Category: Weekly Reflections

In this article, Säljö encourages readers to adopt a view of technology which differs from the conventional, commonsensical one. Technology is not something separate and outside of human society and objective knowledge. Instead, technology, broadly conceived, is actually an integral part of our natural and social worlds. These have been so profoundly mediated and shaped by human technologies of all kinds as to be inseparable from them.

Traditional views of knowledge have not taken full account of the role of human technology in shaping the object of study. Empirical-realist views emphasize observation of the natural world and inductive reasoning to construct facts and knowledge. The other epistemological perspective, the idealist-rationalist one, takes the view that humans can construct knowledge about the world through deductive reasoning. Both views, however, seem to share the assumption that human knowledge exists outside of humans in objective form, and that this knowledge can be learned by humans. By contrast, the view which Säljö advances, the sociocultural perspective on human knowledge, takes a different view of the relation between technology and knowledge. Technologies, broadly conceived, and of both the physical and cognitive varieties, have always been part of the human experience. Humans have used various technological tools to relate to others and their environment and to solve physical and cognitive problems. The result of the use of these tools, however, has been that, on the one hand, our access to knowledge has been increased by them, and, on the other hand, the tools themselves have actually shaped the nature of ‘objective’ reality, both social and physical.

Examples of cognitive tools which have shaped the very nature of knowledge include mathematics and language. Both of these are basically pure tools. They help us have access to knowledge, but they also serve to construct the very nature of reality. Both give us categories with which to conceptualize the world and therefore bring into existence phenomena that would otherwise have no existence for us. Another example given by the author in this connection is the clock. The clock is a technology which gives us access to greater knowledge about time. At the same time, however, the clock actually defines and constructs the very nature of time.

Again, this view of technology, and the inexorable connection between it, our social and natural worlds, and our mental conceptions, is reminiscent of Marx. Recall that Marx proposed the existence of various ‘moments’ of human and social reality: nature, technology, social relations, relations of production, and mental conceptions. These are dialectically related so that changes in one ‘moment’ tend to bring about changes in the others. I believe that this is the correct way of conceptualizing the relation of technology to ourselves, nature and the social world. When a new technology is introduced, it serves to alter our social and economic relations, our relation to nature and (importantly for this article) our mental conceptions. Technology therefore plays a crucial role in constructing human knowledge itself.

If we conceive of technology in this broad way, and understand the way in which various technologies are inextricably bound up with human knowledge, a certain view of the role of technology in learning will suggest itself. In the classroom, we have little choice but to teach the mastering of the technological tools. Math and language are examples of subjects which are almost completely comprised of learning to master the tools themselves. For their part, ‘higher-tech’ technologies must be taught where they have become an inseparable part of our social or economic worlds, or when they have permanently transformed the nature of human knowledge and society. This is the case for technologies such as social media: human society is now basically inseparable from these tools.

Article:

https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uvic/reader.action?docID=166080&ppg=159

What this article does is to summarize some of the main challenges which educational technology will bring up in the next decade. It is filled with interesting ideas, and as such, it constitutes a fitting conclusion for what is my final weekly reflection. Below, I will summarize what I consider to be the four most interesting challenges/issues and provide some of my own thoughts on these in addition to those which the authors present. These tend to take the form of questions which it is difficult to know exactly how to go about answering.

New forms of digital inclusion/exclusion

This involves asking the question of who benefits more from new technologies, and who benefits less. Traditionally, educational technology researchers have tended to view technology as inherently good, the inequalities generated by new technology simply having to do with the fact that some people (by virtue of socio-economic status and educational levels) are able to better absorb and integrate new technologies than others. However, as I have already stated in previous posts, this ignores the larger socio-economic framework which birthed the technology in the first place, and the imprint of this context which the technology carries with it. What if, Selwyn et al. ask, instead of being a function of differential ability to integrate new technologies, the latter tend to exacerbate pre-existing social inequalities and hierarchies? How does this work? Maybe the work world is getting increasingly polarized according to levels of technological fluency. As a result, if you have a pre-exiting advantage with technology due to higher educational levels or higher socio-economic status, technology only serves to increase the social distance between yourself and those people who do not have these advantages. If this is the case, that technology has an inherent tendency to exacerbate the socio-economic divide, is there a way to utilize technology in a way that would work against this inherent tendency, to reduce inequality?

Platform economics in an age of artificial intelligence

Here, the issue is that these tech corporations who are providing the platforms for educational institutions, are benefiting from the integration of these platforms by using them to mine student data, in order to target advertising to them and to ‘educate’ their artificial intelligence programs. This gets us into some of the same terrain as that concerning the use of Google in the classroom. As one person interviewed in that podcast said: “if you are getting a product for free, then you are the product” (my paraphrase). When integrating platforms such as Google into the classroom therefore, we need to do a cost/benefit analysis of what the company is gaining, what students and educators are getting and what the costs of this are. Is it worth selling student data in order to have access to this platform? What is the cost of putting up with targeted advertising, or the risk that one’s data will be used in attempts to commit fraud or scams against a person? What about the larger implications of helping companies perfect their AI? This is touched on in the following section. How is this AI used to shape subsequent human behavior, and what does it do to our political economy to have powerful AI, controlled by large companies, able to do the tasks that humans used to do?

‘Divisions of learning’ across humans and machines  

Artificial intelligence raises numerous questions for technology of education researchers, and for researchers across numerous other disciplines. Who controls and benefits from AI? How is it reshaping our political economy? And what is the implication for the future of education? Allow me unpack these questions a little. Large corporations control AI. One of the applications to which AI is put is to learn our thoughts, preferences, prejudices and behaviors. AI can then be used to sell us things, but it can also be used to influence our behaviors in others ways, that are not always socially advantageous. Maybe in an effort to garner our attention it is used to spit our worst tendencies and prejudices back to us in a way that intensifies them and social polarization with them, as can be seen with Facebook, for example. In addition, AI may be changing our political economy. Clearly the work world is in the process of being transformed as AI learns to do more and more tasks previously undertaken by humans. This may make many jobs, and the livelihoods that depend on them, obsolete in the near future. This raises larger questions about that nature of work and the way that the latter is linked to distribution of resources. If these two remain tightly connected, the way they are now, then AI is preparing the road to a future that is even more polarized, between those who control AI and the means of production and a growing army of unemployed, redundant, immiserated former workers. Finally, AI raises new questions about the future of education. Maybe educational researchers should also begin to look at the ‘education’ of AI. The former also need to theorize human learning in the context of rapidly evolving AI. What is the optimal type of skills that humans need to develop in the context of highly developed AI taking over many tasks previously fulfilled by humans? What types of professional niches can humans continue to occupy in a work world dominated by AI?

IT industry actors as a leading educational force

Selwyn et al. note that large tech corporations are the ones leading the charge to integrate new tech in the classroom. They say that while there is nothing inherently wrong with business taking such a leading role in education, sufficient oversight and regulation has to be developed to keep corporations from influencing educational policy in a way that benefits their own bottom line over and against the public interest in education. While I agree with the second half of this sentence, regarding the need for regulation and oversight of corporations involved in education, I could not disagree more with the sentence’s first clause, that there is nothing inherently wrong with corporations being involved in education. In fact, I would state the exact opposite: there is something inherently wrong and deleterious about having private business involved in education, in any way. As soon as private business becomes involved in education, the purpose of education and its ability to act in the public good get undermined. Business begins to subtly interfere with educational policy, putting its own profit motive above the objectives of forming democratic citizens. Business in the classroom can work to subtly shape the perceptions, attitudes, and narratives that are transmitted in the educational process, in a way that makes them more pro-business and which develops only the skills and attitudes needed to form the next generation of workers. When business becomes involved in education, the ability to of education to be an independent pillar of society, which stands apart from society and imparts the abilities to critique it, is eroded. The more business becomes involved in education, the more it (subtly and not so subtly) undertakes the reshaping of society in ways that benefit its own world view and consolidate its own domination over people, government, civil society. This is why, I believe, the entrance of corporations into public institution must be resisted, in principle, in all of its forms.

Article:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/17439884.2020.1694945?needAccess=true

This short but excellent article is about the need for a ‘critical’ approach to technology in education research.

Selwyn contends that most of the research in the field of technology in education shares the same basic flaws in approach. It tends to focus only on what is possible with new educational technology. It tends to examine technological possibilities divorced from the context on the ground. When it does try to diagnose why technology is not being taken up as planned, it takes the view that it is the fault of educators who are lacking in aptitudes or competencies for full technological uptake. The literature tends to take a Utopian view of technology and to view the latter in a fashion which disembeds it from the larger political, social, economic framework which gave rise to it and which also ignores the larger consequences at this same level of analysis. The result is a field of study which is rife with technological determinism – the propensity to see technology as this disembodied, outside force which cannot be resisted or negotiated but which can only be adapted to – and technological boosterism.

The solution to this situation, according to Selwyn, is the development of a ‘critical’ approach to technology in education research. What this implies is re-embedding technology in the social, political, economic context which gave birth to it, and examining the social, political, and economic consequences of its implementation. Technology is never neutral. Because it was created in the context of a class society, riven with relations of exploitation and oppressions, it is imprinted with these features at the very moment of its birth. Technology has the tendency therefore to act in ways which perpetuates and intensify these relations. It serves certain vested interests, while harming the interests of others. A critical approach to technology of education research would therefore take note of who is served by new technologies in education and how. Are large tech companies the beneficiaries of pushing for technology in the classroom? What are the stakes for ministries of education and individual schools? A critical approach to technology in education research would also examine the larger social, political and economic consequences of technology implementation in the classroom. I have discussed some of these issues in another reflection. They include the need to investigate such impacts as what the training of students in technology does to the labour market in high tech occupations, or the way in which technology in education serves the Neoliberal policy agenda. But, Selwyn points out, technology also has emancipatory potential. A critical approach to technology in education research would start from a view of society which includes class analysis and which is motivated by the desire to push forward a social justice agenda. The possibility for new technologies to further social justice and reduce inequality would therefore also be analysed within the critical technology of education framework.

I think this is a brilliant article. It amounts to call for a reorientation of the field of technology of education research towards undertaking a larger sociology of technology in education. Really, it advocates for embedding technology of education thinking inside of a more dialectical, historical-materialist view of society, technology and social change. Technology is not some autonomous force, disconnected from social and economic relations. This is the type of thinking which leads naïve techno-Utopians to the view that the progressive automation of labour processes will lead to a leisure society within a few short decades. John Maynard Keynes himself fell for such a chimera. The problem with this analysis, of course, is that it forgets the social framework in which technology is created and implemented, which is a class framework. Automation does not lead to a leisure society because the relations of distribution are private and unequal. Automation therefore leads to unemployment and immiseration for many, and the intensification of work for others.

This same type of historical-material analysis needs to be undertaken for educational technologies. Selwyn’s article, however, is nothing more than an introduction to this approach. It leaves it to others to begin to do the more empirical, on the ground type of work that is prescribed. How would this research agenda be operationalized in concrete-complex fashion? Some of the questions that I have provided in the previous paragraph could act as starting points for more grounded research. What are the vested interests in the application of new technologies of education? How do large technology companies like Google benefit from it? What purpose does it serve for educational institutions? What are the larger societal impacts of new technologies? Do they facilitate the implementation of a Neoliberal policy agenda? How? These are some of the questions which I believe it would be germane to explore.    

Article:

https://onlinelibrary-wiley-com.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/doi/pdfdirect/10.1111/j.1365-2729.2009.00338.x

This article makes the case that much of the research in the field of educational technology is tinged by certain common, underlying assumptions about the nature of technology and its role in learning and social change. Many of these assumptions could be placed under the rubric of ‘Technological Determinism.’ In the article, Oliver explains this concept of Technological Determinism, before attempting to find some approaches in educational technology research which fall under distinct paradigms.

Technological Determinism could be described as a view of technology that sees the latter as an autonomous force, arising on its own, outside of social processes, but which itself shapes social change in a rather direct and causal way. Educational research taking this view as a starting point tends to see technological change in the classroom as a given, inexorable process, that must lead to certain direct adaptations by teachers and learners. It tends to view the technologies themselves as largely neutral and holding no signature of societal structure and power. Technological determinism comes in two varieties. Technological optimists see technology as a prime, autonomous driver of social change, but consider this process to be largely good: negative outcomes from the adoption of technology fall under the category of ‘unintended consequences.’ Technological pessimists, on the other hand, are, as the name implies, more skeptical about the possible benefit of the adoption of new technologies, but still do not go so far as to question the underlying assumption that technological change is inevitable and is the prime mover in determining social change. Technological determinists, of both kinds, tend to assess the benefits or drawbacks of technological change on the basis of only the immediate outcomes in terms of efficiency gains and impacts on learners, but do not consider the larger social processes which give birth to technological change and the way in which the latter impinges on certain pre-existing social structures.

As an antidote to this view, we could do worse that referring back to the view of social change advanced by Marx, and the role of technology therein. This passage comes from a footnote in Volume 1 of Capital, in a chapter called “Machinery and Large-Scale Industry.” The footnote contains the following sentence, which is of great importance:

Technology reveals the active relation of man [sic] to nature, the direct process of production of his life and thereby it also lays bare the process of the production of the social relations of his life, and of the mental conceptions that flow from those relations.  

(p. 493)

We have various elements at play in the process of social change, therefore: individuals, their mental conceptions, their social relations, and technology. All of these processes are related and yet there is little direct causal relationship between them. Technology arises out of social relations, but it is not reduced to them (it only ‘reveals’ them). Mental conceptions are also at play, and there is always room for individual agency and actions against the backdrop of social structures. As Marx says elsewhere, in the 18^Th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte: “man makes his own history, but not under the conditions of his choosing” [my paraphrase].

This view of the dynamics of social change reminds us that technology is never an autonomous, natural force, which exists outside of social relations and which is neutral as far as class and power relations are concerned. Social relations themselves give rise to technology and help determine the shape it takes. Because we live in a class society, defined by inequality and exploitation, we ought to be initially skeptical of new technologies and to assume that they will have a tendency to exacerbate and intensify exploitative social relations. With respect to educational technology, we can see this tendency at work in the way in which the implementation of new classroom technology serves to expand the profits of the tech sector, increase societal dependence on these products, and advance the Neoliberal agenda by providing cover for the reduction of social spending in education. But nor does such a view foreclose the possibility that technology can be used to emancipatory ends. Indeed, Marx’s view of social change also delineates the way in which, in dialectical fashion, the seeds of the future society are present (albeit sometimes hard to make out) in present society. Technology, therefore, does contain the potential of being used to emancipatory ends, and there are countless empirical examples of this. The point is that if social relations give birth to technology, they also retain the power to shape its application. This, while human agency can also be used to decide how much technology will be adopted and how it will be used.

While I have just presented my own rebuttal to technological determinism, Oliver, in the article, scours the field of education and technology to try to find some alternative paradigms. Drawing from the work of Vygotsky, Activity Theory states that learning is a function of the deliberate interaction between individuals and their social environments, mediated by tools. The Communities of Practice approach defines learning as the development of identity and competency within a social group. Finally, Actor-Network Theory examines how people work in groups, aided by tools, to sustain (or fail to sustain) social processes.

In my view, none of these paradigms are really equipped to answer the questions posed by, or address the shortfalls of, technological determinism. They all see learning an outcome of interaction with, and integration into, a larger social group. Clearly, in this case, if this larger group is using technology to communicate and socialize, then what educators need to do is to give access to these technologies to students, and improve their abilities to use them. But this view never calls into question how these technologies come to be, what their political content is, and the larger social outcomes they produce. Nor do these approaches see technology as anything but an autonomous, natural, historical development. It does not account for the fact that human societies have agency about whether and how to use technologies. This is especially the case when it comes to the classroom setting, where educators have considerable power to shape the social environment. These approaches never ask whether and which technologies to integrate there and what their other effects will be.

The only other approach suggested by Oliver which seems to offer at least a partial remedy to technological determinism, in my view, is the Social Construction of Technology approach. The latter does indeed begin to look at the larger social forces behind technological development, as well as the social, moral and ethical consequences of adopting certain technologies. This approach, however, is, according to Oliver, underdeveloped in the educational technology research literature.  

Article:

https://onlinelibrary-wiley-com.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/doi/pdfdirect/10.1111/j.1365-2729.2011.00406.x

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

The ‘utopian’ view of technology in education is one which sees the introduction of ICTs in education as both necessary as well as sufficient for educational reform. Here, the introduction of ICTs into education is seen as a sort of panacea. The ‘nostalgic’ view of education in relation to the introduction of ICTs, on the other hand, considers that the introduction of these technologies will seriously undermine traditional objectives, rooted in personal enlightenment and democratic citizenship. Sahay in his article seeks to take a middle path between these two poles, arguing neither that technology is without possible pernicious consequences and can be uncritically adopted, nor that technology is solely destructive to education and must be completely rejected. Instead, Sahay believes that ICTs should be adopted with appropriate levels of criticality and their appropriate adaptation to educational goals. Throughout the article, when Sahay speaks of ICTs or of technology in education more generally, he seems to have in mind online university programs and courses. It is the value and risks of these modalities that are discussed in the article.

In assessing the potential benefits and risks of online learning, Sahay takes as his criteria their impacts on the autonomy of the students. This concept has numerous elements. What he really seems to be describing here is human freedom, which has the following components. The ability to do and work in the world to earn a living; individual access to education; individual choice as to which types of learning to pursue; the level of individual freedom and its constraint by society at large, in particular the capitalist marketplace. There is also one dimension of autonomy which Sahay relates to the ability to participate in a group, society, culture with others. This seems to be an element of autonomy which Sahay takes from Habermas. The article asks whether online learning increases or decreases autonomy according to each of these parameters.

Online learning offers the promise of greater access to education. However, as I have already argued in another post, online learning tends to not be as accessible as is often promised. There are limitations when it comes to access to the technology or to internet connectivity. Time and money, related to social class, offer additional barriers to participation. We could also cite the typically higher cost of online education programs. However, it is true that online learning offers some increases in accessibility when compared to brick-and-mortar institutions.

It is true that online learning can offer skill development, especially in high tech, which facilitates labour market integration. In this sense it increases the autonomy of the learners as far as participation in work. In fact, this is also one of the criticisms of online learning. The model tends to encourage the focus on more narrow types of ‘skills,’ which can be more easily packaged and reproduced at scale, over and against deeper and less tangible forms of ‘education.’ This also has to do with the fact that online learning has attracted a lot of private sector investment. This pulls online education in the direction of the dissemination of skills which will benefit private sector profit-making.

As a result of the above, online learning tends to skew heavily towards tangible skills and away from more traditional fields of education such as the arts and social sciences. Inasmuch as this is the case, the course of study for students in online environments is curtailed. This reduces the autonomy of the learner in these settings.

As mentioned, Sahay considers connections to others and belonging to certain groups as a fundamental aspect of autonomy. This may have to do with the way in which the individual self and identity are constructed in relation to others and groups. The Russian developmental theorist Vygotsky is cited, in addition to Habermas. On the one hand, ICTs can facilitate social connection. Clearly, it is much easier now to find like-minded people through the internet. However, the quality of these connections is much lower. It is certainly the case that online learning suffers from rendering the creation of strong relationships with colleagues and instructors far more difficult, if not impossible. This is related to issues of interpersonal trust, which are absent in online environments. This is one of the major drawbacks of e-learning in my opinion, and as such reduces the autonomy of the student.

Finally, online learning substantially intersects with the capitalist economy, corporatization and globalization in ways that pose substantial threats to the autonomy of the individual in their relationship to the larger society. Online learning has been a major site of investment for large corporations, especially tech companies, who see through its promotion, the possibility of selling more of their products. This involvement of large corporations in online learning tends to push this education in a direction which conforms with capitalist interests. It becomes the training grounds for the preparation of the high-tech workforce. As I have already mentioned in another post, this only causes the value of the labour of such workers to fall, while the profits of their employers rise. While these high-tech, workplace skills are taught, critical thinking and reflection on social issues is slowly removed from the list of educational objectives. This makes it harder to understand and to call into question the capitalist order. The fact that online learning tends to be guided by the profit motive leads to the standardization and reproduction, in addition to the simplification, of the educational content. This lowers the quality of the education delivered through this medium. Finally, online education offers the promise of greater reach and lowered costs to traditional universities. This allows the latter another tool to continue the process of rationalizing their operations along capitalist and neoliberal lines. It allows them to outsource a number of their operations, and to deskill their workforce. Instructors need no longer be tenured faculty, but can be low-level sessional instructors. Not only does this contribute to the reduction of good middle class jobs in society, it works to further lower the quality of the education available.

Despite these potential problems with online learning, Sahay remains sanguine that ICTs can be successfully integrated into educational structures. What is required is a critical understanding of their potential negative consequences, and the will to adapt them to meet larger educational needs, instead of confusing the ‘means’ of ICTs with the ‘ends’ of education.

Article:

https://aisel.aisnet.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1371&context=jais

The purpose of this article is to draw methodological insights from the Frankfurt School’s Critical Theory, and to subject to the process of ideological (or ‘immanent’) critique certain ‘myths’ regarding the use of technology in education.

The Frankfurt school refers to a group of social theorists, operating in Germany from about 1930 onwards, working in the broadly Marxist tradition, who set out to interrogate issues such as technology and social change, as well as various other social and cultural factors that serve to pre-empt radical social change and uphold the status quo. Included in the Frankfurt School proper are figures such as Marcuse, Horkheimer, Adorno. Habermas is a younger member of the Frankfurt School, and French theorists Althusser and Barthes share some of their theoretical frameworks with the School.

The basic approach which Friesen takes from these theorists is that of the ideological or ‘immanent’ critique. According to the Frankfurt School, no knowledge is free from ideology. It is always created from a particular standpoint and serves some or other human interest. As such, many ‘facts’ or ‘common sense,’ generally accepted as true or valid, are actually political and ideological. They serve certain interests while foreclosing others. These bits of ‘common sense,’ which Barthes called ‘myths,’ need to be interrogated. Though they appear to be self-evident and the realities they describe appear universal, timeless and natural, they have in fact been socially-constructed at a point in time. Their genesis must be revealed. Moreover, the knowledge must be shown to be political by revealing whose interests are served by it. Finally, alternate narratives concerning the same events or issues must be excavated to reveal whose interests have been marginalized and how this can be remedied.

This is the broad approach which Friesen takes to three ‘myths’ about technology in education. The first of these is the myth of the ‘knowledge economy.’ This myth says that here in the West, the whole economic paradigm has shifted. The Industrial economy is a thing of the past. We are no longer competitive at industrial manufacturing. Now, the only way to compete globally is through third-sector, knowledge economy products and services. The myth also posits the ‘knowledge theory of value,’ basically a modification of Marx’s labour theory of value, which says that the value of production is determined by the knowledge that goes into it. In the classroom, the ramifications of such a view have been that children are seen as future knowledge producers who have to be filled up with cutting-edge knowledge. The role of education is to prepare students for production of this type, rather than targeting past objectives such as personal development, fulfillment and autonomy, and responsible citizenship.

This ‘myth’ of the knowledge economy and the concept of the ‘knowledge theory of value,’ were promoted by Daniel Bell, an arch-neoconservative theorist of the 1980s and 90s. And it is not hard to see whose interests such a ‘myth’ serves. It ensures that the next generation of knowledge economy workers are produced in order to continue generating capitalist profits in this sector. However, this view of the economy does not actually correspond to the reality, since in the new economy, there are even more low-paid service, hospitality and health care services workers than there are so-called knowledge workers. This shift in the structure of education to the knowledge economy model does not benefit these workers, since they have received an education which has not allowed them to access higher paid knowledge work, while also having deprived them of what were formally the other objectives of education: self-development, moral and spiritual enlightenment, democratic citizenship. But perhaps this too serves the ruling power structure as it limits the ability of these low-level workers to think critically about their society and their place within it and instead encourages in them the fetishization of technology and knowledge work.  

The second ‘myth’ which Friesen addresses is the one stating that online learning makes education accessible to ‘anyone, anywhere, at any time.’ This was the prevalent discourse in e-learning around the turn of the century and it promised to democratize education by making it accessible to everyone, regardless of where they lived, their social class, and even their race. In fact, it has proven that this myth overstated the technology’s transcendence of such limitations. First, access to education via internet is never seamless and free of material physical constraints. Moreover, access to online education remains differentiated according to socio-economic class. Not everyone has access to reliable high-speed internet. This is certainly true of people in the developing world, but is also the case for certain underserved populations in the developed world. Also, the fact that one can access education via internet says nothing of whether one has the time and money to pursue additional study. This too, is largely a function of social class.

The ‘anyone, anywhere, anytime’ myth therefore serves to promote online education by giving the impression of democratizing access to learning. In reality though, previously-existing class divisions are only reproduced through it. At the same time, it serves the interests of the neoliberal university, increasingly responsive to profit motives. Online learning allows the university to spend less on physical infrastructure. It can also begin to lower labour costs by restructuring its workforce. It can hire fewer tenured faculty, replacing them with an army of sessional instructors and tutors who do not design courses, but only implement previously-made ones year after year.

The third ‘myth’ which Friesen addresses is the one which states that ‘technology drives educational change.’ This is a sort of technological determinism which posits the development of technology as a quasi- autonomous force which responds to some formula and is free of the social relations underlying it. This ‘myth’ states that technological changes is not subject to substantial societal control and instead inexorably reshapes society in its image. The message that educators receive is that they must unquestioningly adopt and integrate each new technological innovation, or risk being rendered obsolete. The truth of the matter, however, is that technological change emerges out of social relations, and that technologies are subject to control and limitation by social forces in the interest of the social good, should sufficient political will exist to do so. By the same token, individual institutions such as the educational system are free to accept or reject discreet technologies, according to whether they serve larger educational purposes, and to modify and adapt them to maximize such outcomes.

Article:

https://www-jstor-org.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/stable/pdf/42980245

What this article seeks to do is to examine the views of Freire and Illich on technology in education, to attempt to see if these can be reconciled in order to provide a framework to guide the use of technology by radical educators.

Freire and Illich have not tended to be seen as very compatible by education theorists. Freire spawned the tradition of Critical Pedagogy. While he saw education as one of the cultural tools used by the dominant power structure to give itself legitimation and to indoctrinate citizens into compliance, it could also act as a site of possible consciousness-raising, where oppressed people and classes could be given the critical skills to understand and to resist the power structures which dominate them, while also being given the more technical skills to make their way in the world. Freire’s view of the use of technology was an outgrowth of such a view. For Freire, technology tended to operate on behalf of the ruling capitalist class, and served as a bulwark of capitalism against socialism and to intensify social inequality. Still, he believed, like Marx, that in itself, technology was essentially politically neutral. It could be put to any use – for the ruling class or for the people – depending on how it was used. As a consequence, technology itself could have some emancipatory potential, if this last could be properly harnessed. The goal of teaching about technology, therefore, is to give students a critical understanding of how technology works, in order to give them the ability to resist the manipulation and propaganda to which technology is often put. Students in the radical classroom, moreover, should be made to see the emancipatory potential of technology and how it could be used to create a more just society.

Though Freire and Illich began their careers as colleagues and friends in the 1970s, they eventually fell out over their differing views of education. While Freire gave rise to an entire lineage of educational theory, Illich’s work was not taken up by educators. This has to do with the anarchistic and idiosyncratic elements in Illich’s educational thought. Illich was basically opposed to formal schooling. He believed that education only served to indoctrinate students into compliance with the power structure. He believed that the imperative to continuous education (a by-product of modern society) was itself essentially bad, and that humans could live perfectly good lives without much education, simply reacting to the natural world. Illich’s view of technology was similarly sceptical. He believed that technology constituted another set of human tools, but that often, these tools, rather than serving human beings, actually became their masters. Humans ended up serving the tools as ends in themselves and these introduced another complicating factor in the relation between humans and nature. But Illich was not completely technophobic, he also felt that individuals should learn to use the tools of technology, in order to avoid being completely dominated by them.

The article finds, therefore, that the views of Freire and Illich on technology in education are not that incompatible. Though technology has a tendency, inasmuch as it is introduced in a class society riven with inequality and exploitation, to simply work to further this inequality and exploitation, entrenching and protecting the interests of the ruling class against the rest of society, there is little choice but to teach students to use technology. Critical knowledge about the latter will help them to protect themselves against some of the dangers of technology, such as manipulation and propaganda that is diffused through it. Moreover, by learning technology, students are given the tools to survive economically in world dominated by technology. Finally, since, at root, technology itself is politically neutral, it is also bound to contain some emancipatory potential. The other goal of technology education, therefore, is to teach students to detect this potential and to use technology in the pursuit of social justice.   

Article:

https://journals-sagepub-com.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/doi/pdf/10.2304/pfie.2007.5.4.431

After reading the article on the city in Scandinavia that banned Google in the classroom, and listening to the CBC Spark podcast on the parent of a child in Victoria’s school district 61 who refused to sign the permission slip allowing his child to use Google classroom, I have the following thoughts.

I think that in trying to determine whether this is a good or bad thing, to have Google be such a dominant presence in education, we have to make the distinction between the impacts on the individual user of Google, and the larger societal impact.

When it comes to the negative impacts on the individual user, my feeling is that the concern over using Google is probably a little bit overblown. To understand why, we need to examine what the potential negative impacts on the individual could be.

It is clear that Google collects the personal information (name, email address, phone number) and the data (websites visited, items viewed, etc.) of its users. Why is this a problem? Google’s model, and that of all of these large tech companies, is to gather personal data in order to sell this information to third parties and/or advertisers so that adds can be customized to the user. Google claims that it does not do this with its education software. Maybe this is true, maybe it isn’t; there isn’t really any way to know, especially since the data of the individual leaves the country and there is little accountability for how it is used. But if your data gets sold to third parties or is used to targe advertising, is this really a problem? The fact that your data gets used to target advertising to you is not the end of the world; however, when it comes to your data being sold to third parties, this could be a potentially greater problem. This could be used to target you in various phishing scams, or could even leave you vulnerable to getting hacked. But all of our data is being used to these ends all of the time, and it is usually never more than a nuisance if precautions are taken.

But the fact that Google exports the data of its users to the US could be a bigger problem, since there, it is subject to different, laxer, privacy laws. There are concerns, for example, that one’s data could be swept up by agencies such as the NSA under anti-terrorism laws. But, as the podcast makes clear, this is unlikely to be a concern for the average user, and anyway, we have very similar legislation here in Canada.

If I don’t really buy the claim that use of technologies like Google is that much of problem for the average user, I am much less sanguine about the larger social impacts of allowing Google to take such a dominant position in education. To understand why, we have to try to divine the logic of why Google has striven to become such a dominant player in education. What does it get out of providing free software to schools? It says that it does not make money from the data, and that it makes little from the sale of Chromebooks and their servicing. Why is Google doing this then? We don’t know for sure, but we could speculate. Maybe Google is providing its services for free or at low cost as part of a long-term strategy to create a monopoly for itself in this sector. This is what tech companies often do. We have seen Netflix do this for example, or even Amazon. Offer very low-cost services (not even turning a profit in the short term) just in order to get a huge market share. Once you are in a dominant market position with no competitors, and users are dependent on you, you can start raising prices sharply to make back some profit. Another possibility is that by getting kids used to using Google products, there is a high likelihood that they will continue to use them as adults (this is mentioned in the podcast). It could also be that Google is using kids’ data to help develop their AI, which then becomes profitable on its terms.

How do we assess such possible consequences? Clearly the fact that we are participating in the development of a tech monopoly is bad. Monopolies are bad for all kinds of reasons: for the economy, for society, for consumers. But is the case of Google really any different from how we have participated, and are still participating in, the creation of Amazon’s monopoly, or Walmart’s? Is Google particularly bad? I don’t know.

Some even larger social consequences of using Google (and other types of tech in general) preoccupy me more than the particular case of Google. I have the following questions. If we are teaching kids the skills they need, and which the tech economy demands of its workers, are we not just responding to the dictates of the markets and private business, and thereby abandoning one of the primary objectives of education, which is to teach students to be critical of the society in which they live, including a society run by billon dollar tech companies? If we are training kids with these tech skills, will this not simply lower the value of these types of skills so that tech companies can lower the wages of these types of workers? The class structure of society will not have been altered, only that the requirements for access to each class position will have changed. Is tech in the classroom not participating in and facilitating Neoliberal education policy? If education is showing innovation and advancement as a result of free and cheap tech, does this let governments off the hook for not investing in education? To what extent are tech ‘skills’ taking the place of other more traditional skills at which the students of today are failing (literacy, for example)? Is tech even good for kids (i.e., does it contribute to the ADHD, the shortening of attention spans, mental health issues, etc.)? These larger questions about tech in general in the classroom actually preoccupy me a lot more than the specific issue of whether or not Google should be allowed in the classroom.  

I have a few issues with this film.

I will begin with one of the debates that the film consciously raises: the debate between free inquiry projects and those students and parents feeling that not enough content is being transmitted. I actually think that this is a perfectly valid criticism. Consider the project where the kids learn about various civilizations, try to infer a pattern through which they rise and then collapse, then somehow try to represent these findings through a mechanism of wheels and gears. Alright, this seems to me to be a very good project to teach students lessons about things like planning, execution, perseverance, teamwork, etc. It is also an excellent project for learning technical and technological skills regarding how to design and make such contraptions, use the requisite technology, etc. But we could question how much the kids actually learn about ancient civilizations, anthropology, etc. I wonder whether this actually teaches any kind of critical thinking in these fields. The scholarly literature is bound to be full of questions like the ones the kids and tasked to answer, but I doubt they are digging into it much, or even learning about how such questions can or cannot be answered in these fields. The onus of the project really seems to be more on the technical side of the question. My criticism here is thus a larger one concerning multi-modal types of inquiry projects which allow kids to learn material in the way that seems best to them: some ideas, fields and topics are just better learnt using the traditional tools or reading, thinking, writing and speaking. Actually, I think that this is most disciplines in the social sciences and humanities. I think that this basic truth gets lost in the scramble to be innovative with technology and multi-modal approaches to pedagogy.

The other problem I have with the film is the way in which it fails to problematize the larger class structure of society and the way in which debates on educational reform are embedded in this. It is great to be critical of the traditional educational model, and to point out that it was developed in order to produce workers for industrial capitalism. We then point out how the economy has shifted to a knowledge economy and that we need to prepare kids to be future workers of this type. But are we simply in this case not replicating the same dynamic, where education is totally subservient to the economy and to the ruling class structure? The economy now needs workers of a different type and we rush to produce them. Is this what education really ought to be about? Simply creating ideal workers? What about teaching the skills that kids need to actually reflect critically on the nature of society and its problems? Is this not also one of the ideal goals of education?

The other issue is that it is great to give kids the skills to be able to work in the new economy; however, many educators seems to think that giving skills the silicon valley thinks they need will ensure that they can get decent work, like the way high school grads could be middle class decades ago because of the wealth of blue collar work available. But this ignores the fact that the demand for these types of workers is actually very small. And only a small percentage of people will land good jobs in the knowledge economy. These kids are likely to be underemployed regardless of the types of education which they receive because structural realities have changed. Moreover, this is the coding fallacy all over again: you can teach everyone to code because coders are in demand. However, if everyone knew how to code, then the value of this work would fall and it would no longer be a good job. The reality is that we live in a class society where only a small number of people not belonging to the capitalist class are able to have decent lives materially, and this number is declining all the time regardless of what educators do or do not do. Instead of solely trying to kids equipped for the fight for the smaller and smaller number of good positions, would it not be better to teach them to think critically about the society in which they live, so that they could understand its problems and seek to change them?

More on how the film ignores the larger class structure of society and how education interacts with this. These types of educational reforms privilege certain socio-economic classes over others, and furthers the neoliberalization of education. The school in the film is not a public school but a charter school. Though it claims to take in kids from a variety of socio-economic backgrounds, you can bet that kids from wealthy families have a far easier time of it. Plus, from a labour perspective, these teachers have no union, and thus no job security of any kind. They are vulnerable to tremendous exploitation (self-exploitation) but the employer as a result of this.

All of these factors taken together make me extremely sceptical about the type of educational reform the film is trying to promote.