Conference Agenda

Achieving inclusive and equitable quality education is recognised as crucial to global sustainable development. Internationally, much research has been conducted to explore policies and practices to effectively support diversity in educational systems and many meaningful and transformative insights have been gained (Ainscow, 2015; Hernández-Torrano et al., 2020). Nevertheless, substantial questions remain about the role digital technologies may play in promoting the agenda of inclusive education, given that the use of technology for teaching and learning has not only greatly increased as a result of the recent pandemic, but has also amplified the prevalence of automated decision-making in classrooms (Selwyn et al., 2023).

While established inclusive education research has tended to focus on human relationships rather than technology (Knox et al., 2019), the growing ability of powerful data-driven systems to actively shape the education sector, from policy and governance to the professional role of the teacher, serious attention must now be given to the potential impact of current and future technologies on the inclusive education agenda. Conversely, the research and development of digital technology in education has tended to overlook issues of inclusion, often adopting solutionist and reductionist approaches that position digital technologies as a ‘technical fix’ for increased performativity and measurement, as well as encompassing a broad de-professionalisation of the teacher (Watters, 2013). As such, digital technologies tend towards the standardisation of education provision, rather than the valuing of diversity (Knox et al., 2019).

Responding to recent examinations of the extent to which digital technologies may perpetuate inequality, biases, divides, and exclusion (e.g., Goodley et al., 2020), this panel aims to bring together researchers in inclusive education and critical digital education in order to address this substantive gap in the literature. We argue that the lack of a more critical and in-depth examination of how digital technologies intersect with inclusive education is a pressing matter to steer the current development and usage of digital technologies to support inclusion and minimise marginalisation.

The research questions the symposium will explore are:

• How can digital technologies be better designed to address key barriers to inclusive education?
• How might digital technologies reinforce or even aggravate marginalisation and exclusion in education?
• What are the possible strategies of negotiating the tensions between digital technologies and inclusive education?

The symposium includes a group of international researchers, who have been at the forefront of exploring the intersections of digital technologies and inclusive education through empirical and theoretical research that considers a range of national contexts including Singapore, Australia, UK and China. The discussant has leading expertise of international perspectives on inclusive educational development. The presenters and the discussant will together discuss and articulate explicitly some of the connections and divergences between the key arguments relating to the parallel development of digital technologies and inclusive education. The symposium aims to stimulate productive conversations between the less connected research communities in the fields of inclusive education and digital technologies, to inform shared understandings, ethical practices, and future interdisciplinary research in this emerging space.

Recent decades have seen a widespread ‘technification’ of education (Selwyn, 2021), with digital technologies now part of the fabric of schooling and schools. This technification has encompassed the domain of school discipline, whereby education platforms, such as ClassDojo, are increasingly adopted by teachers to ‘manage’ student behaviour (Manolev et al., 2019). Its presence too has emerged in inclusive education with technology seen as a way to support its advancement (Hersh, 2020). The aim of this paper brings these two areas together by, a) reporting findings from an Australian study which investigated the ways teachers used ClassDojo to enact school discipline practices and, b) considering these findings in relation to educational exclusion/inclusion. Little is known about the ways teachers use ClassDojo to discipline students, and the influence it is having on school discipline practices. Research into the impact of data-centric platforms is emerging; however, there remains a pressing need to understand how they are shaping classroom practices ‘on the ground’ (Knox et al., 2019). We draw on Foucault’s analytics of power to interpret our findings and to understand how power is exercised through ClassDojo. In particular, we use Foucault’s concepts of disciplinary power and panopticism to explain how disciplinary power is exercised through ClassDojo’s platform architecture via processes, practices, and techniques of surveillance and visibility (Foucault, 1977). This critical qualitative inquiry used a multimethod data collection approach: online documentary research, unobtrusive online observations, and semi-structured interviews. Documentary data included website content, weblog posts, instructional videos, and school policies. Observations were conducted in online news webpages and weblogs and focussed on reader comments. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven South Australia primary school teachers. A hybrid iterative inductive-deductive thematic analysis was used to analyse data (Fereday and Muir-Cochrane, 2006; Tracy, 2013). The study found that teachers often used ClassDojo’s platform as a surveillance technology to monitor and make students visible for the purpose of shaping their behaviour. Furthermore, the surveillance practices teachers employed were at times combined with practices of exclusion as a form of punishment. Therefore, we argue that these findings indicate that the use of ClassDojo as a school discipline technology is introducing into schools ‘more pervasive and intrusive patterns of surveillance and regulation’ (Slee, 1995, p.3) which promote, facilitate, and are being used to exclude.

Fereday, J., & Muir-Cochrane, E. (2006). Demonstrating Rigor Using Thematic Analysis: A Hybrid Approach of Inductive and Deductive Coding and Theme Development. International journal of qualitative methods, 5(1), 80-92. https://doi.org/10.1177/160940690600500107 Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: the birth of the prison. Penguin. Hersh, M. (2020). Technology for inclusion [Background paper]. UNESCO. Retrieved 20/01/23, from https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000373655 Knox, J., Williamson, B., & Bayne, S. (2020). Machine behaviourism: future visions of 'learnification' and 'datafication' across humans and digital technologies. Learning, Media and Technology, 45(1), 31-45. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2019.1623251 Manolev, J., Sullivan, A., & Slee, R. (2019). The datafication of discipline: ClassDojo, surveillance and a performative classroom culture. Learning, Media and Technology, 44(1), 36-51. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2018.1558237 Selwyn, N. (2021). Resetting Ed-Tech … what is digital technology really good for in education? Critical Studies of Education and Technology. https://criticaledtech.com/2021/11/11/resetting-ed-tech-what-is-digital-technology-really-good-for-in-education%EF%BF%BC/ Slee, R. (1995). Changing theories and practices of discipline. Falmer Press. Tracy, S. J. (2013). Qualitative research methods: collecting evidence, crafting analysis, communicating impact. Wiley-Blackwell.

As a small country with great ethnic diversity, Singapore embraces inclusive education and is committed to optimise the potential of every student. One recent advancement is the implementation of full subject-based banding that allows lower secondary students to learn in one of the three levels that match their strengths and interests in respective subjects. It makes learning more relevant to students’ learning needs in each subject and provides meaningful interactions among diverse students who were previously streamed based on their ability levels, creating opportunities for students to appreciate diversity in an inclusive environment. Yet, teachers often feel unprepared to optimise learning of diverse students (Florian and Pantić, 2017), constrained by their knowledges, skills and workloads (Huang, 2022). Artificial Intelligence for Education (AIED), when developed and used in equitable and inclusive ways, has the potential to help bridge social and learning gaps when moving towards inclusive education. For example, Adaptive Learning System (ALSs) allows students to learn procedural knowledge, at an individualised pace with personalised support. ALSs also have the potential to identify a particular student’s learning difficulties so that interventions can be implemented within and outside ALSs. AI-powered assistive technologies such as speech recognition can also be included to support students with impairments. However, there are limitations to using AIED for inclusive education, if the technology itself is not designed to be inclusive and equitable. Inclusive education often requires changes in teaching methods, school culture, and policies to ensure that all students have equal opportunities to succeed. These changes are hard to be addressed solely by using AIED alone. In this presentation, we adopt Cerna, et. al. (2021)’s conceptual framework to propose five aspects of consideration in adopting AIED for inclusive education. First, for AIED to meet diverse learning needs, the designing of AIED needs to be in collaboration with various educational stakeholders so that AIED is human-centred and reflects student diversity. Second, resources need to be provided for equal access, particularly by students from low-income families. Third, teacher capacity should be developed, particularly for teacher-AI augmentation in inclusive classrooms so as to avoid AIED depriving student’s agency and voices in learning. Fourth, processes and outcomes of inclusive education and students’ achievements should be rigorously evaluated for continuous improvement. Last, culture and governance for both AIED and inclusive education are needed to sustain the effective use of AIED for inclusive education.

Cerna, L., Mezzanotte, C., Rutigliano, A., Brussino, O., Santiago, P., Borgonovi, F., and Guthrie, C. (2021). Promoting inclusive education for diverse societies: A conceptual framework. OECD Education Working Paper No. 260. Accessed 27 January 2023 https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/94ab68c6-en.pdf?expires=1675088838&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=31B1AA71231B12EAE94C3C1AE4963CBC Florian, L. and Pantić, N. (2017). Teacher education for the changing demographics of schooling: policy, practice and research. In Florian, L. and Pantić, N. (eds) Teacher Education for the Changing Demographics of Schooling: Issues for Research and Practice. Switzerland: Springer. pp. 1-5. Huang, J. S. (2022). Optimizing the potential of every student in Singapore - Is AIED a solution to embrace the complexity in teaching and learning? In E. Walton and R. Osman (eds) Pedagogical Responsiveness in Complex Contexts. Switzerland: Springer. pp. 75-94.

This presentation draws on recent research in the UK and China that has examined the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) to develop and deploy so-called ‘personalised’ or ‘adaptive’ education technology. Suggested by these terms, AI technologies might be perceived as rather straightforward ways of adjusting, differentiating and individualising educational provisions in response to student diversity; attributes which tend to be framed as effective approaches to realising inclusive education (Lindner and Schwab, 2020). However, we argue that there is a pressing need to re-examine such assumptions and consider how AI technologies might be better designed in the future, by building a greater understanding of the precise functioning of AI systems and connecting this knowledge deliberately with critical perspectives on inclusive education, particularly those that pose important questions over the implications of continuing a traditional special, additional, or individualised needs response to diversity (e.g., Florian, 2014; Slee, 2011). The analysis developed in this paper builds on the recent call for critical studies of digital education platforms (Decuypere et al. 2021). In particular, Decuypere et al. suggest the need for more research that examines the ‘performative effects of platforms’ (2021, p2); in other words, the capacity of such technologies to shape educational practice, often in ways unforeseen by technology designers and teaching practitioners themselves. Two specific AI-driven software platforms will be discussed: UK-based ‘Century’ (https://www.century.tech/) and China-based ‘Squirrel AI’ (http://squirrelai.com/), with a focus on how particular conceptualisations about knowledge, learning, and teaching are ‘built-in’ to the design and subsequent functioning of the technology. This includes, for instance, the ways such technologies predefine a mathematical representation of all knowledges in a particular domain, position and categorise learners as passive recipients of automated decision-making over what they should be learning and how, and de-professionalise teachers by marginalising their roles with the AI-infused classroom. Such effects are counterproductive for inclusive education systems that value diversity, especially as such AI systems appear to standardise curricula, activities, and experiences, and significantly reinforce barriers to learners and teachers’ agency. The paper concludes that we must give more attention to the current development and usage of AI technologies and ensure the participation of learners, teachers, and broader communities in a process of co-creating change for inclusive education (Pantić and Florian, 2015; Wang, 2023).

Decuypere, M., Grimaldi, E. & Landri, P. (2021) Introduction: Critical studies of digital education platforms. Critical Studies in Education, 62(1): 1-16. Florian, L. (2014) Reimagining special education: why new approaches are needed. In Florian, L. (ed) The SAGE Handbook of Special Education (2nd edition). London: SAGE. pp. 9-22. Lindner, K. and Schwab, S. (2020) Differentiation and individualisation in inclusive education: a systematic review and narrative synthesis. International Journal of Inclusive Education. AHEAD-OF-PRINT, 1-21. Pantić N., Florian L. (2015). Developing teachers as agents of inclusion and social justice. Education Inquiry, 6(3), 333–351. Slee, R. (2011) The Irregular School: Exclusion, Schooling and Inclusive Education. Abingdon: Routledge. Wang, Y. (2023) ‘It is the easiest thing to do’: university students’ perspectives on the role of lecture recording in promoting inclusive education in the UK. Teaching in Higher Education. Advance online publication. pp.1-18.