28 SES 17 A: (Un)Making (In)Equitable EdTech Futures in Schools

Friday, 30/Aug/2024: 14:15 – 15:45

A symposium hosted by RED and Towards equity-focused EdTech

Chairs: Felicitas Macgilchrist (Univ. Oldenburg), Rebecca Eynon (Univ. Oxford)

Discussant: Keri Facer (Univ. Bristol)

Public schooling has been considered an institution for shaping the future since its inauguration. Whether as an institution for creating national identities or, for enabling equality and social mobility, schooling is oriented to a sense of futurity. In recent decades, digital technology, in particular, digital educational technology (EdTech) has been woven into promises of better educational futures. Decades of educational research have shown, however, that schooling reproduces existing (structural) inequalities. Examining the algorithms, structures and infrastructures of digital technologies, recent studies argue that these systems reformat pedagogical priorities with implications for increasing discrimination, injustice and inequity (Zakhavora & Jarke, 2023; Perrotta et al., 2020). Further studies have proposed critical interventions with technology to alleviate inequalities and promote justice (Choi & Cristal, 2021; Swist & Gulson, 2023). The question that still requires systematic investigation is how, despite often well-intentioned efforts to alleviate inequalities, ‘persistent and pernicious inequalities’ (Facer & Selywn, 2021: 7) are reproduced and/or interrupted through technology use in schools. These inequalities make certainties for young people, by opening up some futures and foreclosing others. This panel thus draws on ethnographic research to ask: How is the uptake of digital technology reproducing, reconfiguring and/or alleviating relations of inequality in schools?

Ethnographic research, with its ‘arts of noticing’ in today’s ‘capitalist ruins’ (Tsing, 2015), offers a promising methodological approach to EdTech’s futures-making entanglements, since it enables researchers to spend time in the field, embedded in the practices, relations, tensions and ambiguities of everyday life with technology in schools (Alirezabeigi et al., 2020). Participant observation, accompanied by thick descriptions, enables scholars to trace the patterns of practices and the ‘rich points’ in which confusing, surprising or unexpected moments give insight into participants’ perspectives, expectations and hopes for the future. Although ethnographic explorations of digital technologies, education and inequality are emerging, these are currently based primarily in the US, with few studies of European or other contexts (Rafalow, 2020; Watkins et al., 2018). Given the situated and contextual unfolding of both schooling and of relations of inequality, there is a risk in assuming that these findings are relevant around the world. Research in further local settings aims to elaborate a more nuanced understanding of how data flows and other technologies reproduce, reconfigure and/or alleviate inequalities (Murris et al., 2023).

The chair opens the symposium by highlighting the key issues noted above, and by reflecting on the challenges of this kind of research when “new” technologies hint at moments of possibility and futures otherwise, and yet structural inequalities are historically sedimented in public education. The first paper presents a systematic review of recent international research on digital technology, schooling and inequality. Three ethnographic case studies then each highlight a central theme emerging from varied methods including participant observation, interviews, and workshops with students and teachers in Germany, Mexico, Sweden and the UK to explore how technology and inequality are interwoven in everyday school practices. Each study includes schools at different positions in the local opportunity structure, i.e., more privileged/ well-resourced schools and historically marginalised/ poorly-resourced schools.

With a shared relational sociomaterial/sociotechnical theoretical perspective, the papers explore the constitution of inequality through practices of waiting and maintenance, through the intensification of work, and through the shifting of pedagogical relations between teachers and students. Through these situated analyses, the papers also speak to broader issues such as temporal bordering, distraction, opportunity, trust, validity, surveillance, communication, temporal frictions and local collective action for social justice. The discussant responds to the individual papers and reflects on overarching themes in the making and unmaking of in/equitable edtech futures in today’s schools.

References
Alirezabeigi, S., Masschelein, J., & Decuypere, M. (2020). Investigating digital doings through breakdowns. Learning, Media and Technology, 45(2), 193-207.
Choi, M., & Cristol, D. (2021). Digital citizenship with intersectionality lens. Theory into Practice, 60(4), 361-370.
Facer, K. & Selwyn, N. (2021). Digital Technology and the Futures of Education: Towards ‘Non-Stupid’ Optimism. The Futures of Education initiative UNESCO.
Murris, K., Scott, F., Stjerne Thomsen, B., Dixon, K., Giorza, T., Peers, J., & Lawrence, C. (2023). Researching digital inequalities in children’s play with technology in South Africa. Learning, Media and Technology, 48(3), 542-555.
Perrotta, C., Gulson, K. N., Williamson, B., & Witzenberger, K. (2020). Automation, APIs and the distributed labour of platform pedagogies in Google Classroom. Critical Studies in Education, 62(1), 97-113.
Rafalow, M. H. (2020). Digital Divisions. University of Chicago Press.
Swist, T., & Gulson, K. N. (2023). Instituting socio-technical education futures. Learning, Media and Technology, 48(2), 181-186.
Tsing, A. L. (2015). The Mushroom at the End of the World. Princeton University Press.
Watkins, S. C., Cho, A., Lombana-Bermudez, A., Shaw, V., Vickery, J. R., & Weinzimmer, L. (2018). The Digital Edge. New York University Press.
Zakharova, I., & Jarke, J. (2024). Do Predictive Analytics Dream of Risk-Free Education? Postdigital Science and Education, 6(1)

We plan four papers:

Conceptualising the Relationships between Digital Technologies, Equity and Teaching and Learning in Secondary Schools: Mapping the Research Landscape (Rebecca Eynon (University of Oxford), Laura Hakimi (University of Oxford), Valentina Andries (University of Oxford), Louise Couceiro (University of Oxford))

When EdTech Makes Us Wait. Temporal Bordering and Inequalities in European Classrooms (Felix Büchner (University of Oldenburg), Svea Kiesewetter (University of Gothenburg))

Global Time Platforms and Local Arrangements in Teachers’ Work Intensification in Sweden and Mexico: Tensions and Frictions (Annika Bergviken Rensfeldt (University of Gothenburg), Inés Dussel (Center for Research and Advanced Studies (Mexico)))

Pedagogical Relationships and the Use of EdTech: Implications for Equity and Future Design (Louise Couceiro (University of Oxford), Valentina Andries (University of Oxford), Laura Hakimi (University of Oxford), Rebecca Eynon (University of Oxford))

RED’s Felicitas Macgilchrist and Dr. Elke Van dermijnsbrugge will be discussing Elke’s Beyond Hope and Despair: The Radical Imagination as a Collective Practice for Uprising on 11 April 2024 (online).

In this session of EERA’s Network 28, we actively engage in alternative world-making through the exploration of Education for Uprising. We investigate the concepts of hope, despair and the radical imagination, driven by the following questions: 

Can we exist beyond the binaries of hope and despair, two key concepts that drive educational practices? And if so, what does this place look like?

What is the radical imagination and what are the conditions for it to be put to work in educational spaces?

Elke Van dermijnsbrugge first explores education as a hyperobject that is owned, imagined and practiced collectively. The semiotic square is introduced as a heuristic tool to illustrate the limitations of the binary opposition between hope and despair, and allows for an exploration of what is possible when these binaries are being set aside. The radical imagination then, is described as a collective practice that is radical in the sense that alternative social forms can always be imagined once we acknowledge that every social form is the result of the collective imagination. Finally, we explore conceptual as well as practical ideas and examples that underpin Education for Uprising which is understood as the emergence of micro-political, autonomous spaces of direct action where community, solidarity and self-organization are key principles.

Join us by registering here: https://forms.gle/5BSUe4cwaXxsmd2y6