Abstract Book of the 9th International Academic Conference on Teaching, Learning and Education
Year: 2025
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Educational Inequality and the Impact of E-Teaching: The Effect of Technological Resource Gaps on Teaching Perceptions
Eyal Eckhaus, Prof. Nitza Davidovitch
ABSTRACT:
Equality and inequality in education remain a growing concern, particularly in light of the shift to e-learning during the Covid-19 crisis. This transition raised critical questions about access to digital education for students lacking adequate technological resources. Socioeconomic disparities were found to hinder the implementation of e-teaching, especially among disadvantaged populations and in developing countries facing technological limitations. This study aimed to explore how students with insufficient access to e-learning tools perceive online education, particularly in the context of broader system-level technological gaps. A total of 1,963 students completed questionnaires during the pandemic, focusing on the challenges of e-teaching. A mixed-methods approach was used, combining quantitative and qualitative analyses, and an empirical model was tested using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). Findings revealed that students identified poor technological infrastructure and lack of resources as directly harmful to teaching quality. While technology is often viewed as a tool for bridging educational gaps, our findings indicate the opposite: in this context, its essential role in education actually exacerbated existing inequalities. This is the first study to empirically demonstrate that during the Covid-19 period, the reliance on technology in education reversed its potential for inclusion, deepening disparities rather than reducing them.
Keywords: Covid-19; developing countries; digital teaching; education; equality and inequality