TY - JOUR

T1 - Re-imagining Digital Technology in Education through Critical and Neo-materialist Insights

AU - Pischetola, Magda

PY - 2021

Y1 - 2021

N2 - Technological determinism, techno-solutionism and instrumental perspectives on technologies have populated educational research literature in the last decades, and even more since the pandemic crisis has started. This essay offers a critique about simplistic explanations of technology adoption in pedagogy by using insights from critical philosophy of technology and feminist new materialism. It rejects the assumption of teachers’ resistance to change and proposes a frame to expand future imaginaries of education. In this sense, critical studies provide a focus on human activity as interconnected with social and situated knowledges/practices. The emphasis is on recursive relations that allow educational researchers and practitioners to take into account the considerable complexity of digital technologies pedagogical adoption. On the other hand, feminist new materialism brings about a new focus on relational ontology, which adds to the critical theoretical framework the agentic element. By overcoming a binary way of seeing technologies through utopias and dystopias, new materialist studies focus on ethics and responsibility. We argue that we need both a critical and a neo-materialist view, in order to adopt technologies in education in meaningful, productive and creative ways. Building on small narratives and possible utopias can take us to re-design and re-interprete the future of educational technologies.

AB - Technological determinism, techno-solutionism and instrumental perspectives on technologies have populated educational research literature in the last decades, and even more since the pandemic crisis has started. This essay offers a critique about simplistic explanations of technology adoption in pedagogy by using insights from critical philosophy of technology and feminist new materialism. It rejects the assumption of teachers’ resistance to change and proposes a frame to expand future imaginaries of education. In this sense, critical studies provide a focus on human activity as interconnected with social and situated knowledges/practices. The emphasis is on recursive relations that allow educational researchers and practitioners to take into account the considerable complexity of digital technologies pedagogical adoption. On the other hand, feminist new materialism brings about a new focus on relational ontology, which adds to the critical theoretical framework the agentic element. By overcoming a binary way of seeing technologies through utopias and dystopias, new materialist studies focus on ethics and responsibility. We argue that we need both a critical and a neo-materialist view, in order to adopt technologies in education in meaningful, productive and creative ways. Building on small narratives and possible utopias can take us to re-design and re-interprete the future of educational technologies.

KW - Critical theory

KW - Feminist new materialism

KW - Digital technologies

KW - Education

KW - Imaginaries

U2 - https://doi.org/10.1344/der.2021.40.154-171

DO - https://doi.org/10.1344/der.2021.40.154-171

M3 - Journal article

VL - 40

SP - 154

JO - Digital Education Review

JF - Digital Education Review

SN - 2013-9144

IS - 2

ER -