Conference Agenda

Public schooling has been considered an institution for shaping the future since its inauguration. Whether as an institution for creating national identities or, for enabling equality and social mobility, schooling is oriented to a sense of futurity. In recent decades, digital technology, in particular, digital educational technology (EdTech) has been woven into promises of better educational futures. Decades of educational research have shown, however, that schooling reproduces existing (structural) inequalities. Examining the algorithms, structures and infrastructures of digital technologies, recent studies argue that these systems reformat pedagogical priorities with implications for increasing discrimination, injustice and inequity (Zakhavora & Jarke, 2023; Perrotta et al., 2020). Further studies have proposed critical interventions with technology to alleviate inequalities and promote justice (Choi & Cristal, 2021; Swist & Gulson, 2023). The question that still requires systematic investigation is how, despite often well-intentioned efforts to alleviate inequalities, ‘persistent and pernicious inequalities’ (Facer & Selywn, 2021: 7) are reproduced and/or interrupted through technology use in schools. These inequalities make certainties for young people, by opening up some futures and foreclosing others. This panel thus draws on ethnographic research to ask: How is the uptake of digital technology reproducing, reconfiguring and/or alleviating relations of inequality in schools?

Ethnographic research, with its ‘arts of noticing’ in today’s ‘capitalist ruins’ (Tsing, 2015), offers a promising methodological approach to EdTech’s futures-making entanglements, since it enables researchers to spend time in the field, embedded in the practices, relations, tensions and ambiguities of everyday life with technology in schools (Alirezabeigi et al., 2020). Participant observation, accompanied by thick descriptions, enables scholars to trace the patterns of practices and the ‘rich points’ in which confusing, surprising or unexpected moments give insight into participants’ perspectives, expectations and hopes for the future. Although ethnographic explorations of digital technologies, education and inequality are emerging, these are currently based primarily in the US, with few studies of European or other contexts (Rafalow, 2020; Watkins et al., 2018). Given the situated and contextual unfolding of both schooling and of relations of inequality, there is a risk in assuming that these findings are relevant around the world. Research in further local settings aims to elaborate a more nuanced understanding of how data flows and other technologies reproduce, reconfigure and/or alleviate inequalities (Murris et al., 2023).

The chair opens the symposium by highlighting the key issues noted above, and by reflecting on the challenges of this kind of research when “new” technologies hint at moments of possibility and futures otherwise, and yet structural inequalities are historically sedimented in public education. The first paper presents a systematic review of recent international research on digital technology, schooling and inequality. Three ethnographic case studies then each highlight a central theme emerging from varied methods including participant observation, interviews, and workshops with students and teachers in Germany, Mexico, Sweden and the UK to explore how technology and inequality are interwoven in everyday school practices. Each study includes schools at different positions in the local opportunity structure, i.e., more privileged/ well-resourced schools and historically marginalised/ poorly-resourced schools. With a shared relational sociomaterial/sociotechnical theoretical perspective, the papers explore the constitution of inequality through practices of waiting and maintenance, through the intensification of work, and through the shifting of pedagogical relations between teachers and students. Through these situated analyses, the papers also speak to broader issues such as temporal bordering, distraction, opportunity, trust, validity, surveillance, communication, temporal frictions and local collective action for social justice. The discussant responds to the individual papers and reflects on overarching themes in the making and unmaking of in/equitable edtech futures in today’s schools.

In many education systems digital technologies are seen as an important way to address educational inequity. Yet despite this enduring emphasis on equity in policy and popular discourse, the research evidence is complex to navigate. It is multifaceted, wide ranging and relatively disparate. This paper presents a systematic thematic (as opposed to meta-analytic) review of the peer-reviewed academic literature that explores the relationships between technology, equity, and teaching and learning in secondary schools, identifying 73 studies from the Global North based on an initial review of 15,000 abstracts from three academic databases (Google Scholar, Scopus, and EBSCO Host). The thematic analysis of all 73 included studies identified four overlapping themes: 1. Digital equity: work that provides an increasingly nuanced understanding of the constituent aspects of the ‘digital divide’ (Dolan, 2016), that has implications for the learning experiences of secondary school pupils (Robinson, et al., 2018), that have intensified and reconfigured during the pandemic (Greenhow et al. 2021) 2. Data driven systems: work that addresses the equity implications of the use of algorithmic systems in education, including growing concerns about the multiple ways that these systems can lead to unjust practices and outcomes along different social axes (Baker and Hawn, 2021) 3. Socio-technical interactions: work that examines the equity implications of the relationships between technology, teachers, pupils, and school administration, including how schools in wealthier areas tend to use technology differently to schools in less well-off areas (Rafalow and Puckett, 2022) 4. Equity-orientated pedagogies: work that attempts to make learning environments more equitable, including digital access schemes (Adhikari et al., 2017); the fostering of digital and data literacies (Choi and Cristol, 2021); and the use of Universal Design for Learning (Griggs and Moore, 2023) The paper presents a synthesis of these themes, and highlights important gaps in the evidence base: a need for greater clarity in the definitions of equity; a need for greater attention to the underpinning logic, biases and accountability structures in commercial EdTech products; and a need for richer, context-specific understandings of how and for what purpose technologies are employed in the learning experiences of secondary school pupils, especially outside of the U.S. We suggest the need for an explicit focus on the ways in which complex patterns of digital inequity, algorithmic bias, and interactions between teachers, pupils and technologies can exacerbate existing social and educational inequities or, indeed, create new ones in specific school contexts.

Adhikari, J., Scogings, C., Mathrani, A. & Sofat, I. (2017). Evolving digital divides in information literacy and learning outcomes: A BYOD journey. International Journal of Information and Learning Technology 34, 290–306. Baker, R.S & Hawn, A. (2022). Algorithmic Bias in Education. Int J Artif Intell Educ 32, 1052–1092. Choi, M. & Cristol, D. (2021). Digital citizenship with intersectionality lens: Towards participatory democracy driven digital citizenship education. Theory Into Practice 60, 361–370. Dolan, J.E. (2016). Splicing the divide: A review of research on the evolving digital divide among K-12 students. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 48, 16–37. Greenhow, C., Lewin, C. & Staudt Willet, K.B., (2021). The educational response to Covid-19 across two countries. Technology, Pedagogy & Education 30, 7–25. Griggs, N. & Moore, R. (2023). Removing Systemic Barriers for Learners with Diverse Identities: Antiracism, UD for Learning, and Edpuzzle. J Spec Educ Technol 38, 15–22. Rafalow, M.H. & Puckett, C. (2022). Sorting Machines: Digital Technology and Categorical Inequality in Education. Educational Researcher 51, 274–278. Robinson, L., Wiborg, Ø. & Schulz, J. (2018). Interlocking Inequalities: Digital Stratification Meets Academic Stratification. American Behavioral Scientist 62, 1251–1272.

Digital infrastructures and EdTech in schools participate in renegotiating the social fabric of schools. They differentiate, categorize and hierarchize (Rafalow & Puckett 2022) actors in digital education practices. One overlooked dimension of the relationship between EdTech and inequalities is the way in which digital education practices create temporal borders between actors. Therefore, in this paper, we zoom in on practices of waiting. We make use of the double meaning of the German verb ‘warten’, in which both the waiting for something (in the sense of pausing; Warten) and the maintenance of something (in the sense of preventive measures to avert breakdown; Wartung) are inscribed. Based on a year of ethnographic research in six schools (three in Germany and three in Sweden) the paper draws links between ‘warten’ practices, EdTech, and social inequality. It asks: Which practices of ‘warten’ (as waiting/maintenance) can be observed in the sociotechnical infrastructure of German and Swedish schools and to what extent are social inequalities negotiated in these practices? The paper draws on two perspectives on ‘warten’: First, an infrastructure studies perspective, which does not consider digital infrastructures as stable entities, but as fragile assemblages of practices, objects, policies, and actors (Star 1999) that need to constantly be sustained, maintained, or repaired. Different temporalities are inscribed in these practices, and for this paper, the concept of maintenance-as-waiting (Schabacher 2021) is particularly relevant. Second, the conceptualization of waiting as part of temporal bordering from critical border studies and migration studies (Andersson, 2014). In this literature, "waiting is the feeling that one is not fully in command of one's life" (Khosravi 2017, p. 81). Digital infrastructures and EdTech in schools give rise to practices of ‘warten’ in the double sense (Warten/Wartung; waiting/maintenance) – and temporal bordering sensitizes us to the unequal ways in which different actors are affected by these practices. Our analysis shows that while ‘warten’ is a central aspect of everyday school life shaped by digital technologies in European countries, it affects different people unevenly. As digital infrastructures and EdTech materialize as actors of temporal bordering, they evaluate the time of certain people in school as more valuable and important than that of others – forcing some to wait or to practise maintenance-as-waiting. By laying out differences and similarities between and within the German and Swedish contexts in relation to ‘warten’, this paper offers thick descriptions and deep insight into the state of European digital classrooms.

Andersson, R. (2014). Time and the Migrant Other: European Border Controls and the Temporal Economics of Illegality. American Anthropologist, 116(4), 795–809. Khosravi, S. (2017). Precarious Lives: Waiting and Hope in Iran. University of Pennsylvania Press. Rafalow, M. H., & Puckett, C. (2022). Sorting Machines: Digital Technology and Categorical Inequality in Education. Educational Researcher, 51(4), 274–278. Schabacher, G. (2021). Time and Technology: The Temporalities of Care. In Media Infrastructures and the Politics of Digital Time (S. 55–76). Amsterdam University Press. Star, S. L. (1999). The Ethnography of Infrastructure. American Behavioral Scientist, 43(3), 377–391.

The focus of this paper is how teachers’ work is regulated and materialised through the relational arrangements of digital technologies. In particular, we pay attention to temporal aspects of work through the issue of work intensification as the generated effect of complex sociotechnical and affective arrangements, which include the experiences and self-regulation of subjects managing time pressure demands (Creagh et al., 2023) and exploitation of emotional labour as part of today’s performative work life (Zafra, 2017). Decisive for how this is played out, are the resources in teachers’ work and positions of teacher labour within different school systems, issues that have become a concern in policy (e.g., Education International, 2023; UNESCO, 2024) often suggesting that teachers be released from work burdens to secure the teacher labour workforce. Based on a sociomaterial understanding of work and as part of a larger international research project, we set out to explore and mirror the issue of work intensification through the Swedish and the Mexican case. Methodologically we draw on thick school ethnographic descriptions consisting of field note observations, interviews, diaries and logbooks, and platform mapping. Actor-network theory (Latour, 2005) and the concept of jumping scales (Barad, 2007) were used to relationally analyse the local–global arrangements that concentrate teachers’ work time and produce work intensification, yet also to highlight the resistance and interruptions to such forces. Analytically, we focus on the sociomaterial time-ordering devices in teachers’ work to sync or counteract temporal frictions and tensions exemplified by (digital and analog) documentation of completed work tasks and calendar coordination (Wajcman, 2019). Our analyses show that work intensification is enacted in Sweden and Mexico through political and teachers’ unions pressures, demands of platform technologies and communication operating on a 24/7 timescale and continuous and yet unpredictable work events of control and care in everyday work. Discussions on teachers’ work often problematised the tensions between global and local demands of work performativity and argued that the global neoliberal agendas won over local demands, de-nationalising and de-regulating teachers’ work (e.g. Robertson, 2013). Our argument, however, is that there are still very powerful local forces speaking to collective work and social justice issues beyond individual well-being and employment discourses (Supiot, 2023) that shape teachers’ work, that are made visible as we mirror our different local cases and their global entanglements.

Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Duke University Press. Creagh, S., Thompson, G., Mockler, N., Stacey, M., & Hogan, A. (2023). Workload, Work Intensification and Time Poverty for Teachers and School Leaders: A Systematic Research Synthesis. Educational Review. Education International. (2021). The Global Report on the Status of Teachers. Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory. Oxford University Press. Robertson, S. (2013). Teachers’ Work, Denationalisation, and Transformations in the Field of Symbolic Control: A Comparative Account. In J. Levin & J. Ozga (eds.). World Yearbook of Education 2013 (pp. 77–96). Routledge. Supiot, A. (2023). El trabajo ya no es lo que fue. Cómo pensarlo de nuevo en un mundo que cambió. Siglo XXI Editores. UNESCO - ITFT (2024). Global Report on Teachers. Addressing Teacher Shortages. Wajcman, J. (2019). How Silicon Valley sets Time. New Media & Society, 21(6), 1272-1289. Zafra, R. (2017). El entusiasmo. Precariedad y trabajo creativo en la era digital. Anagrama.

Studies have highlighted how EdTech may be reconfiguring pedagogical and social relationships. For example, the use of dashboards influences how teachers understand their students and the students see themselves (Jarke & Macgilchrist, 2021); the use of EdTech platforms can encode expectations of what a learner should be and how they should act (Decuypere, 2019) and Google Classroom can shape the role of teachers (Perrotta et al., 2021). Concurrently, research shows that schools with less resources may tend to resort to more automated versions of EdTech (Zeide, 2017) which may have implications for learning and teaching relations (Saltman, 2016). This presentation adds to this emerging area. Drawing on in-depth data from ethnographic research in three secondary schools in England, which takes a relational socio-technical approach, this paper focuses on the ways in which the increasing use of digital technologies in schools is changing student-teacher relations, and the implications this has for educational and social equity. We combine the findings from participatory classroom observation (40 classes per school), interviews with students and teachers (40 per school), futures workshops with students (2 per school) and “socio-technical audits” of key EdTech platforms (Gleason & Heath, 2021). We focus on three themes and tensions in our data that raise questions for pedagogic relations: distraction and opportunity, (dis)trust and validity, and surveillance and communication. We show how the underlying logics – i.e. the design choices and pedagogical assumptions embedded within EdTech - come together with the varied structural and cultural conditions that students and teachers encounter in each school and how these have varied implications for educational equity. We show how the “hidden curriculum” along with the potential biases of EdTech, can shape teacher agency, how students think about themselves, their relationships to others, and the expectations society has for them (Biesta, 2016); and demonstrate how this has implications for the reproduction and reconfiguration of inequity. Viewing the future as a process of emergence from current school practices (Facer, 2013), our findings highlight the significant inequities in schools in England, and how the current EdTech on offer can often be inadequate. Although the implications of EdTech are never straightforward, we argue that stakeholders should be demanding and reimagining “better” EdTech, that fits with broader educational purposes (Biesta, 2016) and are “explicitly designed to address issues of equity” (Facer & Selwyn, 2021:143) to support pedagogical relations that enable positive social change.

Biesta, G. (2016). Beyond Learning: Democratic Education for a Human Future. Taylor & Francis. Decuypere, M. (2019). Researching educational apps: ecologies, technologies, subjectivities and learning regimes. Learning, Media and Technology, 44(4), 414-429. Facer, K. & Selwyn, N. (2021). Digital Technology and the Futures of Education: Towards ‘Non-Stupid’ Optimism. The Futures of Education initiative UNESCO. Facer, K. (2013). The problem of the future and the possibilities of the present in education research. International Journal of Educational Research, 61, 135-143. Gleason, B., & Heath, M. K. (2021). Injustice embedded in Google Classroom and Google Meet: A techno-ethical audit of remote educational technologies. Italian Journal of Educational Technology, 29(2), 26-41. Jarke, J. & Macgilchrist, F. (2021). Dashboard stories: How narratives told by predictive analytics reconfigure roles, risk and sociality in education. Big Data & Society, 8(1). Perrotta, C. Gulson, K., Williamson, B. & Witzenberger, K. (2021). Automation, APIs and the distributed labour of platform pedagogies in Google Classroom, Critical Studies in Education, 62:1, 97-113 Saltman, K. J. (2016). Corporate Schooling Meets Corporate Media: Standards, Testing, and Technophilia. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies 38(2): 105–23. Zeide, E. (2017). The structural consequences of big data-driven education. Big Data, 5(2):164-172.