Parallel session 3 (26th May) Digital Education Governance Beyond International Comparative Assessment
From Claire Sowton
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*Please note: captions are still to be reviewed. We anticipate this work being complete by Aug 22*
Chair: Paolo LandriInvestigating the ‘Private’ in the Digital Education Field: Imaginaries and Precarity in Educational Provisioning in India
Anurag Shukla (Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad)
Supported by favourable policies such as Digital India, Start-up India, Make in India, and Smart Cities that conceptualized technology as a problem-solving ‘silver bullet’, the Digital Education has grown exponentially, attracting a number of players who are actively shaping Indian educational discourse and practice. Globally, the rise of the Digital Education has been accompanied by the growth of the market in education. Working alongside the dispersed policy networks, and the discourse of ‘disruption’, the interests driving Digital Education have proposed an alternative form of educational provisioning where educational services are produced, exchanged and consumed on a for-profit basis, especially through supra-national interactions. Such a form, underpinned by a global education industry, a favourable international policy environment, and transnational sources of influence, has paved the way for longer-term transformation of education systems, institutions and practices, including the repositioning of teachers in an ever-changing educational labour market. In the context of this reimagining and reconfiguring of education, this paper proposes to investigate the constitution of the Digital Education field in India by examining the dynamics shaping it at the discourse level, organizational level and the level of individual teachers. More specifically, using a critical discourse analysis approach, and the key concept of corporatization, the study seeks to analyze the social relationships, identities and figured worlds that emerge from the network of discourse patterns in the Digital Education Field. The possible counter-narratives to these dominant forms of imaginaries and practices are explored to trace the discursive constructions between the organizational field and the practice field. Finally, the concepts of ‘precarity’, ‘deprofessionalization’, and ‘gig academia’ are used to locate teachers and teaching within the fast-growing Digital Education field in India. Selected Digital Education players and teachers will be interviewed to understand how the Digital Education and its logic get materialized in everyday lives. In addition, secondary data on the Digital Education field will be studied. The proposed study seeks to contribute to theory-building by providing a critical perspective on the political economy of the Digital Education in India, and how the work of teachers is currently organized.
In/equalities in Digital Education Policy – Problem Representations from three World Regions
Felix Büchner (Georg Eckert Institute), Patricia Ferrante (Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales Argentina), Svea Kiesewetter (University of Gothenburg), Godfrey Chitsauko Muyambi (University of South Africa), Chinaza Uleanya (University of South Africa) and Federico Williams (Instituto Politécnico Nacional México)
The interplay of digital practices and social, educational, and economic inequalities are increasingly discussed in contemporary research on media technologies and digital cultures (Richterich & Abend, 2019). This body of research focuses on different forms of ‘digital divides’ – inequalities between different social constellations concerning the access to, the usage of and the outcomes from the use of media technologies (van Dijk, 2020). These socio-digital inequalities (Helsper 2021) are often addressed as a ‘problem’ that societies should face to enable a more just and equal life for their members. However, a cross-country and multi-voiced perspective on how socio-digital inequalities are conceptualized in education governance is missing. We – an international research group with teams in Argentina, Botswana, Germany, Mexico, South Africa, and Sweden – therefore ask: how are socio-digital inequalities represented as a ‘problem’ in education governance around the world? For our contribution to the conference, we conducted an analysis of digital education policy documents in our respective contexts as part of the research project RED (‘Reconfigurations of educational In/Equalities in a Digital World’). With a focus on ‘problem representations’ (Bacchi 2012) in supranational, national, federal, municipal, and commercial policy documents we unpack and present differences and similarities of problem narratives to paint a multi-layered picture of contemporary digital education governance in relation to inequalities.
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