The introduction and normalization of digital tools in Swedish schools has not passed without attention. The digitalization of education is often described as an efficient, fun, individualized way of learning, a way to train students in critical thinking and data literacy and a way to leave the established textbooks to learn from authentic settings. As well, digital tools offer efficient platforms for organizing teaching and school administration. On the other hand, digitalization of education has met resistance in different shapes. Social-conservative voices have claimed that digitalization of school is segregating, that students learn less through the computers than more traditional instructions (Hultén & Ideland, 2020), and despite massive investments no clear gains in student academic achievement can be linked to these (Fernández-Gutiérrez et al., 2020). Also, strong concerns have been raised regarding how multinational commercial actors have been given an increased role in public education using computers, platforms, etc. (Player-Koro et al 2017; Hillman et al 2020; van Dijck et al 2018). 

However, the use of ed-tech is not only driven by the business sector, lobby work has also been intense in relation policy reforms inviting the commercial companies (Williamson et. al 2019; Raptopoulou 2021). 

Ed-tech produces hopes and fears about conditions for teaching and learning. This Janus-face of ed-tech is not unique for digital technologies, most technologies have at one point been full of wonder, hopes and fears (Marwin, 1988). This paper historicizes the discussions on contemporary ed-tech by turning to a time of introduction and heydays of other educational technologies – film and radio. The aim is to analyze how educational technologies in the first half of the 20th century were embedded in hopes and fears for school and in what forms the “old ed-tech” invited commercial actors into school. Departing from policy documents and teacher press we address the following research questions (RQ):

1)    What educational problems and qualities were educational technologies expected to bring to the comprehensive school system in Sweden? 

2)    What relations between comprehensive school and commercial actors are formed through educational technologies?

The focus will be on the period 1940-1962, the formative years of the comprehensive school Grundskolan and the heydays for the educational technology radio and film. Grundskolan was formally introduced in 1962 and was nine years comprehensive school that united a thereto differentiated primary and lower secondary school system in Sweden. But the study also includes a prequel, 1920-1939, to bring forward the very early introduction of the educational technologies radio and film. We will argue that educational technologies came to play an important role in shaping Grundskolan and that commercial actors were active in these processes, and that film and radio was at the center of this edutechnical transformation. 

Theoretically, the paper departs from the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries. That is “collectively held, institutionally stabilized, and publicly performed visions of desirable futures, animated by shared understandings of forms of social life and social order attainable through, and supportive of, advances in science and technology” (Jasanoff & Kim 2015, p. 4). Thus, we illuminate and discuss how the hopes and fears about the new technologies – as well as the actors providing them – are not innocent tools but performing imaginaries of a future society.

Two types of materials inform the analysis. By approaching the use of technology with different types of materials we can get a deeper understanding of key actors and sociotechnical imaginaries in different educational settings – in school and in policymaking. The two main data sets consist of: 1) Teacher magazines’ articles on and advertisements for educational technologies. A purposeful selection of journals and volumes to be studied was made, and the sample consists of one yearly volume during the decades 1920-1950. The magazines were published once a week, giving a data sample on almost 200. The articles in the magazines illuminate a professional discourse on the hopes and fears of edtech, and the advertisements also provides insights in the role of business actors. 2) Governmental investigations: During the period, several large school investigations were performed. This material gives us insights into how the state intended to organize the production and use of educational technology. National curricula contain varied and plentiful references to educational technologies during the studied period, providing insights into how edtech was to be implemented and used, as well as the curricular objectives associated with edtech. The documents were analyzed from the questions of 1) What kinds of ed-tech were considered as useful for school? 2) What hopes and fears were embedded in the introduction and use of educational technologies? 3) What relations between comprehensive school and commercial actors are formed through educational technologies? The first step of the analysis was to select relevant sections of the policy documents and the magazines. Thereafter, the selected data were used to build a timeline of the introduction and reporting of educational technologies. The third step included analysis of how the technologies were socially constructed within tensions of hopes, fears but also everyday life in school and fantasies of a better society. In the last step we studied if and how commercial actors were invited to school through these sociotechnical imaginaries.

First, the data express hopes for increased equal conditions for education, made possible by technologically distributing modern knowledge as well as teacher competence. Particularly, education in rural areas was expected to improve. However, there were also worries expressed concerning unequal access to technology, a fear that was politically productive. The reforms surrounding the new comprehensive school system included a massive investment and development of infrastructure in this area, such as syllabus, regulation, financial support, teacher training and formalized collaborations between different actors. Second, the analysis illuminates hope for bringing in “authentic” knowledge from different parts of the world in a way that were engaging the students. For instance, films were expected to capture the students’ interests, and radio was believed to foster the students’ cultural taste. However, there was also a fear that the media technologies risk to passivize and to foster uncritical citizens. A third conclusion is that already almost a century ago, ed-tech became a gateway for commercial actors into school and that these processes were connected to political intentions. However, there are obvious differences between the two technologies. Radio, that was mainly aiming to disciplining the cultural taste and to distribute well defined knowledge, was kept in the hands of the state. School film, on the other hand – motivated by engaging students, making teaching more fun and to providing authentic examples from “reality” – was outsourced on commercial actors such as Disney and Europafilm. In relation to contemporary ed-tech debate, we see similarities between the early introduction of media technologies and contemporary discussions around digital technologies. Important to discuss is if there is a cultural script for the assemblage of new media technologies and educational policies and practices. How can historicizing analyses help us to understand how sociotechnical imaginaries organize the use of ed-tech?

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