Page 49 - Education in a Digital World

36 Theoretical Approaches

change. While most people in education would feel uncomfortable in making such
a direct association, many would perhaps concur with ‘softer’ forms of technological
determinist thinking which assumes that technology has an influence (and often a
strong influence) on social change. Thus, as Sally Wyatt (2008, p.169) observes,
the idea of technological determinism continues to endure in most accounts of the
relationship between technology and society:

The simplicity of this model is a principal reason for its endurance. It is also
the model that makes most sense of many people’s experience. For most of
us, most of the time, the technologies we use every day are of mysterious
origin and design. We have no idea whence they came and possibly even
less idea how they actually work. We simply adapt ourselves to their require-
ments and hope that they continue to function in the predictable and expected
ways promised by those who sold them to us. It is because technological
determinism conforms with a huge majority of people’s experiences that it
remains the ‘common sense’ explanation.

As Wyatt implies, there is a long heritage of technological determinism in popular,
political and academic discussions of the ‘effect’ of technology on education around
the world. A determinist way of thinking underpins the range of popular claims, for
example, that internet use leads to an individualisation of learning. In fact, many of
the enthusiasms for education and technology outlined in Chapter 1 appear to be
driven by an underlying belief in technology as some sort of ‘technical fix’.
As Kevin Robins and Frank Webster (1989) observed, the history of education has
been characterised by attempts to use the ‘power’ of technology in order to solve
problems that are non-technological in nature. The history of education is also
characterised by a tendency to ignore the often ineffective or unsustainable out-
comes that arise as a result of technology use. As we saw in Chapter 1, there is little
to suggest that much has changed in the twenty-five years or so since Robins
and Webster made this observation. Indeed, this faith in the technical fixis
pervasive and relentless – especially in the minds of the key interests and opinion
formers of this digital age. As the co-founder of the influential Wired magazine
reasoned more recently, “tools and technology drive us. Even if a problem has
been caused by technology, the answer will always be more technology”
(Kelly 2010, p.22).
Despite these common-sense proclamations, any serious account of education
and technology needs to resist the assumption that any digital technology has the
ability to change things for the better. While appealing to those people who want
to construct bounded ‘scientific’ explanations and models, the dangers of these
ways of thinking about the use of technology lie primarily in the simplistic con-
clusions that they lead towards. In particular, this way of thinking usually reaches
conclusions that recommend the overcoming of ‘barriers’ or impediments within
the immediate educational context, so that the inherent beneficial effects of technology