Session Information
16 SES 08 A, Digital Governance, EdTech and Behaviour Modification
Paper Session
Contribution
In recent decades, there has been a major change in the education technology field, as more and more high-tech companies, including start-ups, enter the educational technology arena, previously dominated by big publishers and non-profit organizations. A large portion of the EdTech sector is profit-driven and sees the educational field as a potential market (Williamson, 2017). The discussion on technology and education has been characterized by cycles of hype, hope, and disappointment (Gouseti, 2010). The rise of the EdTech industry in the education field has been accompanied by a similar hopeful discourse about its potential to disrupt and fix the educational system (Selwyn, 2016). Is it another cycle? This question motivated us to examine what pedagogical change(s) EdTech companies offer to schools and to what extent these changes are linked to the pedagogical changes required in the education system as described in the literature.
Educational researchers and leading agencies state that owing to trends of digitalism, globalism, and aspirations towards a knowledge society, life in the 21st century involves new challenges (e.g., growing need for innovation and knowledge creation) (Law 2014; OECD, 2018; Tan et al., 2021). Therefore, today’s students must develop certain skills, orientations, and competencies, often termed 21st-century skills (National Research Council, 2012).
Moreover, educational researchers and agencies state that the educational system should undergo a transformative change towards learner-centered pedagogies. This is imperative because the prevailing teacher-centered instruction in schools is deemed inadequate for fostering 21st-century skills among students (Bremner et al., 2022; Tan et al., 2021; OECD, 2018).
Learner-centeredness is not merely about students being active during the lesson, but rather, it is about students being involved in decision-making about their learning in dialogue with peers and the teacher, metaphorically co-writing the script of their learning with the teachers. In contrast, in teacher-centered pedagogy, teachers write the learning script: they control every aspect of the educational situation (Ben-David Kolikant, 2019; Bremner et al., 2022; Gutierrez et al., 1995).
According to Law (2014), who reviewed empirical studies related to pedagogical innovation and change, another important dimension to consider when analyzing pedagogical innovation and change is the role students, teachers, and technology will play, and their closeness to teacher-centered and learner-centered practice.
Finally, learner-centered pedagogies feature high curricular flexibility. Namely a certain degree of freedom for students to make decisions and co-write their learning scripts and the freedom required for teachers to support the diverse needs that emerge as students undergo these learning processes (Bremner et al., 2022).
This transformative change towards learner-centered pedagogies means restructuring educational goals and a dramatic change in teachers and students' roles and responsibilities (Law 2014; OECD 2018). Such a change can be classified as a second-order change, a term that refers to cases where the system itself undergoes a change that involves restructuring the goals, procedures, and boundaries of the system. In contrast, first-order change refers to cases where there is a change in the way procedures are carried out in a given system, but the system itself and the essence of these procedures remain the same (Ertmer, 2005; Watzlawick et al., 1974). Technology can support and sustain a second-order change towards learner-centeredness (Ertmer, 2005; Law, 2014; OECD, 2018).
We examined EdTech companies that offer pedagogically-oriented products for K-12 formal education from a pedagogical perspective. Data sources were the websites of all companies that presented at the ASU+GSV summit, 2018. Comparing each product’s description against learner-centered pedagogy principles, we revealed that only a few companies aim at second-order change. The majority aim at middle-order change, within which one component of traditional teacher-centered pedagogy is broken, yet the essence of teacher-centeredness is preserved.
Method
We examined all the 368 companies that presented at the ASU+GSV summit in May 2018. We chose this sample because: (a) The ASU+GSV summit is one of the main and most prestigious conferences in the EdTech industry, which gathers investors, entrepreneurs, and educational policymakers from around the world (asugsvsummit.com, 2018). Every year, the conference appears on the list of main industry conventions in Ed-Surge magazine and other magazines such as Forbes, and it has a large number of attendees: over 4000 each year. (b) The companies participating in the conference have not necessarily implemented their product in schools on a wide scale but have already gained the interest of investors and the summit organizers and therefore can be considered industry representatives. We conducted a content analysis of the information presented on each company's website (Skalski, Neuendorf & Cajigas, 2017). Our focus was on companies that offer K-12 pedagogical tools. Out of 368 companies, 66 matched these criteria. These companies' websites were analyzed. We first coded the learning subject(s) the product is intended to be used. Then we characterized the product against the principles of learner-centered pedagogies as described in the literature (e.g., Law, 2014). Specifically, three dimensions were analyzed: who is the scriptwriter, the level of freedom the scriptwriter has, and what is the teacher’s role. The categories in each dimension span an axis, where the category at the lowest level denotes teacher-centeredness and the highest learner-centeredness. We also analyzed the rationale companies present for the necessity of their product in their own language. Three dimensions emerged out of the analysis: Reasons given by the companies; Pedagogical concepts used to describe the product; and Emotional terms describing the use of the product in the classroom.
Expected Outcomes
About a fifth of the companies (13 companies) offer products supporting first-order pedagogical change, and another fifth (14 companies) promote second-order pedagogical change. Most of these companies offer products for programming and science teaching. Most companies (59%), however, could not be labelled as promoting first- or second-order change. These products provided the students with limited autonomy over the learning script, enabling them to choose a fixed script from a fixed inventory or work on a task at their own pace. Teachers are often provided with dashboards to regulate students’ progress. These products leave most control over the learning script in the teachers’ hands. Namely, a component of traditional pedagogy is broken, yet traditional pedagogy is maintained in essence. We thus conclude that these products offer middle-order change, defined as a change that “represents a compromise; the magnitude of change is greater than [the] first-order change, yet it neither affects the critical success factors nor is strategic in nature.” (Golembiewski et al., 1976, as quoted in Lorenzi and Riley 2000, 119). These findings are discordant with the importance education ministries and policy organizations worldwide ascribe to 21st-century skills and the place of these skills on their agenda (for example, OECD, 2018). Moreover, the companies’ statements regarding the pedagogy their product supports do not align with the relatively small number of products we identified as promoting leaner-centeredness. Our findings put up a warning sign regarding the expectations from the EdTech industry and place the responsibility on the client, the education system, to define how to change transformatively. We should be aware of "mechanic perception" (Fois & Barak, 2016), by which the mere idea of implementing EdTech products is positive unto itself.
References
Asugsvsummit.com. (2018) About. Retrieved from - http://www.asugsvsummit.com/about/summit-details Ben-David Kolikant, Y. (2019). Adapting school to the twenty-first century: Educators' perspectives. Technology, Pedagogy, and Education, 28(3), 287-299. Bremner, N., Sakata, N., & Cameron, L. (2022). The outcomes of learner-centred pedagogy: A systematic review. International Journal of Educational Development, 94, 102649. Ertmer, P. A. (2005). Teacher pedagogical beliefs: The final frontier in our quest for technology integration?. Educational technology research and development, 53(4), 25-39. Fois Y. & Barak Y. (2016). Teacher education in the maze of pedagogical innovation. Tel Aviv: Mofet Institute (In Hebrew). Gouseti, A. (2010). Web 2.0 and education: not just another case of hype, hope and disappointment?. Learning, Media and Technology, 35(3), 351-356. Law, N. (2014) Comparing pedagogical innovations. In Comparative education research: Approaches and methods, pp. 333-364. Cham: Springer International Publishing. Lorenzi, N. M., & Riley, R. T. (2000). Managing change: an overview. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 7(2), 116-124. National Research Council. (2012). Education for life and work: Developing transferable knowledge and skills in the 21st century. National Academies Press. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). (2018). The future of education and skills: Education 2030. OECD Education Working Papers. OECD Publishing, Paris. Ramiel, H. (2021). Edtech disruption logic and policy work: The case of an Israeli edtech unit. Learning, Media and Technology, 46(1), 20-32. Selwyn, N. (2016). Is technology good for education?. John Wiley & Sons. Skalski, P., Neuendorf, K., and Cajigas (2016) Content Analysis in the Interactive Media Age.In K. Neuendorf (Ed.), The content analysis guidebook. (pp 201-242). Sage. Tan, S. C., Chan, C., Bielaczyc, K., Ma, L., Scardamalia, M., & Bereiter, C. (2021). Knowledge building: Aligning education with needs for knowledge creation in the digital age. Educational Technology Research and Development, 1-24. Watzlawick, P., Weakland, J. H., & Fisch, R. (1974). Change: Principles of problem formation and problem resolution. WW Norton & Company. Williamson, B. (2017). Educating Silicon Valley: Corporate education reform and the reproduction of the techno-economic revolution. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 39(3), 265-288. Wu, Y. C. J., Huang, S., Kuo, L., & Wu, W. H. (2010). Management education for sustainability: A web-based content analysis. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 9(3), 520-531. Zhao, Y. (2018). Personalizable education for greatness. Kappa Delta Pi Record, 54(3), 109-115.
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