The main argument of this article is rather straightforward and can be summarized as follows. Technology and education researchers are frustrated by the lack of uptake by teachers of new educational technologies. These technologies are present and a lot of work has been done on how to integrate them in the classroom. Work has also been done on how to educate teachers on the use of this technology. Despite this, the rate of adoption of these technologies by teachers is low. Instead of getting frustrated and blaming the teachers themselves and their shortcomings for not adopting these technologies, however, technology education researchers ought to listen carefully to the criticism of technology offered by teachers and the reason why the latter are sometimes reluctant to integrate the former into their practice. The article argues that such a focus on teacher critiques of educational technologies constitutes important ‘intellectual capital’ for educational technology researchers.   

While the article does not actually advance any solutions for meeting the critiques of technology by teachers, now does it suggest any possible next steps forward, or even what to do with this new ‘intellectual capital’ that education technology researchers now dispose of, it does do a good job of articulating quite a few teacher critiques of technology in the classroom. These are valuable in their own right. Some of the grounds on which teachers resist new technology in classroom are as follows.

Teachers often resisted the adoption of new technologies as a kind of protest against their imposition in a top-down manner by administrators and policy-makers. Teachers consider that these people have little knowledge of the on-the-ground realities of the classroom and impose the adoption of new tech from on high. Teachers were reluctant to invest the time and energy into a process over which they have little say and no ownership.

Teachers were reluctant to invest the time and energy into learning the new tech. Often teachers have significant knowledge gaps in these areas, and getting up to speed would take a lot of time. Plus, the field is always changing, requiring significant investment in continual upgrading. This can lead to ‘change fatigue’ in teachers over the long run.  

Some teachers were uncomfortable with their lack of knowledge in the area of tech when compared to that of some of their students. Some teachers felt that this undermined their role in the classroom as the keepers of knowledge and therefore undermined their authority.

The implementation of new technology requires not only an up-front investment, but continued investment in maintenance and upgrading. Technology requires almost continuous troubleshooting and maintenance and the teachers did not feel comfortable in this role. It also requires outlays in new software and hardware. But administrators and policy-makers often neglect to invest in this type of ongoing maintenance for their technology.  

Teachers felt that policy-makers and administrators sometimes fetishized technology as an end in itself. This, while teachers themselves were often sceptical that technologies create useful value-added in learning. They tended to argue for a more targeted, judicious approach to technology adoption, and only to meet specific learning objectives. These included offering the possibility of greater scaffolded learning, learning which was more multimodal in nature, and which helped connect classroom learning to students’ home lives. Overall, teachers were more likely to adapt the technology to their classrooms’ own specific learning needs, rather than to seek to adopt the tech wholesale, for its own sake.

I find some of these criticisms to be quite cogent and thought-provoking. I think that teachers are right to be critical of new technologies and the costs which they imply, and to seek to integrate it into their classrooms in a targeting fashion, rather than fetishizing technology as an end in itself as some boosters are prone to doing. I think teachers are right to be wary of the personal costs to them of adopting new technologies. From a labour and democracy perspective, they are right to question why they should spend all this time learning new tech and modifying their approach to teaching, when they have no say over the implementation of new technology and have no ownership over it; when its implementation is happening by dictate from the top down.

We could take the criticism of new technology in the classroom one step further, to look at its dynamics at the societal level. It is not surprising that policy-makers fetishize tech in the classroom for its own sake and prescribe its adoption, though they lack an understanding of the real needs on the ground. Policy-makers are simply playing their role as shills for the capitalist class, whose job is to transfer resources from the public sector into private hands. In this case, they seek to augment the profits of the large tech companies. Moreover, the implementation of tech in the classroom facilitates the implementation of the Neoliberal agenda in education. As funds are transferred to tech companies, the implementation of new tech in the classroom functions as a substitute for real improvements in learning outcomes that could only come with increasing funding to public education. Implementation of new tech is therefore perfectly compatible with the Neoliberal agenda of slashing government social spending to the bone. This dynamic also explains why so little is ever invested in maintenance of the new tech. The point is not to improve outcomes; it is merely to shift resources to tech companies while cutting social spending. After this has happened, it is of little interest if the hardware and software are kept up.

For all of these reasons, my position as a teacher would likely be to strongly resist the implementation of new tech in the classroom, both on the grounds of the larger social dynamic which I have described and which is served by it, and the additional work that it would cost me to implement. I would make sure that any tech I did adopt would be simple and easy to use for me, would require little troubleshooting and maintenance, and would be targeted to meet the specific learning needs of my students.  

Article:

https://link-springer-com.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/content/pdf/10.1057/9781137385451_4