In his work The Moroccan Textbook in the Digital Age: Challenges and Bets, Mohamed Hamoudou described textbook digitalization as an inevitable step toward Moroccan school reform. He claimed that textbook digitalization would contribute to Moroccan education reform and also serve as a stronger alternative to paper textbooks. The latter, the writer explained, would hardly hold out against technological expansion. This paper, however, calls into question the relation Hamoudou tended to establish between school digitalization and education reform. The idea here is that no one can assert with certainty that the two factors are related as long as no study confirms this. This paper argues that while Hamoudou’s work remains a solid piece of research, it failed to raise and subsequently tackle fundamental questions that would allow to determine the real share of technology in school reform. Some of these questions are: does school digitalization enhance the quality of education; or can it only successfully contribute to this when it interacts with other factors including teacher’s competence and the relevance of teaching content? What if all these urgent calls to digitize schools merely emanate from an inner dread of being left behind, especially as technology continues to invade the world at such an unprecedented pace? Drawing upon various studies and experiences in the field of education and technology, this paper endeavors to resolve these questions, or at least initiate a serious discussion around them.

Authors:
Loubna El Moncef, Dar Essalam High School, Morocco

About the Presenter(s)
Dr LOUBNA EL MONCEF is a high school English teacher. She earned her PhD in 2018 in cultural studies from the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Ibn Tofail. Her research interests include gender, cultural studies and education.

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https://www.linkedin.com/in/loubna-el-moncef-879b2847

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