Technology, Education, and Capitalism in the 21st Century

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

This panel presents a series of papers that consider the relationships among technology, education, and capitalism in the 21st century. The use of educational technologies in schooling and higher education has rapidly grown over the past two decades. The COVID-19 pandemic and the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) have further accelerated the use of digital products and systems in schools and universities throughout the world.

Despite technocratic narratives of how digital tools can promote innovation and improvement, these products are created and operationalized by specific actors. Across the technology industry, some of these actors include: tech entrepreneurs who found companies; individual engineers who design the products and service solutions; high net-worth individuals (HNWI) and the business organisations that they found and lead; and venture capital firms who invest in the products and services that come to market.

These various actors hold particular world views, sensibilities and goals of reforming education according to their unique institutional or personal agendas and domain expertise, often working from a techno-determinist perspective and within technological constraints. Their distinct donor and institutional agendas can enhance scale and innovation, but they can also limit transparency and undermine accountability in relation to both actions and outcomes (Patil & Brakman Reiser, 2020).

Their influences imply changes in education governance, understood as both the structural organization of education, which connects actors, groups and institutions in uneven networks, and also as the techniques, concepts and practical tools used to shape human action, decision making, and conduct (Rose, 1999, Williamson, 2016). Navigating education dynamics today requires analysis of these new actors, methods, logics and sensibilities of governance that wield influence over digital platforms and products, and the ways in which these dynamics are constituted through historical and present-day power relations of white supremacy, patriarchy, heteronormativity, among other power relations. The papers specifically highlight how these new dynamics and power relations are being enacted in Global South countries, and how they concern Global North/South relations.

The first paper examines, from a comparative regionalist lens, how the EU’s use and leverage of its emerging AI regulatory framework may be perceived as an imposition on other regions with which the EU has long-standing donor-recipient relationships, such as the Caribbean Community (CARICOM).

The second paper will look at Microsoft as a political and non-state actor advocating for, and inspiring change in, educational leadership in the Global South. Grounded in the politics of education borrowing and lending, the analysis will reflect upon the trade-offs of technology industry agendas in advocating theories of educational leadership and address the potential implications for systems of public.

The third paper analyses EdTech networks in Brazil, identifying central organizations with diverse backgrounds, such as major tech corporations, startups, investors, philanthropic entities, as well as peripheral alternatives that search for democratic and participatory uses of technology in education. The study aims to explore the various types of organizations, their interrelationships, and their participation in transnational networks of education governance and digitalization.

The fourth paper draws on theories of racialized and gendered political economy to examine the uneven geographies and networks of venture capital investments in education in the Global South using quantitative and qualitative data.

Works Cited

Rose, N. (1999). Powers of freedom: Reframing political thought. Cambridge university press.

Williamson, B. (2016). Digital education governance: data visualization, predictive analytics, and ‘real-time’policy instruments. Journal of education policy, 31(2), 123-141.

Sub Unit

• 21st Century Educational Alternatives: Confronting Racial Capitalism, Patriarchy, Militarism, and the Climate Crisis

Organizer

• Kathryn Moeller, University of Cambridge

Chair

• Kathryn Moeller, University of Cambridge

Individual Presentations

• The global reach of European Union’s emerging artificial intelligence policy in education: Examining the impact on its global partners - tavis d jules, Loyola University Chicago; Florin D Salajan, North Dakota State University

• Innovation, Transformation and Education Governance: Technology Industry Agendas in School Contexts - Lara Patil, NORRAG

• Mapping the Digital Education Landscape in Brazil: EdTech networks, actors, and power dynamics - Marina Avelar, Federal University of Minas Gerais

Discussant

• Stephen P Heyneman, Comparative-Education.com