Education and Technology

Key Issues and Debates

Neil Selwyn

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781350145566
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Tecnología educativa

What does the future hold for digital technology and education? What can be learnt from the history of technology use in education? Does digital technology make education more individualized? Will it eventually replace the school, university and teacher? In a thoroughly revised edition of this successful book, Neil Selwyn takes a critical look at some of the major current debates and controversies concerning digital technologies and education. Focusing on the social as well as the technical aspects of these issues, Selwyn addresses fundamental but often unvoiced questions about education and technology. Over the course of eight chapters, the book gives careful thought to the people, practices, processes and structures behind the rapidly increasing use of technologies in education, with an emphasis on the implications of digital technologies for individuals and institutions. Brand new chapters on trends in AI and 'big data' driven automation of education, and the future(s) of education and technology are included. This edition also features new sections exploring 'post-digital' perspectives, personalized learning, digital labour, and the impending need for sustainable forms of digital education. The book focuses attention on the connections between recent technology developments and broader changes in education practice, education policy and education theory over the past few decades. It also challenges us to reflect on future directions and controversies for education in the (post)digital age. Expanded study questions, annotated further reading and a new glossary of key terms are included to support readers. An updated companion website links to bonus chapters and audio recordings for further discussion.

1

What Do We Mean by ‘Education’ and ‘Technology’?

Chapter Outline

Introduction

What Is Education?

What Is Technology?

From ‘Analogue’ to ‘Digital’ Technology

Making Sense of Digital Technologies in Education

Conclusions

Introduction

The use of technology – and in particular the use of digital technology – is an integral aspect of education. Yet, making sense of education and technology is not a straightforward task. The digitisation of society over the past couple of decades has been fast moving and extensive. We live in a ‘digital age’ where technology products and practices can quickly become fundamental parts of everyday life. For example, many people now consider it impossible to be without their smartphone at all times. The most popular social media platforms are now accessed by billions (rather than millions) of users each day. We are accustomed to turning to technology for immediate solutions to mundane problems. These days, people will simply ‘Google the answer’ to a misremembered fact, ‘ask Alexa’ for a forgotten name or swipe and tap a screen to order a taxi or arrange a date; whatever predicament one might be in, it is likely that ‘there’s an app for that’.

It is understandable, therefore, that most aspects of education are beginning to be reimagined in a technological light. For instance, digital technologies lie at the heart of how people communicate, consume information and organise their lives. These shifts clearly have implications for how learning takes place, how knowledge is created and how people expect to be taught. At the same time, digital systems and networks are integral to the management and operation of modern institutions. This has obvious consequences for schools, universities and other sites of education provision. As such, anyone interested in contemporary education needs to be mindful of the complex relationships that have developed between education and technology. These are aspects of education that demand sustained analysis and critical thought. This is not simply a background feature or narrow technical concern.

Unfortunately, education and technology is something that people rarely give serious thought to. This is not to say that intelligent or thoughtful things are never said about education and technology. Yet most people see little need to scrutinise what has become a familiar feature of the education landscape. The majority of people working in education see digital technologies as a common-sense element of their job and, for the most part, something that is simply ‘got on with’. This book does not share such complacency. Digital technology is certainly an embedded aspect of contemporary education, but is surely something that requires sustained and honest appraisal. More than ever, the issues and tensions that have grown up around education and technology merit our close attention.

Any discussion of education and technology needs to be wide-ranging and broad-minded. In particular, our principal focus should not be on technological devices, tools and applications per se, but the practices and activities that surround them, the meanings that people attach to them, and the social relations and social structures that these technologies are linked to. At this early stage of the book, such concepts might seem a little imprecise and unclear. This opening chapter lays some foundations for subsequent exploration of these issues.

First, then, it is helpful to get a good sense of exactly what is at stake when we talk about specifically educational technology. In addition, it is useful to properly consider what ‘technology’ is and how technologies interact with a complex domain of social life such as education. Going back to basic definitions and questions such as these is an important initial step in developing a detached, critical stance – drawing our attention towards crucial questions that can otherwise be easily overlooked in the excitement that surrounds any new digital innovation. Beneath any ‘new’ technology being implemented in education is a range of long-established concerns and challenges. In this sense, we need to first pay due attention to a couple of fundamental questions of definition; that is, what exactly do we mean by the terms ‘education’ and ‘technology’?

What Is Education?

Perhaps the best way to develop a full understanding of ‘education’ is to start by defining another term altogether: ‘learning’. Despite being a concept central to education, many educational commentators are surprisingly vague in their basic definitions of ‘learning’. With this ambiguity in mind, the description offered by Ivan Illich (1971, p.11) is perhaps as good as any, contending that ‘to learn means to acquire a new skill or insight’. In these terms, the process of ‘learning’ can refer to an individual’s acquisition of new skills, or perhaps new forms of knowledge and understanding. These different aspects of learning are also reflected in Benjamin Bloom’s (1956) well-known ‘taxonomy of educational objectives’. Here Bloom asserted that all learning can be described in terms of three overlapping domains: the psychomotor domain (manual and physical skills – i.e. ‘doing’); the affective domain (emotions and attitudes – i.e. ‘feeling’) and the cognitive domain (intellectual capability and knowledge – i.e. ‘thinking’).

One recurring area of debate among educationalists is whether learning should be seen as a product or as a process. Many of the theories of learning that were developed during the first decades of the twentieth century tended to conceptualise learning as an end product or outcome – most often as a distinct change in behaviour. This view of learning is expressed, for example, in the ‘behaviourist’ conception of learning as a relatively permanent change in behaviour as a result of an individual’s experiences. This notion of learning-as-product continues to be a common-sense way of understanding learning. Many students (and some educators) continue to see learning as consisting largely of ‘gaining knowledge’ and ‘the filling of empty vessels’ – ideas that Carl Bereiter (2002) describes as ‘folk’ theories of learning. These concepts were reflected in Roger Säljö’s (1979) investigations over forty years ago where he questioned large numbers of adult learners about what they perceived themselves doing when engaging with education. The view of learning-as-product was certainly apparent in the first three types of responses that Säljö identified:

• Learning as a quantitative increase in knowledge, that is, learning as acquiring information or ‘knowing a lot’;

• Learning as memorising, that is, learning as storing information that can be reproduced;

• Learning as acquiring facts, skills and methods that can be retained and used as necessary.

By contrast, the fourth and fifth categories of responses arising from Säljö’s research seem to point towards a different notion of learning. In this sense, some people also described their learning as an ongoing process rather than a finite product:

• Learning as making sense or abstracting meaning, that is, learning that involves relating parts of the subject matter to each other and to the real world;

• Learning as interpreting and understanding reality in a different way, that is, learning that involves comprehending the world by reinterpreting knowledge.

The latter descriptions of learning as an ongoing process raise the idea of an individual learner who is building upon their previous experiences, and perhaps then changing their behaviour as a result. As we shall see in Chapter 4, this is certainly a view of learning that many twenty-first-century educationalists and psychologists would concur with. As Jerome Bruner (1996, p.146) put it, learning ‘is not simply a technical business of well-managed information processing’. Instead, learning might also be seen to involve individuals having to make sense of who they are, and thereby develop an understanding of the world in which they live. From this perspective, learning can be seen as a continuing process of ‘participation’ rather than a discrete instance of ‘acquisition’ (Sfard 1998).

In this respect, we should acknowledge that learning can sometimes be an unconscious and unplanned process that individuals are unaware is taking place. Alan Rogers referred to this type of learning as an ongoing process of ‘task-conscious’ or ‘acquisition’ learning that takes place all the time. As Rogers (2003, p.18) argued, learning along these lines is ‘concrete, immediate and confined to a specific activity; it is not concerned with general principles’. For example, much of the learning arising from parenting or running a household could be said to fit this description. While some commentators have referred to this kind of learning as unconscious or implicit, Rogers (2003) suggests that it might be better to speak of people as having a consciousness of the task. In other words, while the individual may not be conscious that they are learning, they are usually aware of the specific task in hand.

Of course, when asked to describe ‘learning’, most people would think of forms of activity that are rather more organised and planned. In this sense learning is often a process that individuals are engaged consciously in. Rogers (2003) labelled this as ‘learning-conscious’ – that is, learning that is facilitated in some way by someone else rather than the incidental accumulation of experience described earlier. This implies that people are aware fully that the task they are engaged in involves some form of learning. As Rogers (2003, p.27) put it, usually this process involves ‘formalised’ guided episodes of learning – in other words, ‘learning itself is the task … learning [is made] more conscious in order to enhance it’.

In these terms, then, the processes and practices of ‘education’ are obviously related to Rogers’ ‘learning-conscious’ descriptions of learning. When most people talk about ‘education’, they are referring to the institutionally supported provision of formalised learning – that is, learning that is structured and often assessed and credentialised. Formal education is perhaps the easiest form of education to identify, and by far the most discussed in the academic literature. A wide range of institutionally provided educational opportunities exist – most obviously the compulsory forms of school-based learning for children and young people. Similar forms of continuous post-compulsory education also exist through colleges, universities and various types of distance education. Formal education can also be found outside of settings such as schools and universities. For instance, ‘adult education’ and ‘community education’ institutions offer a range of full-time and part-time opportunities to engage in classes and courses. Work-based training also represents a major source of adult formal education – including health and safety training, work-related evening classes, as well as more complex forms of professional development. These latter forms are increasingly relevant to the broad concept of ‘lifelong learning’ – that is, the notion that education encompasses not only the compulsory phases of schooling but also education and training throughout the life course.

In contrast to these examples of formal education, Rogers’ notion of task-conscious learning relates mainly to what could be termed ‘informal education’. In one sense, informal education can be seen simply as the ‘learning experiences of everyday life’ (Scribner and Cole 1973, p.553). This is learning that usually has no curriculum, assessment or formal ‘teacher’. In contrast to the types of formal education just described, informal education ‘is not typically classroom based or highly structured, and control of learning rests primarily in the hands of the learner’ (Marsick and Watkins 1990, p.12). One common form of informal education is work-based ‘learning on the job’, as well as the diversity of learning arising from general interests, pursuits and hobbies outside of the workplace.

As a whole, then, the term ‘education’ can be best understood as the conditions and arrangements where learning takes place. Yet, in reaching this definition we should recognise that education is not simply a technical matter of facilitating an individual’s learning. Indeed, thinking about education and technology primarily in terms of ‘learning’ narrows our attention towards specific processes and activities centred on the individual ‘learner’ rather than the broader aims and purposes of ‘education’. Instead, Gert Biesta (2015) suggests that there are three broader functions of ‘education’ that need to be acknowledged alongside matters of ‘learning’. First are matters of qualification – that is, giving people the knowledge, skills and dispositions that allow them to ‘do something’ (whether this is training for employment or the ‘life skills’ needed to function in society). Second is what can be termed a ‘socialisation’ function – what Biesta (2015, p.19) describes as ‘insert[ing] individuals into existing ways of doing and being’ such as particular social, cultural and political ‘orders’. Third is what can be termed a ‘subjectification’ function – giving individuals a sense of who they are, encouraging the ability to act autonomously, and think independently and critically.

These broad societal and cultural functions remind us that much of what takes place in educational settings might have little (or nothing) to do with learning per se. Often the most significant aspects of education lie beyond the immediate instance of an individual engaging directly in the process of learning. Instead, it is important to also consider what can be termed the social ‘milieu’ of education. This can include the organisational cultures and micro-politics of educational institutions such as schools, colleges and universities. Similarly, how an individual engages with education can be often linked closely with the concerns of institutions such as the family, the workplace and wider community. In turn, these contexts are themselves set within a range of even wider social milieu – not least commercial marketplaces, nation states and global economies. While perhaps not immediately apparent to anyone in a classroom setting, it would be foolhardy to attempt to make ...