Is Technology Good for Education?

Neil Selwyn

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780745696478, 9780745696461
• eBook ISBN: 9780745696508
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Popular Culture
• Index: Social Sciences

Digital technologies are a key feature of contemporary education. Schools, colleges and universities operate along high-tech lines, while alternate forms of online education have emerged to challenge the dominance of traditional institutions. According to many experts, the rapid digitization of education over the past ten years has undoubtedly been a 'good thing'.

Is Technology Good For Education? offers a critical counterpoint to this received wisdom, challenging some of the central ways in which digital technology is presumed to be positively affecting education. Instead Neil Selwyn considers what is being lost as digital technologies become ever more integral to education provision and engagement. Crucially, he questions the values, agendas and interests that stand to gain most from the rise of digital education.

This concise, up-to-the-minute analysis concludes by considering alternate approaches that might be capable of rescuing and perhaps revitalizing the ideals of public education, while not denying the possibilities of digital technology altogether.

ONE
Digital Technology and Educational Change

Introduction

Digital technology is now an integral part of education. The past forty years have seen exponential increases in computer processing power accompanied by major technological developments such as the internet and mobile telephony. Smartphones, tablets and other computerized devices are now common means of interacting with people, consuming media, engaging with the core institutions in our societies and generally living out many aspects of everyday life. Google and Wikipedia are the first places that millions of people turn to when wanting to access information and find things out. These technologies alone have transformed the generation and communication of knowledge and, it follows, the ways in which learning and understanding take place. In all these ways, many important elements of education are now profoundly digital.

Of course, ‘education’ extends far beyond matters of learning and engaging with knowledge. In an organizational sense, digital technologies are now central to the ‘formal’ organization and governance of compulsory and post-compulsory education. Schools, colleges and universities operate along increasingly digital lines, while alternate forms of online education have emerged to complement and/ or compete with traditional ‘bricks and mortar’ institutions. Hundreds of millions of people are enrolled in online courses and other forms of virtual study. Billions of dollars are spent every year by state and federal governments on digital educational resources. National educational technology policies and initiatives are launched regularly by governments around the world, all striving to keep up with the demands of the digital age. What shall be referred to throughout this book as ‘digital education’ is entwined with matters of global economics and politics, as well as ongoing changes in what ‘counts’ as knowledge, skills and learning. All told, digital technology is an increasingly integral element of ‘education’ in the broadest sense.

On a day-to-day basis, however, the digital tends to be experienced as routine and unremarkable. Digital technologies are simply part of the way that we now ‘do’ education, as well as how education is ‘done’ to us. For many people, digital technologies have become a background feature of everyday education. Yet it is unwise to be blasé about the presence of digital technology in education settings. Beyond the immediate ‘education community’ of teachers, students, technology developers and other involved professionals, it is telling that policy-makers, industrialists and other influential actors usually frame digital technologies in education in dramatic terms of wide-scale change and reform. So rather than getting bogged down in prosaic discussions of how specific digital devices or applications might be used more effectively by teachers or schools, many people outside of education are keen to speculate in more ambitious terms. For instance, might digital technology do away with the need for teachers and schools altogether? Why should thousands of universities be funded to deliver different versions of what are essentially the same courses when the best professors can be beamed repeatedly to anywhere in the world? From this perspective, digital technology presents a fundamental challenge to everything that we have come to know as ‘education’ over the past hundred years or so. This book focuses on the ways in which this potential for radical change might actually be realized. To what extent is digital technology really changing education – and is this always in our best interests?’

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‘To what extent is digital technology really changing education – and is this always in our best interests?’

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Digital technology and education change

Most discussions about the uses of digital technologies in education are concerned with educational change. This is to be expected, as digital technologies tend to be associated with change across all areas of society. Very few people set out to use digital technology in order to do things in exactly the same ways as before. Instead, digital technologies are usually associated with doing things in cheaper, faster, more convenient, more exciting or more efficient ways. If not leading to changes for the better, then digital technologies tend to be implicated with detrimental change along the lines of ‘Google making us stupid’ or ‘text messaging making kids less literate’. Either way, it is common sense to align digital technologies with change and things being different. Indeed, digital technologies are perhaps best understood as ‘mediating’ non-digital processes and practices: making some new things possible while at the same time introducing new limitations and unintended consequences.

The potential of digital technologies to change education tends to be imagined along a spectrum ranging from modest improvement to wholesale revolution. At one level, digital technologies are celebrated as leading to distinct improvements in education. Often this relates to improving learning (e.g. making learning more social, ‘situated’ or ‘authentic’) or improving learners (e.g. getting them engaged, motivated or able to learn). Descriptions recur of technology ‘enhancing’, ‘enabling’, ‘assisting’, ‘supporting’ and ‘scaffolding’ learning. In a similar vein, digital technologies are also welcomed as expanding the capacity of teachers to teach, heightening the efficiency of educational institutions and increasing the relevance of education systems to the needs of society and economy. All told, a sense emerges of education being improved and upgraded while remaining essentially the same in terms of its institutions, organization and general ways of doing things.

Another heightened level of change, however, sees digital technologies associated with the transformation of educational processes and practices. This refers to a marked renewal and ‘shaking up’ of the nature and form of ‘education’. This shift in language implies a set of fundamental changes, such as courses being delivered online rather than face-to-face, people learning through playing games rather than being taught directly, and so on. Tellingly, these changes are sometimes described in language borrowed from the worlds of computer engineering and the IT industry. For example, the vernacular of software development is often used to indicate significant improvements in functionality. Thus we hear talk of ‘School 2.0’ and ‘Education 3.0’. Continuing this theme, some commentators talk of ‘upgrading’, ‘hacking’ or ‘rebooting’ education. All of these descriptions imply a recoding and re-scripting of the rules of education. The purposes of education are being renewed, with digital technology acting as a catalyst and a facilitator of these changes.

More extreme still is the idea that digital technologies are leading to wholesale revolution in education – suggesting an overthrowing of the established order and vested interests. This severity of change is more pronounced than the straightforward idea of ‘transformation’, implying a contentious, violent and bloody form of change. Indeed, ‘revolution’ conveys a sense of conflict, clashes of interests and ideologies, the overthrowing of established elites, the challenging of the status quo and the redistribution of power and control. Some of the main targets of this upheaval are dominant institutions such as ‘the school’ and ‘the university’, formal examination and qualification systems, national curricula and suchlike. Digital technology is also seen to destabilize the ‘education establishment’ of teachers, unions and academics, as well as government agencies and state institutions. In contrast, digital technology is framed as empowering previously marginalized groups: in particular, advancing the interests of individuals over institutions, parents over professionals, private markets over public sector monopolies and outsiders over insiders. With these kinds of technology-driven radical change, very little in education is expected ever to be the same again.

A digital ‘fix’ for a ‘broken’ system?

These changes tend to be discussed in confident and compelling ways. Thinking carefully about the language that is used to describe education and digital technology is a theme that recurs throughout this book. One of the most significant aspects of ‘digital education’ is its discursive nature. In other words, the values and meanings that are attached to the idea of digital education could be seen as just as significant as any actual use of digital technology. This certainly chimes with the ways in which digital education often is experienced ‘on the ground’. There has been, for example, little rigorous evidence produced over the past forty years of technology leading to the sustained improvement of teaching and learning. Similarly, most education institutions and systems certainly do not appear to be in the throes of full-scale revolt or even partial transformation. Much of the rhetoric of digital education has proven frustratingly difficult to substantiate.

We are perhaps better off treating these descriptions of digital ‘revolution’, ‘transformation’ and ‘improvement’ as evocative and aspirational stories, rather than sober, objective and accurate descriptions of actual ongoing changes in education. The primary significance of these stories is what they tell us about wider hopes, fears, desires and expectations surrounding contemporary education – particularly in fast-changing technological, economic, political and demographic times. ‘Digital education’ is a potent space for voicing hopes and fears of what education might become in the near future. We would do well, therefore, to treat any overly confident assertions of digital change in a circumspect and sceptical manner.

In this spirit, it is worth paying attention to the prominent argument that digital technology is a ready ‘fix’ for education systems that are outmoded, no longer fit for purpose and generally ‘broken’. Over ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• 1 Digital Technology and Educational Change
• 2 Making Education More Democratic?
• 3 Making Education More Personalized?
• 4 Making Education More Calculable?
• 5 Making Education More Commercial?
• 6 ‘Good’ Education and the Digital – So What Needs to Change?
• Index
• End User License Agreement