# Key Findings - Enthusiasm for certain types of automated instructionist technologies persists despite scant evidence of their efficacy, and often in the face of evidence of demonstrated failure.
- Advocates of these sorts of technologies seek to shape and control narratives about learning in ways that are divorced from evidence-based claims. - Educators should be skeptical of claims about increasing learning speed or allowing for self-directed learning as this may not best serve all types of learners. - Many of these technologies are more invested in growing their market share and edging out competitors than they are in provable or testable educational outcomes. # Introduction While today’s technology corporations operate under the guise of benign mottos such as “connecting people” or “organizing information,” they do far more than connect and organize: they are implementing a vision for reshaping human interaction in line with their technology and business models, displacing competing versions regardless of their quality. [...] This awakening to the era of digital surveillance and manipulation (Zuboff, 2015) led to a re-examination of the systemic impact of modern digital technologies on all areas of human activity, including education. What was believed to be unequivocally beneficial—such as universal, free access to educational materials—started to be observed in light of many previous critiques of technology and society. Examining with more attention the politics of educational technologies and their enabling systems became imperative. [...] [...] the issue is not just the creation of such learning technologies, but their (often malign) affinities with the larger socio-technical systems that generated them. Going beyond the simplified critique about “artifacts having politics,” today we have to examine how technological artifacts augment, enable, and facilitate specific visions of education that were there all along. [...] the politics of technological artifacts can go both ways. Yes, a computer can be used to mimic the traditional, oppressive classroom, but it can also offer students novel, subversive tools for knowledge creation to escape schoolified oppression. [...] In this article, we will discuss the techniques and artifacts designed to teach pre-determined content to students through electronic media (such as video classes) accompanied by automated assessment. We will term these as “automated instructionist technologies.” We want to investigate how the “enamoring” of the educational world with these technologies happened despite historical accounts of earlier failures, hyperbolic promises only ever partially fulfilled, and decades of accumulating negative evidence [...] # Data Collection Our methodology included three data collection moments. First, we collected the self-reported “company’s mission” public information from the websites of about 15 major edtech companies working on automated instructionist technologies and AI in education. [...] We then collected publicly available interviews with some of the prominent leaders in the field and news pieces in which they are quoted. [...] Finally, we used web-scrubbing techniques to extract the most recent public news pieces with the keywords “AI in Education” and “MOOCs.” [...] [...] [...] # Conclusion: # Devaluing Educators by Overvaluing Automated Teaching Technologies Our analysis revealed a familiar pattern. Namely, entrepreneurs propose a new automated educational technology by establishing an opposition to a stereotyped version of traditional education (dialogism). Then, they build on intertextuality to generate discourse that makes use of old and new “texts” (e.g., “learning at your own pace”). Finally, through polyphony (social media, marketing, high-profile events, celebrity endorsements, branding), they disseminate and legitimize the inevitability of the seemingly benign product—which is then assimilated into everyday discourse (e.g., “personalized learning,” is now incorporated into the lexicon of schools and policymakers). [...] The benefits are significant: first, you attain the privilege of not being challenged by educational formulations when they go wrong. Edtech entrepreneurs that fail catastrophically are allowed to “pivot” to a different direction with no consequence. Take, for example, Coursera’s several “reinventions,” the failure of Udacity’s MOOCs, the ruin of the School of One, Summit Learning System, AltSchool, Edmodo, InBloom, and Knewton, and the underwhelming record of Khan’s Lab School. And despite being behind many of those failed initiatives, and protests from teachers’ union leaders, in May 2020, the Gates Foundation was announced as the state of New York’s leading partner in “reimagining” education during the pandemic. [...] Pressey, Skinner, Khan, and Ferreira all participate in a 100-year-old project to mold education in the image of their technologies. [...] Nevertheless, the modern edtech version of behaviorism understood that the actual battle in education centers around a narrative of innovation, disruption, and revolution. This art has been perfected, and with each new technology (e.g., AI), as it gets increasingly hyperbolic, it also further hides its theoretical inspirations. No edtech firm will use the word “behaviorism” on their websites. [...] It is up to us to build defenses in our educational systems that will protect them from the seductive discourses of automated instructionist technologies. Part of this work lies in ensuring that our educational systems take advantage of technology in other ways instead—such as engaging children in building inventions, programming computers, composing music, or creating art [...to...] make the learning of new, unthinkable things possible. In a time of increasing social inequality and escalating tensions due to multiculturalism and immigration, automated and AI-based educational systems—in their current inception—could become the ultimate tool for educational stratification and inequity. Such systems could be the tool of choice for low-income and underprivileged school districts due to constant budget pressures and the allure of a Silicon Valley-esque revolution. Students in those districts would not only be exposed to less face-to-face, innovative instruction but would be much more vulnerable to bias and to have their data exploited or monetized by service providers. These populations would grow up with dehumanizing, impersonal educational technologies that would greatly diminish their prospects in the complex and interconnected world of the 21st century. But not to worry: the prophets of automated education promise that, in return, we will find ten times more Einsteins. Tratto da https://wip.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/do-educational-technologies-have-politics/release/1 che include anche una interessante analisi della storia e della retorica propagandistica (aka marketing) dell'EdTech Giacomo _______________________________________________ nexa mailing list [email protected] https://server-nexa.polito.it/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nexa
