Page 161 - Education in a Digital World

148 So Where Now?

perhaps most apparent in the various ways in which digital technologies are being aligned
with the presumed ‘twenty-first-century skill’ demands of the knowledge economy
and the implicit need to (re)produce the “differently literate and differently orientated
workers” necessary for contemporary economic success (Apple 2010, p.32). In this
sense, many aspects of educational technology provision and practice are driven by
the efforts of various organisations to ensure that individual nations and individual
citizens become and/or remain enrolled in the contemporary economic order.
Yet we should not reduce our analysis of educational technology wholly to an eco-
nomic determinism. The past seven chapters have also suggested that the politics of
educational technology are concerned with a range of issues beyond economic compe-
titiveness and the upskilling of workforces. This book has also highlighted, for example,
links between educational technology and the commercial pursuit of profit, as well as
government concerns over international relations and the construction of national
cultural identities. Often the influence of these factors on educational technology is less
obvious than the explicit concerns of skill levels and national economic fortunes, yet is
no less significant. In this sense, one of the least obvious (but certainly one of the most
important) observations that has recurred throughout this book relates to the use of
educational technology to ‘leverage’ neo-liberal dispositions and a free-market mentality
into the minds and actions of national governments and individual citizens alike. It could
be argued, therefore, that many of the examples considered in this book articulate closely
with neo-liberal values such as self-interest, individual freedom, market individualism
and meritocratic notions of aspirational action regardless of circumstance.
In all these ways, educational technology has been found to be entwined with wider
societal and economic shifts that have little to do with the straightforward connections
between technology, teaching and learning that usually inform discussions in this area.
Instead, educational technology should be understood as an integral part of broader
efforts to sustain the dominant neo-liberal project that informs so much of con-
temporary ‘global society’. Thus while such issues are rarely considered in mainstream
discussions of educational technology, it is these broader ideological connections
that merit further attention and consideration. This is particularly the case with regard
to the ways in which educational technology is encountered and experienced within
the ‘emerging’ economies and commercial markets of less-wealthy countries and
regions. Indeed, many of the forms of educational ICT4D reviewed in Chapters 6
and 7 are clearly predicated upon what Mosco (2009, p.9) terms the ‘neo-liberal
orthodoxy’ which “insists that developing countries take a market-based approach
with as little government intervention as possible”. That these forms of technology
interventions are so far “falling short of their promises and predictions in relation to
actual accomplishments” should perhaps not be cause for particular surprise (ibid.).

Making Better Sense of Education, Technology and Globalisation

All of these issues lead us to the conclusion that educational technology is an integral
element – for better and for worse – of the on-going ‘globalisations’ of education