Periodic Reporting for period 2 - MORPHOGENESIS (EdTech and the birth of platform education: An ethnographic account of a start-up in the age of global education)
Período documentado: 2023-10-01 hasta 2024-09-30
In its current action plan on digital education, the European Union underlines the ambition of ensuring that all citizens are prepared to live and work in the digital age. The past 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 a new class of actors on an unprecedented scale. This project has focused on such digital reorganisation of education. What role does digital technology play in reshaping the classroom? How do apps and platforms reconfigure the role of teachers? What kind of processes, mechanisms, and objects do digital tools rely on to establish something as worth learning? Who are the engineers behind the machines and what do they claim to know?
By addressing these questions, the aim of this research has been twofold: 1) 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, and of the classrooms where such digital tools eventually end up; (2) to build a framework that formulates an ensemble of concepts in order to analyse how, through such digital platforms, the reorganization and the differentiation of education go hand in hand, creating new patterns of teaching and learning. These objectives were successfully met through various work packages.
By addressing these questions, the aim of this research has been twofold: 1) 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, and of the classrooms where such digital tools eventually end up; (2) to build a framework that formulates an ensemble of concepts in order to analyse how, through such digital platforms, the reorganization and the differentiation of education go hand in hand, creating new patterns of teaching and learning. These objectives were successfully met through various work packages.
MORPHOGENESIS consisted of an extended case ethnography conducted in the EdTech scene of New York City (2021-2023) and in the classrooms of Bologna (2023-2024). Through ethnographic observation and interview-based study, the research project has produced empirical data on the wide range of actors involved in the production and reception of educational technology. Through presentations and publications, the project has contributed to two main areas of scholarship: a) the rise of algorithmic management in social life, both within the workplace and beyond, and b) the resulting reconfiguration of the teaching profession. The project's findings were shared and placed in a new light through the organisation of an international workshop on interaction and the technologies that are called upon to substitute for physical co-presence.
The project's empirical findings and conceptual developments yielded significant contributions to two research areas, with results featured in leading academic venues.
a) In labour studies, algorithmic management has typically been equated with automated surveillance of the workplace – scientific management on steroids. But such a viewpoint tends to overlook that algorithms are closely linked to the changing topology of organisation. Rather than an exercise seeking to coordinate oppositions within organisations – between labour and capital, for example, or between various departments, levels, or teams – algorithmic management turns to and envelops the outside world. The latter is no longer presented as a stimulus to which the organization is expected to adapt, but as an addressee that can be co-opted, mobilised and hence organised. The principles animating algorithmic management have been further explored in a publication for Organization Theory, co-authored with David Stark.
b) Many educational researchers have criticized the growing use of learning platforms, viewing this trend as a mechanization of education. By accepting technology as functionally equivalent if not superior to the human judgement of professional teachers, their warning sounds, our digital tools run the risk of subjugating rather than serving us. Rather than repeat this popular trope of the sorcerer's apprentice, the project has focused on platformisation as an internal reorganization of education. A first theorisation has been published in The Oxford Handbook of Education and Globalization. Other articles, focusing on the engineers behind the machines and the reconfiguration of the teaching profession are currently under review.
In doing so, MORPHOGENESIS achieved its objectives of 1) developing a framework to understand the distinctive organisational shape of digital learning platforms and 2) analyzing how these platforms reshape the classroom by producing original data on these topics.
a) In labour studies, algorithmic management has typically been equated with automated surveillance of the workplace – scientific management on steroids. But such a viewpoint tends to overlook that algorithms are closely linked to the changing topology of organisation. Rather than an exercise seeking to coordinate oppositions within organisations – between labour and capital, for example, or between various departments, levels, or teams – algorithmic management turns to and envelops the outside world. The latter is no longer presented as a stimulus to which the organization is expected to adapt, but as an addressee that can be co-opted, mobilised and hence organised. The principles animating algorithmic management have been further explored in a publication for Organization Theory, co-authored with David Stark.
b) Many educational researchers have criticized the growing use of learning platforms, viewing this trend as a mechanization of education. By accepting technology as functionally equivalent if not superior to the human judgement of professional teachers, their warning sounds, our digital tools run the risk of subjugating rather than serving us. Rather than repeat this popular trope of the sorcerer's apprentice, the project has focused on platformisation as an internal reorganization of education. A first theorisation has been published in The Oxford Handbook of Education and Globalization. Other articles, focusing on the engineers behind the machines and the reconfiguration of the teaching profession are currently under review.
In doing so, MORPHOGENESIS achieved its objectives of 1) developing a framework to understand the distinctive organisational shape of digital learning platforms and 2) analyzing how these platforms reshape the classroom by producing original data on these topics.