Programme: Recovery and Resilience Plan

One of the two main priorities of the updated Digital Education Action Plan (2021-2027) is "Promoting the development of a highly effective digital education ecosystem." The project proposal is based on the hypothesis that to build and maintain an effective ecosystem of digital education requires not only resources (high-speed Internet, appropriate hardware and software products, built platforms, prepared pedagogical staff and materials), not only appropriate legal regulations, but also clear ethical principles and goals. Such ethical goals and principles, laid down in the texts published by the competent EU authorities and in the Bulgarian normative documents, are e.g. the right to equal access to education and the right to education of good quality, the ethical processing of personal data, ethics in digital literacy (the ethics of using digital technologies, including topics such as internet safety, cyber-bullying, fake news, intellectual property/plagiarism and responsible use of technology). Also important is the ethical principle of inclusiveness and personalized learning, the ethical principle of social responsibility, concerning the technology companies providing the learning platforms (they must be safe, must not exploit data and not lead to unwanted social effects), the principle of transparency and accountability. A range of ethical issues also arise with the introduction of AI into education. This research will have a retrospective element: to analyze the ethical aspects of the construction and functioning of the digital education system in Bulgaria so far (to assess how many of the expected results in this context have been achieved) while positioning it on the EU map. On the basis of this retrospective assessment, it will also be able to outline guidelines for further monitoring of the digitization process, for the future improvement of this ecosystem from an ethical point of view.