Copyright

Linda Herrera

Published On

2025-11-17

Page Range

pp. 1–38

Language

  • English

Print Length

38 pages

1. Introduction

Learning from Egypt’s Historic Education 2.0 Reforms

  • Linda Herrera (author)
Chapter of: Education 2.0: Chronicles of Technological and Cultural Change in Egypt(pp. 1–38)
In September 2018, Egypt’s Ministry of Education and Technical Education (MOETE) began rolling out elements of a ‘new education system’ or ‘Education 2.0’. This chronicle of Education 2.0 provides a rare glimpse into a state-led national education reform oriented towards digital transformation and infrastructure expansion, curriculum change and teacher Professional Development, and culture change. The chapter lays out the political, policy, and social context in which the reforms unfolded, happening in the wake of the Arab uprisings, and in keeping with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and Africa Agenda 2063. The research draws on oral histories from the ‘top down’ and ‘bottom up’ with figures from the state, society, and international and private sector partners. It finds that in a rapidly changing, oftentimes harsh, and unpredictable world, it is imperative to continue to strive for a social contract in education oriented towards human dignity and a genuinely sustainable future, for our collective survival depends on it.

Contributors

Linda Herrera

(author)
Professor in the Department of Education Policy, Organization and Leadership in the Global Studies in Education program at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Linda Herrera is Professor in the Department of Education Policy, Organization and Leadership in the Global Studies in Education program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She was director of the Education 2.0 Research and Documentation Project in Egypt and served as an international education advisor. A social anthropologist with expertise in the Middle East and North Africa, her research and teaching cover a range of areas including education and power, youth studies, citizenship education and critical democracy, technology and society, and international education development. Her books include, Educating Egypt: Civic Values and Ideological Struggles (American University in Cairo Press, 2022), Global Middle East: Into the Twenty-First Century (with A. Bayat, University of California Press, 2021), Revolution in the Age of Social Media (Verso, 2014), Wired Citizenship: Youth Learning and Activism in the Middle East (Routledge, 2014), Being Young and Muslim: New Cultural Politics in the Global South and North (with A. Bayat, Oxford University Press, 2010), and Cultures of Arab Schooling: Critical Ethnographies from Egypt (with C. A. Torres, State University of New York Press, 2006).