Session Information
99 ERC SES 07 A, Ignite Talks
Ignite Talks Session
Contribution
With the emergence of a multitude of new educational technology (EdTech) and the simultaneous opacity of the capabilities, limitations, and methods used by a digital tool or platform, it is becoming increasingly challenging for teachers, school administrators, and education policy makers to make sufficiently informed decisions about the use of technology in schooling. As EdTech remains a ‘black box’ (Hartong, 2021) in terms of both its functionality and emergence, sociotechnical imaginaries and algorithmic logics are inadvertently being implemented into the technology´s educational concept (Decuypere, 2019; Macgilchrist, 2019; Troeger et al., 2023).
Due to their methodology, previous studies on the development of educational media technologies have only been able to hypothesize about the discrepancy between the pedagogical conception and the actual implementation of an EdTech product (e.g., Weich et al., 2021). Meanwhile, ethnographies of the EdTech sector have either been rather event-based (Player-Koro et al., 2022) or have not yet focused on the development processes of technology (Ames, 2019; Macgilchrist, 2019; Ramiel, 2021). I would like to close this gap with my thesis by critically observing developers as they work in a relatively young venture, using a media ethnography approach. Over a time span of at least six months, I would like to investigate which, how, and why fundamental design decisions are made when translating pedagogical concepts into algorithmic environments.
The planned project is situated in two contexts. On the one hand, it is characterized by the assumption that educational media technologies emerge in an interplay of socio-technically negotiated ideas and social construction (Bijker et al., 1987), coming into being through “situated action” (Suchman, 2006, p. 70) and practices (Pink et al., 2016). A technology is therefore an expression of a certain image of educational and learning processes, of pedagogical theories and didactic concepts on the part of its developers. How exactly this image is translated into algorithmic or digital environments, how it is programmed and implemented, is the subject of a variety of negotiation processes. These are embedded in a social working context, characterized by translation practices between different internal and external actors and professions that need to be captured.
On the other hand, my dissertation project assumes that the European educational media production is undergoing a decisive digital transformation, with new players entering the market and fundamentally changing it. While established educational media publishers have to reinvent themselves in order to meet the social and political pressure of digitalization, platform-based technologies and products dominate the school EdTech market, especially from supposedly 'disruptive' start-ups (Ramiel, 2021). These new private-sector actors introduce a wide array of new sociotechnical imaginaries (Jasanoff, 2015) of education, not only to the European EdTech market, but also to more general educational discourses (Eynon & Young, 2021; Nivanaho et al., 2023). However, young EdTech organizations are also interesting for my research in that it is precisely the negotiation processes in the early founding and development phase of a venture that shape fundamental socio-technically influenced concept decisions. Therefore, this moment seems suitable for researching the medial construction of educational concepts ‘in the making’, so to speak.
Method
I chose to implement a media ethnographic approach to research EdTech start-ups and their inner workings. With this, I will be able to conduct educational organizational and conceptual research at the micro and meso level, for which a qualitative methodology seems appropriate. As shown, previous studies have so far refrained from ‘in situ’ research of such design processes and have only been able to ascertain that discrepancies become visible between the statements of developers about their educational ideals and the pedagogical end product of their work. The media ethnographic approach of participant observation, on the other hand, will allow me to gain a differentiated insight into pedagogical production decisions and processes. For this reason, my research project combines several data collection methods: In order to gain an overview of the research context and the startup team, ethnographic interviews will be conducted first, which will then be followed by participant observation to “study the differences between what people say they do and what they do” (Boellstorff, 2021, p. 51), for at least 6 months. Concluding interviews complete the survey, which will then be analysed with a grounded theory approach (Glaser & Strauss, 1999) and a special focus on “rich points” (Agar, 1996, p. 31) in my material. The startup will be sampled along three criteria. First, the stage of development of the company is taken into account. Only projects that are still in an early phase, i.e. are either about to be founded (pre-seed phase) or have recently been founded (seed-phase), are considered, because it can be assumed that interesting fundamental technical and educational product development decisions are made here. A second criterion is the possible access to the company. This does not only mean the possibility of being able to research a case in a purely practical way, but also the accessibility of the researched team and an openness to critical research and participant observation (Cunliffe & Alcadipani, 2016). The third (soft) criterion I apply is the relevance potential of the company to be examined, i.e. the presumed infrastructural and/or market reach of the envisaged EdTech. The reason for this is that my project is intended to gain knowledge about the algorithmic modelling of pedagogical processes across school subjects and competencies.
Expected Outcomes
As my contribution to the ERC is about proposing a research design, which I intend to implement by September 2024 in my PhD project, I will not be able to present any results. Instead, I would like to use this opportunity as a newcomer to the ERC to reflect on my research proposal, to learn from my peers, and to hear about their experiences with the topic of EdTech development and the methodology of (media) ethnography. Especially in the European context, the matter of digital future-making seems to be a cross-cutting issue. The digitalisation and mediatisation of education and schooling are worldwide meta processes that cannot be dealt with in a regional understanding, but need a global, and especially a European perspective. EU-wide policy papers like the Digital Competence Framework for Educators show the relevance and normalisation of emerging technologies in the classroom. Digitalisation seems to be one of the few certain futures in European education. It is important to understand not only the practical impact of this ‘digital turn’ on schooling, how it changes classroom culture, competencies, and media usage in schools. It is also crucial to turn to the media production side of digitalisation in education, to ask critical questions about what parts of pedagogical theory and practice can be digitalised and how this is done, to look at new actors like EdTech startups and their imaginations of digital futures that are inscribed in EdTech.
References
Agar, M. (1996). The professional stranger. Academic Press. Ames, M. G. (2019). The Charisma Machine. MIT Press. Bijker, W. E., Hughes, T. P., & Pinch, T. (Eds.). (1987). The Social construction of technological systems. MIT Press. Boellstorff, T. (2021). Rethinking Digital Anthropology. In H. Geismar & H. Knox (Eds.), Digital anthropology (pp. 44–62). Routledge. Cunliffe, A. L., & Alcadipani, R. (2016). The Politics of Access in Fieldwork: Immersion, Backstage Dramas, and Deception. Organizational Research Methods, 19(4), 535–561. Decuypere, M. (2019). Researching educational apps: Ecologies, technologies, subjectivities and learning regimes. Learning, Media and Technology, 1–16. Eynon, R., & Young, E. (2021). Methodology, Legend, and Rhetoric: The Constructions of AI by Academia, Industry, and Policy Groups for Lifelong Learning. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 46(1), 166–191. Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A. L. (1999). The discovery of grounded theory. Aldine Transaction. Hartong, S. (2021). The power of relation-making: Insights into the production and operation of digital school performance platforms in the US. Critical Studies in Education, 62(1), 34–49. Jasanoff, S. (2015). Dreamscapes of Modernity: Sociotechnical Imaginaries and the Fabrication of Power (S. Jasanoff & S.-H. Kim, Eds.). University of Chicago Press. Macgilchrist, F. (2019). Cruel optimism in edtech: When the digital data practices of educational technology providers inadvertently hinder educational equity. Learning, Media and Technology, 44(1), 77–86. Nivanaho, N., Lempinen, S., & Seppänen, P. (2023). Education as a co-developed commodity in Finland? A rhetorical discourse analysis on business accelerator for EdTech startups. Learning, Media and Technology, 1–15. Pink, S., Horst, H. A., Postill, J., Hjorth, L., Lewis, T., & Tacchi, J. (Eds.). (2016). Digital ethnography: Principles and practice. SAGE. Player-Koro, C., Jobér, A., & Bergviken Rensfeldt, A. (2022). De-politicised effects with networked governance? An event ethnography study on education trade fairs. Ethnography and Education, 17(1), 1–16. Ramiel, H. (2021). Edtech Disruption Logic and Policy Work: The Case of an Israeli Edtech Unit. Learning, Media and Technology, 46(1), 20–32. Suchman, L. (2006). Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions. Cambridge University Press. Troeger, J., Zakharova, I., Macgilchrist, F., & Jarke, J. (2023). Digital ist besser!? – Wie Software das Verständnis von guter Schule neu definiert (pp. 93–129). Springer VS. Weich, A., Deny, P., Priedigkeit, M., & Troeger, J. (2021). Adaptive Lernsysteme zwischen Optimierung und Kritik: Eine Analyse der Medienkonstellationen bettermarks aus informatischer und medienwissenschaftlicher Perspektive. MedienPädagogik, 44, 22–51.
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