The Politics of Education and Technology Conflicts, Controversies, and Connections

This book provides a much needed critical perspective on the use of digital technology in education. Drawing on a wealth of theoretical and empirical work, it examines the stakeholders in education technology, the struggles to settle how technology should be used in education, and the questions that underpin these debates: What, exactly, is the purpose of education? How can we use technology to achieve it? Whose answers to these questions win out in civic discussion, and whose win in the marketplace? With chapters covering everything from single-school studies to international political initiatives, The Politics of Education and Technology lays bare the messy realities of technology use in education and their implications for contemporary society.

Neil Selwyn is Professor on the Faculty of Education, Monash University, Australia.

Keri Facer is Professor of Educational and Social Futures at the Graduate School of Education of the University of Bristol, UK.

1. Introduction: The Need for a Politics of Education and Technology; Neil Selwyn and Keri Facer
PART I: RECOGNIZING THE POLITICS OF "LEARNING" AND TECHNOLOGY
2. Educational Technology and the "New Language of Learning": Lineage and Limitations; Norm Friesen
3. Networked Cosmopolitanism? Shaping Learners by Remaking the Curriculum of the Future; Ben Williamson
PART II: THE POLITICS OF TECHNOLOGICAL OPPORTUNITY AND RISK
4. Becoming the Future: The "Lake Highlands" Middle School Laptop and Learning Initiative; David Shutkin
5. The Politics of Online Risk and the Discursive Construction of School "E-safety"; Andrew Hope
PART III: THE GLOBAL POLITICS OF EDUCATION AND TECHNOLOGY
6."Empowering the World's Poorest Children"? A Critical Examination of One Laptop Per Child; Neil Selwyn
7. Changing Narratives of Change: (Un)intended Consequences of Educational Technology Reform in Argentina; Inés Dussel, Patricia Ferrante, and Julian Sefton-Green
8. The Ideological Appropriation of Digital Technology in UK Education: Symbolic Violence and the Selling and Buying of the "Transformation Fallacy"; Timothy Rudd
PART IV: THE POLITICS OF EDUCATION AND TECHNOLOGY: EXTENDING BEYOND "THE DIGITAL"
9. Mobile Technologies and an Ethical Digital Literacy in the Face of Empire; Richard Hall
10. Tweak: Biosocial Imaginations and Educational Futures; Nick Lee and Johanna Motzkau
11. Epilogue: Building Allegiances and Moving Forward; Keri Facer and Neil Selwyn