, G. (2019). Depreciation of human capital: a sectoral analysis in OECD countries. International Journal of Manpower, 40(7), 1254–1272. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJM-07-2018-0207 López-Pueyo, C., Barcenilla, S., & Giménez, G. (2018). The two faces of human capital and their effect on technological progress. Panoeconomicus, 65(2), 163–181. https://doi.org/10.2298/PAN151002014L Spiezia, V. (2010). Educational Achievements ? Student-level Evidence from PISA. OECD Journal: Economic Studies, 2010, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1787/eco_studies-2010-5km33scwlvkf Turban, E., McLean, E., & Wetherbe, J. (2004). Information Technology for Management: Transforming Organizations in the Digital Economy. In E. Turban, E. McLean, & J. Wetherbe (Eds.), Information Technology for Management: Transforming Organizations in the Digital Economy (Fourth, Vol. 2, Issue 4). Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1108/09593840010377644 Vandenbussche, J., Aghion, P., & Meghir, C. (2006). Growth, distance to frontier and composition of human capital. Journal of Economic Growth, 11(2), 97–127. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10887-006-9002-y White, M. A., & McCallum, F. (2021). Crisis or catalyst? Examining COVID-19’s implications for wellbeing and resilience education. In Wellbeing and Resilience Education (pp. 1–17). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003134190-1

Further information:

Sesión 3: Educación y desarrollo sostenible

Other activities in Sesión 3: Educación y desarrollo sostenible

10:00 h. to 10:30 h.

Sesión 3:

"El papel de la educación en el impacto medioambiental: modelo STIRPAT-E."

Speaker: Juan Cándido Gómez Gallego, Universidad de Murcia, Profesor

10:30 h. to 11:00 h.

Sesión 3:

"Resiliencia, educación y sostenibilidad."