Graduate Students Critically Investigating Emerging Technologies

• In Event: Educating Techno-Skeptics: Critical Approaches to Educational Technology in a Dystopian World

Abstract

The nature of teaching and learning is becoming increasingly digitized, and learning spaces are filled with technologies that are marketed with the promise to increase student motivation and learning effectiveness (Oliveria et al., 2019). As schools and institutions adopt technologies, many teachers evaluate emerging technologies at the surface level, using them in their own practice and considering ways to implement technologies with children. There is no doubt that the functions of many educational technologies can be utilized to support learning for diverse students in diverse contexts (Kumi-Yeboah et al., 2020), however, without a deep critical analysis of emerging technologies, we may not see the unseen impacts technologies can have.

Working with multiple post-graduate teacher participants in a class focused on teaching and learning with emerging technologies, we critically investigated multiple technologies. Participants chose five emerging educational technologies in which they were interested and performed an investigation. These investigations included using the technology, creating something with the technology, exploring its functions, marketing claims, and predicting the potential for disruption in the educational marketplace with a particular focus on the participants' current teaching context. The investigations then shifted toward critical analysis where each participant was tasked with investigating the history of each chosen emerging educational technology. They were then asked to analyze the ethical implications of using the technology as well as if the use of this technology could be done equitably.

This portion of the panel presentation will share participants’ conclusions about particular technologies as well as their perspectives on their critical inquiry. Adding a technoskeptic (Krutka et al., 2020) lens to teacher investigations is an essential element of teacher training and in working with post-graduate teacher leaders, we must allow space for dialogue and critical analysis of the technologies that are used in classrooms including creating space for purposeful investigations of neoliberal market-based approaches to technology adoption. I situate my perspective in the practical connection between theory and practice realizing that teachers, even master teachers seeking terminal degrees, must be allowed space to process their conceptions and perspectives. Without this space and encouragement, we will not be able to address systemic social issues in tech integration (Kimmons, 2020).

References

Kimmons, R. (2020). Current trends (and missing links) in educational technology research and practice. TechTrends, 64(6), 803-809.

Kumi-Yeboah, A., Kim, Y., Sallar, A. M., & Kiramba, L. K. (2020). Exploring the Use of Digital Technologies from the Perspective of Diverse Learners in Online Learning Environments. Online Learning, 24(4), 42-63.

Oliveira, A., Feyzi Behnagh, R., Ni, L., Mohsinah, A. A., Burgess, K. J., & Guo, L. (2019). Emerging technologies as pedagogical tools for teaching and learning science: A literature review. Human Behavior and Emerging Technologies, 1(2), 149-160.

Author

• Jason Trumble, University of Central Arkansas