Narrative Trajectories of Identity and Becoming in an EdTech Innovation Network (Poster 6)

• In Event: Critically Examining Space and Time in Learning and Design for More Just and Equitable Futures

Abstract

Objectives
In the face of persistent educational inequity, we must reconsider what counts and who counts as innovative with technology in school and better engage in-school actors like teachers and students as critical innovators (Authors, forthcoming). This study focuses on the case of an online/face-to-face ed-tech meetup, asking the following questions: how do interests and identities of meetup members relate to how they position themselves across space and time as innovators?

Theoretical perspectives
Here I am interested in learning as identity development that involves positioning per socially salient categories, discourses, contexts and places (Authors, 2022b; Deppermann, 2015; Gee, 2000). I also draw upon Foucault's (2008) notion of the entrepreneur of the self to understand members of the ed-tech network as subjects constantly adapting to power and value systems in a marketized neoliberal society.

Data and Method
This study focuses the pseudonymous EdTech Network and its members (“ed-techers”) as represented and organized on the meetup.com social networking platform. I take a mixed-methods (Teddlie & Tashakkori, 2009) approach to narrative analysis (Czarniawska, 2004), combining (1) using topic modeling (Blei et al., 2003) to surface latent discourses about identities and interests in member profiles with (2) and characterizing these discourses through post hoc qualitative analysis and participant observation at meetup events.

Results
Four latent discourses were used by ed-techers to describe their interests upon joining the meetup: teaching and learning, commercial career, school support and global social change. Ed-techers used seven identity discourses to describe themselves: teacher, commercial professional, mobile, connected, expert, institutional and entrepreneurial. Qualitiative analysis showed how ed-techer interests related to professional trajectories (Figure 3).

Ed-techers interested in teaching and learning, for instance—many of whom were schoolteachers—were relatively more likely to story themselves as coming from, going to, or staying in school (Panel A), and they tended to positioned themselves as learners of technology. Meanwhile, many ed-techers interested in school support storied themselves as leaving school (Panel C), often using a discourse that painted school as dysfunctional, oppressive and overly bureaucratic. Ed-techers with career commercial and global social change interests (Panels B and D) did not generally story themselves as coming from or moving to school at all. Rather, they positioned themselves outside school as knowers, designers and providers of technological solutions and services. Overall, a deep market form is visible in the corpus of meetup profile stories, where school-based actors learn and consume technology while out-of-school actors design, produce, sell and make change with technology.

Significance
Despite evidence that the meet-up does put a diversity of potential innovators (from school university, industry and non-profits) into temporal and spatial proximity, the findings reinforce prior research (Authors, forthcoming) that shows a general lack of recognition and support for in-school innovational leaders, and remind us that diversity, openness and connectedness in innovation ecosystems do not guarantee equitable engagement or outcomes. Principles for using participatory media to more reliably and persistently engage important but historically marginalized groups of innovators (like students and teachers) are proposed.

Author

• Adam Papendieck, University of Texas at Austin
  Presenting Author