The year 2015 marks the twentieth anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, with a goal to contribute to gender equality globally. As scholars continue in their quest to ‘take stock’ of the ways in which gender and education work in tandem to achieve greater gender equality, we observe a revival in interest regarding conversations on gender and education. These conversations cover a gamut of related issues, including teaching and achievement as well as a number of intersecting issues such as gender-based violence. Within the conversation has been a continued focus on the role of equity primarily defined as access and opportunity. This paper explores the context of quality as it relates to equity in education and addresses the problems that are still left on the margins. Our goal is to take stock and assess the strength of evidence and to provide directions for future research.

Children today experience digital engagement from a young age, and information and communication technology (ICT) use impacts how the family, seen as a social–relational structure or network of two or more people, communicates and interacts in daily life. This review broadly encompasses how children and young people are vulnerable regarding digital technology, focusing on diverse aspects of the family. The scoping review includes a final corpus of 100 articles broadly focusing on the term ‘vulnerability’ as it relates to digital technology and the family. The themes identified originate from the articles and describe five domains of vulnerability: (1) extensive Internet use, (2) age and gender, (3) risky online behaviour, (4) social networking as a social lubricant, and (5) parental mediation and care. The studies identified lean heavily on quantitative studies measuring time, whilst depth and context are less visible. Despite a growing body of research, there is a lack of both qualitative studies and research examining the role of technology in the lives of children and young people and how family dynamics are affected in the digital age.

The start of the Education for All (EFA) movement ushered in a new era in education, an era linked to research on issues such as ‘global governance’ or the ‘world institutionalization of education’. This global governance not only affects the way in which educational systems are influenced, it also involves how we view and define various issues within education. One of the major goals of the EFA movement, which has been accepted as part of the global consensus of ‘what works’, is the focus on gender equality, and in particular on the role education can play in empowering women and girls. This article is an attempt to understand key issues related to gender and education, and in particular the objective is to provide a critical analysis of how the global consensus in relation to gender and empowerment can be understood in a local context. The data reported on here are from fieldwork conducted in Southern Sudan and South Africa, and in this article we attempt to shed light on the local realities in relation to global gender goals.