A new peer-reviewed article published Dec. 1 in Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education (CITE) warns that many of the technologies being integrated into classrooms and training teachers to use them could be perpetuating injustices.
According to the researchers, a combination of U.S. policy, “big tech” influence, the inclusion of technology into teaching standards, and the acceleration of technology use during the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a rapid and relatively uncritical adoption of educational technologies. This is occurring, the researchers say, without proper consideration of power, privilege, and prejudice embedded within the technologies.
The article, “Confronting the Tools of the Oppressor: Framing Just Technology Integration in Educational Technology and Teacher Education,” explores the ways in which technology is often misunderstood or overgeneralized in educational settings.
“Throughout history, educational technology has been used like a tool, like a black box. We may have this assumption that it’s for good, but it’s not always for good,” said Dr. Natalie Milman, professor of educational technology at the George Washington University and co-author of the study. “Technology [has] challenges, and it can do harm.”
The paper calls out a number of areas deserving of greater attention and discourse within the education landscape, including:
- How U.S. policy’s emphasis on technology for purposes of defense and capitalism have shaped a push toward educational technology in classrooms and permeated national teaching standards and teacher education;
- Big tech’s privatization of educational technology and the power it wields in molding pedagogical practices in a way that disenfranchises and de-professionalizes educators;
- The proliferation of surveillance technologies in educational technologies and the danger of cultivating a pedagogy that echoes prisons more than schools;
- The staying power of technologies adopted into classrooms during the pandemic that did not undergo traditional vetting and critical questioning used to make these changes in the classroom;
- The techno-solutionist determinism that has crept into and planted itself in the discourse around “bridging the digital divide."
The authors recommend several approaches to work toward greater integration of “just technology” into classrooms.
Additional authors of the paper include Jessa Henderson, a doctoral student at GW; Marie Heath, Assistant Professor of Educational Technology at Loyola University Maryland; and Sumreen Asim, Assistant Professor of Elementary Science and Technology at Indiana University Southeast.
The full article is available on CITE. To schedule an interview with Dr. Milman, please contact Assistant Director of GW Media Relations Julia Metjian at [email protected].
-GW-