Analyzing the expansion of the EdTech sector in Chile: recent strategies to enter into the public education system

• In Event: The Politics of EdTech: Exploring the changing conditions of educational governance in the age of technocapitalism (Part I)

Proposal

In recent decades, digital technologies and infrastructures have been adopted in countries from both the Global North and the Global South (OECD, 2015). In the case of the Global South, recent research shows that transnational technology corporations have increased their engagement in educational development following variegated institutional logics and rationales (Patil, 2023). During the pandemic crisis, EdTech companies have gained greater centrality in the education sector, playing a fundamental role in aspects as diverse as teachers' professional learning (Lewis, 2022), school management (Barros Farhat & Gonçalves, 2022), communication between families (Moyano-Dávila et al. 2023) and contact between parents and teachers (Chen & Rivera-Vernazza, 2023). In this way, digital platforms have become crucial in both the governance of education (Wilkins & Olmedo, 2018) and in the development of pedagogical practices (Sefton-Green, 2022). Thus, this article aims to analyze the network of actors involved in the platformization of the Chilean school system and the role of private technology corporations in this ecosystem.

Theoretically, the paper combines literature on education governance and contributions from the cultural political economy approach. Regarding the methods, three sources were triangulated: i) 22 semi-structured interviews with key actors and policymakers which were analyzed following a thematic analysis approach, ii) a database of startups in the EdTech sector in Chile analyzed through a quantitative descriptive analysis, and iii) a systematization of the main digital education policies implemented in the country. This article provides a better understanding of how the process of platforming and digitalization of education has developed in Chile, a country characterized by having one of the most privatized and commoditized education systems in the world. Likewise, it also allows us to contrast the growing expansion of the EdTech market in the country, to understand the reasons behind it, and to understand the main networks and actors involved in the process. In this sense, the provision of technological services and infrastructure has developed through a heterarchical (Ball, 2009) and poorly coordinated network of actors, which has allowed the heterogeneous growth of EdTech as central actors, both in management and in school learning, through multiple platforms and devices and whose central focus is the students' experiences, understanding schools many times as obstacles to student achievement. In this context, it is clear not only that the State has lost its centrality and initiative but also that there is a growing process of privatization of educational policy that influence the meaning, perspective, and characteristics of educational platformization in the face of a dispersed and internally differentiated State.

Authors

• Cristobal Villalobos, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile

• Lluís Parcerisa, University of Barcelona

• Sebastian Pereira, CEPPE UC