home - on_education

no. 12_december 2021

On Education

editorial: taming technology

The twelfth issue of On Education is devoted to attempts to tame technology use in education. It asks what challenges educational institutions face from instructional technologies, and what answers have been and are being found. It asks to what extent programmers, software developers or entrepreneurs themselves are able to tame the technologies they want to sell to schools. It discusses the role of teachers, activists, policy makers, and administrators in resisting, regulating, or affirmatively embracing educational technologies.

Kalervo N. Gulson, Sam Sellar and P. Taylor Webb

synthetic governance: on the impossibility of taming artificial intelligence in education

This paper claims it is impossible to tame Artificial Intelligence in education. The paper is not advocating that AI should be used in an unfettered way in education. Rather, the paper suggests that despite ongoing policy attempts to regulate AI, these policy moves are unlikely to succeed due to a synthesis of machines and humans in education governance. The paper briefly outlines attempts to tame AI, and proposes that rather than considering taming AI, a new politics of education may be necessary.

Felicitas Macgilchrist

rewilding technology

This paper is rooted in the ecological crisis of our contemporary world. Rather than rejecting educational technology (edtech) as too environmentally damaging to use, it draws on critical utopian approaches, feminist science fiction and conservation projects to suggest ‘rewilding’ as a frame for designing and using edtech with a view to ameliorating technology’s long-term inequitable planetary impact. After briefly describing projects for rewilding nature, the paper turns to the specifics of rewilding edtech. It first highlights pragmatic suggestions for more sustainable edtech practices. It then suggests that the concept of ‘sustainability’ limits current practices, and proposes that a more radical and utopian rewilding can herald an education beyond sustainability. Rewilding edtech prioritises decelerating and degrowth, regenerating and relating, hospicing dying worlds and birthing new possibilities.

Tobias Röhl

taming algorithms

The introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) and other tools, based on algorithmic decision-making in education, not only provides opportunities but can also lead to ethical problems, such as algorithmic bias and a deskilling of teachers. In this essay I will show how these risks can be mitigated.

Nompilo Tshuma

harnessing technology for cultural transformation: a case study from South Africa

Taming the technology used for teaching and learning in higher education can take different forms. These taming activities are dependent on the context – and critical issues that affect higher education within those contexts – as well as the agency of academics to address those issues. The focus of this paper is on one such context, where cultural transformation is a key theme in higher education. In this paper, I reflect on how technology has been harnessed by academic change agents to challenge cultural norms while recognising diversity within their classrooms.

Robin Schmidt

taming educators’ tech beliefs

Forty years of empirical research on the use of ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) in schools has repeatedly shown that ICT is by no means “wild” and “threatening”, but rather largely ineffective. Therefore, I argue that the “wildness” of ICT in schools is primarily a matter of impactful teachers’ beliefs. I analyse some elements of these beliefs and suggest that its them that need “taming”. On this basis I propose that they can be tamed by becoming closely familiar with their content and structures, by professionalising them based on research and thirdly by reframing the use of ICT in school as a question of enabling participation in a world that is changing through digital transformation.

Jeremy Knox

how the ‘taming’ of private education in China is impacting AI

Following the theme of this issue of On Education, this paper suggests that one of the most significant and recent examples of ‘taming’ educational technologies occurred in China this year, involving national policy directives aimed at regulating both technology companies and the private education sector. This ‘taming’, it will be argued below, has particular and significant implications for the development of artificial intelligence (AI) for education in China, principally due to the way in which this burgeoning field has developed in relation to private educational provision. The following sections will outline key government policies, and assess the extent to which state regulation is impacting the ways such technologies are designed and deployed in the Chinese education system.

Cerstin Mahlow and Andreas Hediger

education as loosely coupled system of technology and pedagogy

The recent development of education seems to be driven mainly by technology; assigning version numbers is an attempt to tame this development. But education is more complex than buzzwords like “Learning 4.0” may suggest. In this article, we argue for viewing education as a loosely coupled system of two interacting layers, technology and pedagogy: closely connected, but not glued together. Using several examples, we show that sometimes technological innovations trigger pedagogical innovations and sometimes pedagogical needs initiate the development of technological solutions. We intend the model of loosely coupled layers of technology and pedagogy as a starting point for opening an overdue discussion on how to make the best use of technology for teaching and learning. We argue that complementing technology with established and proven principles of situated contextualized pedagogy is a key element for the future development of education.

Jakob Erichsen

fictional expectations and the constant taming of a spreading technology

This essay argues that expectations about the future are a central category for understanding the paradoxical dynamics of the ongoing digitalization of schools. To do so, it outlines how to understand expectations about the future and which complementary concepts are particularly relevant. To illustrate the theoretical considerations, the essay uses empirical examples from a current research project focusing on the role of expectations in the debate on the digitalization of schools in Germany. The essay shows that looking at actors’ expectations helps to understand the continuous spread of new technology, as well as its constant taming.

Taming Technology