Copyright

Linda Herrera; Nairy AbdElShafy;

Published On

2025-11-17

Page Range

pp. 417–436

Language

  • English

Print Length

20 pages

24. The Learning Journey of a High School Student from the Historic Class of 2021

  • Linda Herrera (author)
  • Nairy AbdElShafy (author)
Chapter of: Education 2.0: Chronicles of Technological and Cultural Change in Egypt(pp. 417–436)
Out of roughly 600,000 students who started high school in 2018 when the Education 2.0 reforms were being rolled out, this chapter profiles the learning journey of ‘Laila’ and her friends. It uses a technique of longitudinal oral history research to record three turbulent school years starting with Grade 10 when all students received tablets and the ministry launched multiple digital initiatives, Grade 11 during the COVID-19 pandemic with the school shutdowns, and Grade 12, a year of hybrid schooling and intense preparations for the Thanaweya Amma university entrance exam. Some takeaways are that even as electronic exams were supposed to eliminate cheating, and digital learning platforms were meant to serve as an alternative to private lessons, both remain widespread and have adapted to new technologies. Students often reap real benefits from the digital tools and platforms but still want and value strong teachers and need the in-person time together with classmates and school communities.

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).

Nairy AbdElShafy

(author)

Nairy AbdElShafy holds an M.A. in Oral History from Columbia University (2019) and a B.Sc. of Political Science from Cairo University (2008). An independent Egyptian educator and oral historian, she researches intergenerational narratives of trauma and memory within different migrant and internally displaced communities. She is currently an editorial board member of the Oral History Review.