Raising Critical Technology Consciousness

• In Event: Civic Learning With, Within, and Against Digital Platforms

Abstract

We have often described the work of our public-facing online network of civic technology scholarship and resources as seeking to raise critical thinking around technology to ensure more just futures. We start with a recognition that, “Technologies are not neutral and neither are the societies into which they are introduced,” and continue with the question, “As technology continues encroaching in our lives, how can we advance technology education for just futures?” Our initial work has consisted of curriculum development, hosting book clubs, and an annual conference. In our scholarship, we sought to help students grow in their technoskeptical knowledge, skills, and dispositions as a goal (e.g., Author, 2022; Author, 2023). Through the larger project, we have been fortunate to meet many people who held concerns about the effects of technologies in and out of schools. We started to wonder, how did they come to develop critical consciousness about technology?

In this session, we will report findings from our study of how educators participating in the network came to critical technology consciousness. Our work is informed by the literature on critical consciousness rooted in the work of Paolo Freire (1970, 1973). That body of scholarship has examined how people, including teachers and students, develop an awareness of issues of social justice as well as tools for taking meaningful action on those issues (e.g., Diemer & Li, 2011; Paccione, 2000; Watts et al., 2011). Developing awareness is of particular interest for us, given that many important effects of technology on society are hidden from view. This is especially the case for digital platform technologies, which many assume to be neutral spaces for communication.

In our study, we invited scholars and educators involved with the project to share their stories of coming to critical technology consciousness via short written narratives. We then conducted follow-up interviews with a subset of participants to further understand their stories. Using those data sources, we sought to answer the questions: 1) How do our participants conceptualize taking a critical perspective on technology? 2) What types of experiences led our participants to develop critical perspectives on technology? We used inductive qualitative analysis methods (Merriam, 2009; Miles et al., 2020) to identify major themes that emerged across our participants’ stories. In our session, we will share preliminary findings from this work and identify educational implications. We will highlight common formative experiences our participants shared that can potentially serve as educational tools for raising critical technology consciousness. We will also relate our findings to the specific puzzle of teaching with and about digital platform technologies.

Authors

• Daniel G. Krutka, University of North Texas

• Marie K. Heath, Loyola University Maryland

• Jacob Pleasants, University of Oklahoma