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EdTech and the birth of platform education: An ethnographic account of a start-up in the age of global education

Project description

How digital learning platforms shape global education

The COVID-19 pandemic forced a closure of schools and universities and resulted in the rapid spread of digital technology. The emergence of digital learning platforms has shaped the organisation of education. However, the disruptive capacity of these platforms to essentially redefine what education values as worth learning is not adequately studied. The EU-funded MORPHOGENESIS project will investigate how the shift towards digital learning platforms contributes to the global disruption of pedagogical valuation processes. The project intends to build a framework that combines concepts with theoretical insights from sociology of education, organisation studies, and the study of regionalisation and globalisation processes, and will develop an extended case ethnography in New York.

Objective

In its latest action plan on digital education, the European Union underlined the ambition of ensuring that all citizens are prepared to live and work in the digital age. However, the current COVID-19 pandemic, with its widespread closure of schools and universities, has thrown into sharp relief how the introduction of digital technology fundamentally reshapes the organisation of education. Within a few months, it became evident that schooling without school or studying without campus prompts the influx of new, private actors on an unprecedented scale. This project focuses on such digital reorganisation of education, cut off from the classroom. In particular, I propose to investigate how the conversion towards digital learning platforms participates in a worldwide disruption of pedagogical valuation processes. While existing research has so far favoured questions of power and inequalities, the disruptive capacity of these learning platforms to radically redefine what education values as worth learning has hardly been studied. To fill this gap, MORPHOGENESIS proposes (1) to build a framework that formulates an ensemble of concepts with theoretical insights from three related (sub)disciplines (sociology of education, organisation studies and the study of regionalisation and globalisation processes). With the help of Luhmannian systems theory, the coherent formulation of such framework will make it possible to analyse how, through such digital platforms, the reorganisation and the differentiation of global education go hand in hand; (2) to develop an extended case ethnography of the start-up scene in New York, where this so-called EdTech is currently being imagined, coded and executed into the platforms that explicitly aspire to disrupt contemporary education. Together, the conceptual framework and methodology will enable a better grasp of the metamorphosis that education is currently undergoing and the unprecedented role that online learning platforms play within it.

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Topic(s)

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MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) H2020-MSCA-IF-2020

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Coordinator

UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI MODENA E REGGIO EMILIA
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 269 002,56
Address
VIA UNIVERSITA 4
41121 Modena
Italy

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Region
Nord-Est Emilia-Romagna Modena
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 269 002,56

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