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

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

This double symposium aims to bring together critical perspectives on the politics of EdTech and its implications for studies of educational governance in comparative and international education. Combining case studies from Brazil, Egypt, Germany, Denmark, Portugal, Chile, the UK and the US with conceptual perspectives on the changing conditions of educational governance and analyses of EdTech business practices, the symposium seeks to expand our understanding of how EdTech comes to matter in different ways and across different spaces as a force driving political change and reconfigurations of public values.
The critical impetus underpinning the symposium’s contributions stand in contrast to popular framings of EdTech companies as disruptive saviors that drive personalization, monitor student progress, or enable access to teaching resources. Situated in an emerging body of research loosely gathered under the moniker of critical studies of EdTech, scholars have problematized the assumptions of neutrality and growth couched in dominant narratives of EdTech as a revolutionizing force with limitless possibilities of use (Williamson, 2017; Macgilchrist, 2021). Through different methodological approaches, studies have challenged the abstractive tendencies of technological solutionism as a way of glossing over the deep-seated inequalities and power distributions that sit within public education. Instead, they have drawn attention to the specific networks of servers, codes, infrastructures, cables, platforms, experts, aesthetics, professional communities, cultural stereotypes, business models, and investment funds that are all enacted when students open a Google Chromebook, send photos to classmates through Snapchat, or hand in assignments on ClassDojo (Ideland, 2021; Manolev et al., 2020). Probing such enactments also involves explorations of how the dynamics of EdTech concern and reinforce particular Global North/South relations (Avelar and Patil, 2020, 2023).

Anchored in the suggestion that the process of digitizing education ‘needs to be understood as part of a broader expansion of the digital economy’ (Komljenovic, 2020, p. 15), the empirical concerns raised across this scholarship are closely tied to broader perspectives and concepts drawn from the political economy of digital capitalism (Birch, 2020; Birch & Muniesa, 2020; Srnicek, 2016; Zuboff, 2019). Central to these approaches is an attention to the broader dynamics and logics shaping how the practices, promises, and usage of EdTech in concrete educational settings emerge in ways that often position them as instruments that can be folded into different pedagogical ambitions. Whether looking at the organizational practices of EdTech companies, their imbrication in historically situated school settings, or the heterarchical networks that support them, political economy approaches emphasize the entanglements between EdTech practices materialize and the political economy of the landscape they operate in. Completing other lines of critique of EdTech from ethical or organizational viewpoints, these approaches reflect Winner’s (2009, p. 589) crucial observation that “very often, new educational technologies are promoted not because there is any well-conceived idea about their value in teaching and learning, but because they offer an attractive market for vendors and because educators want to appear fully up to date.” This includes questioning not only how EdTech business logics and products change what it means to learn, to teach, and to be a student, but also inquire into the political conditions, economic-political networks, infrastructures, and other material structures, discourses, or atmospheres that sustain them and give urgency to their promises (Wilkins & Olmedo, 2018; Williamson & Hogan, 2021).

As we discuss across this symposium, one of the key issues raised in political economy studies of EdTech is an attention to the economic dimensions of their involvement as drivers of new forms of privatization and commercialization in public education. While the initial introduction and funding of educational technologies was in large part carried forth by the neoliberal state (improving efficiency in public service delivery through technological fixes, providing individuals with more flexibility, enhancing possibilities for documenting interventions), recent studies suggest a shift in the dynamics of how EdTech operates within public education as public sector governance becomes increasingly reliant on their capacities (Cone & Brøgger, 2021; Cone & Lai, forthcoming). As discussed in the emerging literature on assetization and rentiership in education (Candido et al., 2024; Decuypere et al., 2024), the ongoing shifts in the internal role and practices of EdTech in public education can be seen to reflect the broader political economic shift from economies of production to economies of rent – in turn generating new forms of infrastructural lock-ins of public sector capacities in privately owned products and services (Kerssens & Van Dijck, 2022). With this symposium, we wish to propose the importance of maintaining attention to both the political conditions as well as the economic logics of EdTech as part of the ongoing critique of EdTech, hereby complementing existing studies probing their positive or negative configurations of educational relationalities.

Sub Unit

• Globalization & Education SIG

Organizer

• Lara Patil, NORRAG

Chairs

• Lucas Cone, University of Copenhagen

• Lluís Parcerisa, University of Barcelona

Individual Presentations

• EdTech governance: education policy, power and politics in the era of technocapitalism - Lluís Parcerisa, University of Barcelona; Lucas Cone, University of Copenhagen

• Challenging the Promises of EdTech: A critical analysis of the promises made by an AI EdTech Startup - Julie Lüpkes, Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg

• Analyzing the expansion of the EdTech sector in Chile: recent strategies to enter into the public education system - Cristobal Villalobos, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile; Lluís Parcerisa, University of Barcelona; Sebastian Pereira, CEPPE UC

• EdTech and philanthropy enactment in Portuguese public schools - Erika Moreira Martins, Instituto de Educação, Universidade de Lisboa

Discussant

• Marina Avelar, Federal University of Minas Gerais and NORRAG