Search

The past 20 years have seen the steady ‘datafication’ of school systems – i.e. the rendering of key aspects of school practice into data that is digitally collected, processed and circulated. In co...

The past decade has seen the expansion of personal digital technologies into schools. With many students and teachers now possessing smartphones, tablets, and laptops, schools are initiating one-to-one and ‘Bring Your Own Device’ (BYOD) policies aiming to make use of these ‘personal devices’ in classrooms. While often discussed in terms of possible educational benefits and/or organisational risks, the actual presence of personal devices in schools tends to be more mundane in nature and effect. Drawing upon ethnographic studies of three Australian high schools, this paper details ways in which the proliferation of digital devices has come to bear upon everyday experiences of school. In particular, the paper highlights the ways in which staff and students negotiate (in)appropriate technology engagement; the ordinary (rather than extraordinary) ways that students make use of their devices in classrooms; and the device-related tensions now beginning to arise in schools. Rather than constituting a radically ‘transformational’ form of schooling, the paper considers how the heightened presence of personal technologies is becoming subsumed into existing micro-politics of school organisation and control.

From the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, schools micro-computing in the UK developed from being a niche ‘hobbyist’ activity to a prominent, officially mandated element of the national education system. Drawing on in-depth interviews with key actors of the time, this paper outlines the initial varied interpretations of schools micro-computing in the UK, identifying the social groups that were involved in pursuing these interpretations, and then considering which meanings and values gained dominance over others. This ‘social shaping’ analysis highlights the processes that underpinned the gradual stabilisation of the meaning(s) around the micro-computer in an educational context. The paper concludes by considering how the eventually dominant interpretations of schools micro-computing can be explained in terms of the technological frames of relevant social groups—not least the differing determinist assumptions of groups hoping to encourage the radical computer-led transformation of schools and schooling, as opp...

This paper considers the contribution of sociological theory to the academic study of young people, education and digital technology. First it discusses the shortcomings of the technological and socially determinist views of technology and education that prevail in current academic and policy discussions. Against this background the paper outlines the benefits of a number of different sociological perspectives on the social shaping of technology that, despite their popularity in other areas of science and technology studies, have been employed rarely in analyses of educational technology. In particular the paper outlines the provenance of theoretical approaches such as the social construction of technology, studies of domestication of digital technologies, feminist critical theory and the political economy of technology. Drawing on all these theoretical traditions the scene is then set for future empirical and theoretical examinations of young people’s use of digital technology in formal and informal educ...

‘Realising the potential of new technology’ was one of the central educational themes of New Labour’s 1997 election manifesto, with ‘information and communications technology’ (ICT) established subsequently as a prominent feature of the Blair administration policy portfolio. As such New Labour can claim rightly to have made an unprecedented and sustained political commitment to technology in education, directing over £5 billion of funding towards educational ICT during the 1997 to 2007 period. Yet the fact remains that the New Labour ICT agenda has failed to achieve the much promised technological ‘transformation’ of the UK education system. With this in mind the present paper develops the argument that New Labour’s concern with educational ICT was driven primarily by concerns over enhancing competitiveness in a globalising economy, creating a lifelong learning system fit for a successful knowledge economy and modernising the formal education sector. Thus whilst New Labour’s ICT agenda may well have had t...

Although the National Targets for Education and Training in England and Wales include indicators for lifelong learning, and the progress towards the targets set for these indicators has been lauded by politicians and other observers, much of this apparent progress is actually accounted for by changes in these same indicators at Foundation level. However, once the 'conveyor belt effect', of passing increasingly qualified 16-18 year-olds into the working-age population instead of less qualified 60 and 65 year-olds, is taken into account, then progress in qualifying those of working-age is much less. In fact, there is then very limited evidence that Lifelong Learning targets have had any impact at all. Certainly work-based training has not increased, and may even have declined over the last decade, while some socio-economic inequalities in adult participation in education and training have worsened. The paper examines this apparent weakness for the current approach and its implications for the measurement of...

The National Grid for Learning (NGfL) not only represents the most ambitious educational computing initiative to date but also heralds one of the largest public/private education policy partnerships the UK has even seen. In reflecting the growing influence of market and technological forces the NGfL should, therefore, be treated as a significant education signpost for the new century. Before the initiative reaches full operation a major step in the 'construction' of the Learning Grid has been its formation within government and official discourse. This discursive construction is important inasmuch as it makes an 'ethereal' initiative a tangible concern, shaping expectations among both the education and business communities and consequently influencing the future effectiveness of the NGfL. From this basis, the present article examines how the National Grid for Learning is being discursively constructed by government and official actors at a macro level through policy and advisory documents, official statem...

Educational use of the Internet forms one of the cornerstones of Labour government policy, primarily via the construction of the 'National Grid for Learning' which aims to connect every school in the UK to the Internet by 2002. In this paper we report on the extent to which schools are already buying into information and communi- cations technology (ICT) and in particular the Internet, effectively examining the foundations upon which the Learning Grid is being constructed. Via an empirical study of 150 current school websites we will argue that schools adopt a variety of approaches to the Internet and Worldwide Web depending upon the technological and institutional capital of the school, and that far from being utilised solely for educational purposes, the Internet provides an additional tool through which schools seek to reaffirm or reconstruct their existing institutional identities with varying levels of success. The paper concludes by adopting a semiotic framework for analysing the differential use of the Internet by