Week 3: (Annotated Bibliography) Bayne (2015) What’s the matter with “technology enhanced learning”

Summary:

Bayne (2015) scrutinises the term “technology enhanced learning” (TEL) using three frameworks. “Technology” is unpacked using insights from science and technology studies. “Enhancement” is examined from a critical posthumanist position instead of a transhumanist one. “Learning” is subjected to critique with the use of Biesta’s (2005) work on “learnification”.

Essentially, Bayne argues that the term TEL prevents critique of it and further discourse on the role of new technologies in education.

Key Concepts:

Transhumanism is a movement that aims to improve the human condition. According to Bayne (2015), a transhumanist perspective assumes that there will always be extant human qualities (e.g. reason, intelligence, self-realisation) in education, therefore the implementation of new technologies will “simultaneously and paradoxically enable the transcendence and preservation” the human (p. 13).

In contrast, posthumanism is an approach that seeks to understand the human subject in relationship to the world around it. Therefore, as Bayne explains, its adoption allows us to step away from the essentialist and instrumentalist construction of technology and think differently about how the human is positioned in terms of the sociomaterial.

The sociomaterial (or sociotechnical) approach considers the human inseparable from its social and material contexts. The human is in a symbiotic relationship (as he or she shapes and is shaped) by his or her social and material environment.

Discourse Analysis

“Shouldn’t we be talking about the revolution (not the evolution) of education with new technologies?” – This was my first question after reading Bayne’s article.

I aim to use this article to highlight the existing transhumanist view of new technologies in education, at least in Singapore. To do so, I will use Bayne’s (2015) frameworks to analyse a newspaper article in which recently appointed Minister of Education (Singapore), Lawrence Wong announced the Ministry’s “renewed interest” in the role of technology in education.

I feel that it is also important to highlight that Wong was not trained in education and previously held the posts of Minister of National Development, Second Minister for Finance and Second Minister for Communication and Information.

Current education systems are born out of the Industrial Revolution. As Ken Robinson (see video 1 below) puts it, “schools are pretty much organised on factory lines” (RSA, 2020). I believe this is because, despite being “white-collar”, most workplaces have not shrugged off practices from the Industrial Revolution. Technology has simply evolved, but not revolutionised, the way we do things most things at work. Workers use apps on their phone (instead of a punch card machine) to report for work. Secretaries use emails (instead of letters) to send messages. In the same vein, new technologies are largely being used to galvanize our educational practices but not revolutionize them.

Video 1: RSA. (2010, February 4). Sir Ken Robinson – Changing Paradigms [Video]. Youtube. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCbdS4hSa0s.

Firstly, the use of “learning” rather than “education” in the title is telling. As Biesta’ (2005) points out, the issue with this term is that its goals are oriented to specific teaching and administrative goals and not the intellectual development of the learners. Wong’s (as cited in Meah, 2020) suggestion on how “the private sector should be involved in the provision of education” also illustrates how sociomaterial considerations are ignored. By placing the focus on “industry demands and needs” and how these should “shape the curriculum to be industry-relevant”, Wong fails to see how current students, who will be future workers, can affect the workplace (Meah, 2020). Is this an essentialist and transhumanist approach that seeks to mould the student into the perfect worker? In this view, the student is assumed to have certain positive qualities (e.g. creativity, intelligence, discipline) that are valued in the workforce. The education system is the workshop that refines these qualities. At the top of the pedagogical chain is the private sector, which guides the education system by identifying what the latter needs to concentrate on.

By Wong’s admission, there are human attributes because “teaching and learning ultimately remain social and relational processes” (Meah, 2020). However, he goes on to highlight the potential for new technologies to enhance current practices, such as “using analytics and artificial intelligence for automated grading”. Moreover, for Wong, the goal of education is one of a “higher-order” because students should strive to be “better human beings … and lead more fulfilling lives” (Meah, 2020). What does Wong mean by “better human beings? This quite clearly exemplifies a transhumanist view. Though not explicitly stated, the system has already determined what an ideal individual is supposed to be and it is the duty of the education system to help students achieve this transcendence.

In this view, teachers are not directors but simply actors. Instead of turning to them for their input on how we can pedagogically utilise new technologies (which is basically a posthumanist approach), the ministry is more concerned with how they can be “trained in this new way of teaching” (Meah, 2020). Hence, the teachers themselves are assumed to have certain fixed qualities, but require training in new technologies for further improvement.

References:

Bayne, S. (2014). What’s the matter with ‘technology-enhanced learning’? Learning, media and technology, 40(1), pp.5–20.

Biesta, G. (2005). Against learning. Reclaiming a language for education in an age of learning. Nordisk Pedagogik, 25(1), pp.54-66

Meah, N. (2020, September 25). ‘Universities, polytechnics, ITEs reviewing curriculum for ‘new way’ of teaching, learning: Lawrence Wong’, Today Singapore. https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/universities-polytechnics-ites-reviewing-curriculum-new-way-teaching-learning-lawrence