Parallel session 3 (25th May) Digital Education Governance Beyond International Comparative Assessment
From Claire Sowton
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Chair: Nelli Piattoeva
“Worlds of education”: How to Grasp the Politics and Pedagogies of Algorithmic Sorting in School Education?
Ken Horvath (University of Education Zürich) and Mario Steinberg (University of Basel)
Artificial intelligence has recently moved center stage in debates on digital education. Corporate and political actors routinely argue that AI-based technologies will enhance educational equity and quality. In contrast, critical scholars underline the possible detrimental and discriminatory effects of algorithmic black-boxes. Attempts at clarifying these possible effects, however, face the challenge that the formation of these technologies intertwines the political and the pedagogical in novel and often opaque ways. Inspired by French pragmatic sociology, we propose the notion of “worlds of education” as a key heuristic for disentangling these dynamics. “Worlds of education” denote specific ways of imagining, organizing, realizing, and evaluating educational practices that have been developed and institutionalized over time. They are hence both (i) heavily informed by prevailing political and moral orders and (ii) deeply ingrained in everyday pedagogical situations. For involved actors, they provide strategic resources for designing, implementing, and assessing the role of algorithmic sorting in ways that seem feasible, adequate, and legitimate. We sketch the contours of this concept in three steps: First, we identify plurality as a crucial challenge for researching configurations of digital education governance – there are always several widely accepted and powerful understandings of what makes “good and fair” education that actors employ when envisioning and enacting new technologies. Second, we outline possible strategies for grasping plural understandings in empirical research. Finally, we discuss ways in which the idea of “worlds of education” can advance dialogue between critical scholarship and actors in the technological, political, and pedagogical field.
Ken Horvath (University of Education Zürich) and Mario Steinberg (University of Basel)
Artificial intelligence has recently moved center stage in debates on digital education. Corporate and political actors routinely argue that AI-based technologies will enhance educational equity and quality. In contrast, critical scholars underline the possible detrimental and discriminatory effects of algorithmic black-boxes. Attempts at clarifying these possible effects, however, face the challenge that the formation of these technologies intertwines the political and the pedagogical in novel and often opaque ways. Inspired by French pragmatic sociology, we propose the notion of “worlds of education” as a key heuristic for disentangling these dynamics. “Worlds of education” denote specific ways of imagining, organizing, realizing, and evaluating educational practices that have been developed and institutionalized over time. They are hence both (i) heavily informed by prevailing political and moral orders and (ii) deeply ingrained in everyday pedagogical situations. For involved actors, they provide strategic resources for designing, implementing, and assessing the role of algorithmic sorting in ways that seem feasible, adequate, and legitimate. We sketch the contours of this concept in three steps: First, we identify plurality as a crucial challenge for researching configurations of digital education governance – there are always several widely accepted and powerful understandings of what makes “good and fair” education that actors employ when envisioning and enacting new technologies. Second, we outline possible strategies for grasping plural understandings in empirical research. Finally, we discuss ways in which the idea of “worlds of education” can advance dialogue between critical scholarship and actors in the technological, political, and pedagogical field.
Digital Ethnography in Search of Digital Education Governance
Antti Paakkari (Tampere University)
Antti Paakkari (Tampere University)
This presentation examines the possibilities of researching digital education governance on the ground-level of the school, through means of digital ethnography. As various ed-tech solutions are mobilized into the school everyday, how can we gain an understanding of their workings and the ways in which they are entangled in school life? Through the development of two methodic approaches, the presentation searches for possibilities for research methods that are able to navigate the borderlands between school, home, public and market spaces where the digitalization of education currently unfolds. The first experiment involves following the Covid-19 distance school days of upper secondary school students with portable video cameras; the second tracing the entanglements of upper secondary school students’ mobile phone use during school days by creating a closed wi-fi network inside the school enabling the students to share their phone screens with researchers. By following the entanglements of new technologies and schooling, we can gain insight into the marketisation of public education and the growing influence of global digital platforms seeking to strengthen their foothold in schools. Drawing inspiration from the works of Anna Tsing and Deleuze & Guattari, the article discusses the possibilities and challenges of researching these new emerging school assemblages and entanglements.
Learning Analytics as Modes of Anticipation: Enacting Temporalities in Actor-Networks
Ida Martinez Lunde (University of Oslo)
Learning analytics platforms (LAPs) have become important modes of anticipatory governance in education. Educational futures are governed by LAPs by tracking student data over time, suggesting school practitioners are expected to improve school quality by engaging with digital representations of prediction, anticipation, and decision-making. This study empirically investigates two Norwegian LAP’s as they unfold in school leaders’ mundane practice: Conexus Engage and Conexus Insight. The aim of the study is twofold: firstly, I aim to examine enactments of anticipation that unfold in relations between the school leaders and the LAPs, and secondly, I aim to problematize traditional understandings of time in educational research. Analytically and methodologically, the study draws from actor-network theory. The empirical material consists of screen-recorded interviews with school leaders at three lower secondary schools in Norway. As such, this study offers empirical insight into digital actors, as well as displaying analytical and methodological protocols to study digital education governance. The enactments showed various temporalities in the relations between the school leaders and the LAPs: the past, present and future were juxtaposed and emerged conjointly, rather than chronologically. This suggested time emerged on the premises of the LAPs. Furthermore, the actor-networks showed how anticipation became both fluid and stable, and how it actively steered the problematizations, priorities and solutions in leadership tasks. In this sense, Conexus Engage and Conexus Insight became indispensable for the school leaders in this study.
Ida Martinez Lunde (University of Oslo)
Learning analytics platforms (LAPs) have become important modes of anticipatory governance in education. Educational futures are governed by LAPs by tracking student data over time, suggesting school practitioners are expected to improve school quality by engaging with digital representations of prediction, anticipation, and decision-making. This study empirically investigates two Norwegian LAP’s as they unfold in school leaders’ mundane practice: Conexus Engage and Conexus Insight. The aim of the study is twofold: firstly, I aim to examine enactments of anticipation that unfold in relations between the school leaders and the LAPs, and secondly, I aim to problematize traditional understandings of time in educational research. Analytically and methodologically, the study draws from actor-network theory. The empirical material consists of screen-recorded interviews with school leaders at three lower secondary schools in Norway. As such, this study offers empirical insight into digital actors, as well as displaying analytical and methodological protocols to study digital education governance. The enactments showed various temporalities in the relations between the school leaders and the LAPs: the past, present and future were juxtaposed and emerged conjointly, rather than chronologically. This suggested time emerged on the premises of the LAPs. Furthermore, the actor-networks showed how anticipation became both fluid and stable, and how it actively steered the problematizations, priorities and solutions in leadership tasks. In this sense, Conexus Engage and Conexus Insight became indispensable for the school leaders in this study.
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