COVID-19 was the great moment for educational technology and, although digital tools kept learning For many families and schools, they also failed. A large number of educational technology purchases were madeedtech-school-software-app-spending-pandemic-e2c803a30c5b6d34620956c228de7987″ target=”_blank” rel=”noopener nofollow”> not usedequity gaps widenedand teachers and students weretechnology/tech-fatigue-is-real-for-teachers-and-students-heres-how-to-ease-the-burden/2022/03″ target=”_blank” rel=”noopener nofollow”> Burned. Combined with sobering reports Given the persistent lack of solid evidence in favor of educational technology, it is not surprising that the notion of using technology to “fix broken schools” has disappeared from most startup presentations and TED talks on education . However, it seems that the reckoning has been interrupted.
The emergence of generative ai has broughtai-and-chatgpt-artificial-intelligence-series-3-of-5/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener nofollow”> the term “disruption”ai-artificial-intelligence-disrupt-education-creativity-critical-thinking” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener nofollow”> backai-artificial-intelligence-students-18356126.php” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener nofollow”> toai-disruption-deepens-chegg-plunge-115111161.html” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener nofollow”> Headlines and along with it, the idea that education is stuck in the past and needs technology to drag it into the future. For those of us who have been in educational technology for a while, it feels like we're stuck in a loop. While the tools, marketing strategies, and messages may change, the underlying philosophy behind the idea of disruptive innovation remains.
So what is this philosophy? I would say it is technology-as-a-sociocultural-and-ideological-phenomenon” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener nofollow”>technocentrism, a concept introduced by Seymour Papert, renowned mathematician, learning theorist and pioneer of educational technology. Scholars George Veletsianos and Rolin Moe define it as the fusion of technological determinism, the view “that technology shapes its emerging society,” and technological solutionism, the view “that technology will solve social problems.” This way of thinking about technology has been central to many presentations made by educational technology providers to schools and, I would argue, has a huge influence on how most of us think about educational technology.
We need to stop treating education as a disease and educational technology as medicine
To illustrate, let me use an analogy. Within this technocentric framework, education is a disease and educational technology is like medicine. Entrepreneurs and developers try to create the best possible drug to treat students, while administrators and researchers (myself included) stand guard, testing and validating treatments. Students take the medication, their bodies respond, and hopefully, positive change occurs. It is a perspective so shared that it travels like common sense. Even our pedagogies model this thinking. Take, for example, the concept of technology-enhanced learning, which sees digital tools as key to enhancing learning: simply integrate a particular technology and you're done, rising to Bloom's taxonomy.
paper diagnosed this problem in 1987. In response to research claims that Logo, a children's programming language, did not work for learning, Papert wrote:
This (technocentric) tendency appears in questions such as “what is the effect of the computer on cognitive development?” or “does LOGO work?” Of course, such questions could innocently be used as shorthand for more complex claims, so the diagnosis of technocentrism must be confirmed by careful examination of the arguments in which they are embedded. However, such expressions often betray a tendency to think of “computers” and “LOGO” as agents that act directly on thinking and learning; They reveal a tendency to reduce the truly most important components of educational situations – people and cultures – to a secondary and facilitating role.
It does not have to be this way. There is a different way of thinking about learning, one that engages technology but does not see it as the key agent of change or source of learning. According to Papert: “The content for human development is always a culture, never an isolated technology.” This is what some might call a systemic view of technology where learning is an emergent (and slightly unpredictable) property of the interaction between humans and tools in an environment. I like to think of that system as an ecology. In opposition to technocentrism, an ecological perspective considers technology not as medicine, but as soil, air or water. It's about moving from thinking about technology as an independent factor that influences the learning experience to seeing it as a more dynamic force. This means considering how technology impacts students and teachers, and how students and teachers shape the learning possibilities that technology offers.
Why educational technology research should move away from a technocentric view of learning
These ecological dimensions of learning are why it has been difficult to demonstrate more than small or moderate positive effects of educational technology products or interventions. In the last decade, this has been documented by several meta-analysis It covers the most modern era of educational technology, dating back to the 1960s. Even if we look further back to the early 20th century, as teacher and author Larry Cuban does in his book “Teachers and Machines: The Classroom Use of technology Since 1920”, the same problems persist.
There is so much going on when learning occurs that while we can connect it to a tool and generate evidence of effectiveness, context matters. There are many forces that contribute to a learning experience and its outcomes: the time of day, whether or not a student has eaten, how they feel physically and emotionally, whether they have a device in their pocket, and what training they have. the teachers have had. The potential of technology is significantly affected by the humans who use it and their context.
Papert, operating from an ecological mindset, observed how learning was highly situational and contextual. She viewed learning environments “as a network of interacting and mutually supportive processes.” This complex web of interactions makes it difficult to isolate and test the direct impact of a technology on learning as is done in effectiveness studies.
This does not mean that this type of research should stop. Instead, we need to be much more vigilant about opening the door to our research and thinking critically about our own assumptions and methods. We should continue to conduct rigorous clinical trials, but we must also rely on evidence based designas logical models, as well as formative research, such as usability and feasibility studies. Most importantly, we need to develop new research methods that are in line with an ecological, rather than technocentric, way of thinking about learning and technology. If each classroom has its own ecology and educational technology is more like soil or water, we need a model more like an environmental impact study of learning with technology.
What schools and edtech developers can do
Efforts have been made for years to move in this direction, such as climate studies; initiatives that promote digital well-being, human experience and prosperous digital; research on the contextual factors that impact effectiveness of educational technology; and calls to move from improved technology totechnology-enabled-instructional-practices-in-k-12-education-a-thought-piece-drawing-on-research-and-practice/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener nofollow”> technology enabled learning. Still, there is room for much more, especially approaches to that foreground theory (which is woefully underused in educational research).
Beyond research, we need to rethink the development of educational technology and how we might incentivize and support the creation of tools that foster a positive, prosocial culture in the classroom, regardless of the content. Educational technology developers could start by involving teachers in the design process and incorporating radical ideas such as nice design, o create tools that give people agency and establish social bonds, and digital decline, that is, exploring how we could reduce technology and its objectives and lean towards sustainability. Culturally responsive learning and universal learning design could only help with these goals. We can also expand our portfolios of evidence to honor the goals and outcomes of these approaches that would affect the tone, tenor, and rhythms of a classroom as much as the academics. However, if we really want to get out of the quagmire, venture capital firms and other funders must review your investment expectations and impact measures.
Importantly, we must provide schools with resources they can use to ensure that technologies support the goals they have for classroom culture, not just academic outcomes. This requires a new framework for examining, selecting, and evaluating technologies, one more attuned to how technology changes the feel of a classroom and how certain classrooms change the affordances of a tool. Ultimately, we need to help schools think about creating balanced classroom ecologies where technology serves the goals of teachers and students and supports their agency and creativity.
These are all approaches that I believe will help clear the fog of technocentrism, which distracts us from the real source of learning and innovation: not technologies, but thriving classroom cultures. It's not about abandoning technology completely or looking for the perfect tool. It's about better understanding the alchemy of meaningful learning with technology.
