Coming to grips with essentialism & instrumentalism in education research
The terms essentialism and instrumentalism are not to be considered theories according to Hamilton, Edward C., and Norm Friesen in their article from 2013: “Online Education: A Science and Technology Studies Perspective.” Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology 39 (p 4), instead we should look at them as general orientations that have been represented in many discussions around online education. In this blog I will try to clarify the terms with examples taken from my recent experience.
Essentialism rests on the principle that technology has independent pedagogical value and that all we need to do is embrace the technology to make this happen (p 6). It leaves out what happens after a technology is put in place, how the practical use of technology can lead to necessary changes within the technology to make it a potential success. After the pandemic started last year, many University programmes were ‘converted’ to online teaching with the use of new technology (at least, it was new to many teachers). Within the University of Edinburgh, Collaborate was used as a teaching platform already, but suddenly its use had to be expanded quite rapidly. During this period many changes were made both visible (being able to see more people at one time) and invisible (expanding the capacity to accommodate the extra users). This is only one example that shows essentialism is somewhat short sighted and only deals with a small part of the journey that technology and its users undergo.
Underlying the idea of instrumentalism is a basic assumption that what technologies can do is what students and teachers will do with them once the technology is introduced (p 7). Tools that can be used for a variety of reasons, become purely educational tools because they are used for teaching. (p 7) Within medical education at the Edinburgh Medical School, many of the lecturers and teachers work for the NHS. When the MBChB was looking for a teaching platform at the start of the pandemic, it looked at different options, but was limited by the restrictions the NHS places on its computers; its firewalls, the age of many of the computers available and slow internet and Wi-Fi connections within NHS spaces. In the event, Teams was chosen for some of the teaching, like GP teaching for instance. However, because of the way teams is configured, it meant that many NHS teachers could only log into Teams with their NHS account, which meant they couldn’t share slides or see the students names, but only a student number. Having the choice to use a camera, many students opted out of using it, which was frustrating to many teachers, who felt as if they were talking to themselves. Teams can be used successfully as a teaching platform, but it has mostly been used for meetings, traditionally and therefore had less of the educational features that are present in Collaborate, to name one. So although it is indeed possible to teach successfully in Teams, it is not as straightforward as revealing the platform and letting teachers and students get on with it, as instrumentalism claims.
Good summaries of the two dispositions of essentialism and instrumentalism. A good way of thinking about essentialism is that it claims a technology performs certain functions only regardless of context (their essences are immutable/ unchanging across situations). So your example of Collaborate is a good one given that a change in context/ situation changes its use in practice – from a formal virtual classroom to also be a space for social interactions, for student group work, for staff meetings, for large scale lectures, etc…. This difference in practices of Collaborate also includes the more been aspects you cite such as expanding capacities.
In terms of instrumentalism, what you are moving towards is the argument for that technologies, teaching and learning are co-constituted – or entangled together – rather than the tech being a passive instrument of human intention. Teaching practices become adapted to the particular configuration of NHS Teams accounts and devices.
So, good clear summaries of both. As you progress through the course, you might come back to this post to expand your examples and range of literature that responds to these two dispositions.