Page 50 - Education in a Digital World

Theoretical Approaches 37

may be more fully felt. This logic is illustrated in the frequent ‘blaming’ of indivi-
dual educators or educational institutions for the failure of digital technologies to be
used ‘effectively’. Indeed, current discussions and debates about the use of digital
technology in educational settings often continue to follow a decidedly externalist
logic, ‘treating new technologies as autonomous forces that compel society to
change’ (Nye 2007, p.27). Many of the claims and arguments presented in the
opening sections of Chapter 1 were based around the assumption that digital tech-
nology is set inevitably to change various aspects of education on a global scale. As
we later acknowledged in Chapter 1, this is clearly not the case. We therefore need
to adopt a mind-set for the remainder of the book that reflects this disparity
between the rhetoric and realities of technology and education.
There are many good reasons to attempt to move beyond a technologically
determinist view of technology and education – not least because such thinking
often leads to incorrect analyses and conclusions. If the relationships between edu-
cation and technology are seen only in these ‘cause-and-effect’ terms, then the main
task of any analysis of educational technology is simply to identify the impediments
and deficiencies that are delaying and opposing the march of technological progress.
This view is implicit, for example, in the increasingly popular proposals to dispense
with the educational institutions or classroom teachers that appear to be impeding
the benefits of technology in education. Technological determinism of this type
leaves little room for manoeuvre, deviation or any other form of social agency in
the implementation and use of technology. In short, it presents a view of technol-
ogy and education where social actors are passive agents – simply reacting to
technological developments in a cause and effect manner. As such technological
innovations are seen to simply ‘happen’, leaving societies (and education) having to
deal with the consequences and adapt as best they could to the new arrangements
and new ways of being. At best, then, teachers, students, governments and everyone
else involved in education are placed in a position of having to respond to
technological change by making the ‘best use’ of the technologies that they are
presented with.
Of course, we should remain mindful of the danger of setting technological
determinism as a ‘conceptual straw-man’ (Winner 1993) and then finding oneself
forced into a viewpoint where nothing can be said to be influenced by anything
else. Indeed, as Raymond Williams (1981, p.102) warned, anyone resolved simply
not to be deterministic faces “a kind of madness”. To ascribe complete interpret-
ability to any technology can be seen as an equally constraining and reductionist
form of ‘social determinism’ where only social factors are granted any importance
(see Potts 2008). In one form, this can lead to equally as misleading assumptions that
technology is somehow ‘neutral’, malleable and ‘one-way’– i.e. “one can use it
without being used by it” (Beatham 2008, p.511). At best, then, we need to take a
mutual shaping approach where technology both is shaped and shaping in a number
of enabling and constraining ways. In this sense, technological development and
technology-related change are therefore inherently entwined with social relations,