“Innovate”, “transform”, “engage”, “envision”, “upskill”. Words drawn from the lexicon of Distinguished, Innovative or Certified Educators. Individuals employed by educational institutions who have been awarded a level or accolade from a global software company. A signal to distinguish the holder’s proficiency? A marker of mastery of a particular software suite. Or an electronic portfolio, a neatly arranged system for the evaluation of learning
Whether the credit is received from Orange, MacroHard or Backrub, the professional development is framed around their own and their students’ engagement with the company’s products in teaching and learning. The priority seems to be to elevate or maximise the use of the company’s platforms and further equip the educator to fluently apply features in these products to collaborate on projects, share ideas, and expertise. When successful, this work is shared among fellow educators or amplified via social media, by fellow members of these networks, who seem fiercely loyal to their “tribe”. Members of the learning network are often invited to communities of practice, copy and use what has been created. Teachers, students and their work that is associated with the platform are recognised. They are seen for many after-hours work, which comes with the use of technology and enjoy the prestige and perks that come with corporate/academic invitation theatre.
Distinguished, innovative and certified educators are doing more than just building skills, confidence and fluency. They are also promoting a particular educational future that extends the reach of a specific technology company. “We are seeing the emergence of the idea of education as a sector for investment and profit-making, where organizations, practices and networks engaged in these endeavors take on an increasingly global scale” Verger (2016). Education technology ‘brokers’ is what Decuypere & Williamson (2020) call these intermediaries who (at the very least) bridge the gap between educational institutions and a “shadow education industry of business managers, market forecasters, deal makers, investors, venture philanthropists and private equity firms”. Trusted actors within a loose network of members (individuals, schools, regional associations and education departments) with a corporate sponsorship to offer legitimacy and back up their efforts.
Types of intermediary work
- Procurement work. Obtain digital service, software and hardware, and necessary licenses.
- Branding: Promote the digital service, software and hardware for use in educational contexts.
- Lobbying:influence other educational institutions/decision-makers to adopt/use the same service, software and hardware.
- Credentialing: legitimise the effort associated with obtaining said company’s qualifications
- Administering: Whether it’s the technical management/support, work involving the daily management or the integration and alignment required to make sure that curriculum embedding.
Stated bluntly. Vendors are selling software products or platforms in classrooms, and then teachers are being vetted by the company that supplied the product.
So if you are a “Distinguished Educator”, an “Innovative Educator Expert” or a “Certified Educator”, perhaps unwittingly, we have become a broader attempt to embed, normalise and expand the scope of big tech’s involvement in technical infrastructures, education management and data gathering. (Williamson 2022).
Among the assortment of teachers, edupreneurs, academics, developers who are happy to identify themselves with these companies, it seems that there are at least two common dispositions.
- A perspective that sees education provision in the future as an object of trade, increasingly for sale, based on competition and consumerism.
- A tendency to focus on skills gap and digital divides and use these “deficits” to open up the door for a particular skills-based understanding of education
The result is that educational technology companies are further legitimised as enablers of education for this century. These intermediates are not the same as the traditional service providers, who are paid to by the school receiving the service. Their platforms and products are not just supporting education. But are bending education towards their corporate aims. By offering legitimate alternatives to institutionalised education, for individual advantage or potential profit, they entrench their mindset in professional learning efforts.
During #feesmustfall and the pandemic, platforms carried the traditional learning and teaching functions that were removed by pandemic lockdowns and restrictions. New platforms were introduced to carry the conventional learning and teaching functions that were removed by pandemic lockdowns and restrictions. Intermediaries are reinforcing a particular vision for educational reconstruction, arguing that access to digital platforms and media can help address learning loss and expand educational opportunities for ‘all’.
A growing body of scholars hold that there is a need to develop a perspective that goes beyond the immediate context of education technology use and question the ways in which objects, tools and devices are extracting capital from commodified education processes (Oliver 2011). Similar to the colonial investments in infrastructure such as roads, harbours and railways, which were set up to extract raw materials to Europe or North America, educational infrastructures are penetrating varied instantiations of educational systems worldwide. Terms such as the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” (4IR) have amplified the messages of a technology-led change and claims about automation, machine learning, personalisation, artificial intelligence, etc are subtly incorporated into their language.
Most of the literature that examines e-learning systems and their implementation focuses on the demand for e-learning and the success in meeting the demand. Less attention is paid to the supply side and the larger commercial imperatives. Corporate socio-technical imaginaries are being re-imagined in parallel with market calculations and speculative investments. The social and technical imaginary of public service as digitally enhanced and data driven has become increasingly shared. Since sociotechnical imaginaries are actively performed and enacted (Strauss, 2006), understanding how local actors take up, sustain, or transform these imaginaries offers potential insight into the contested political terrain of ‘twenty-first century’ digital technology reforms.
Education systems, up until recently, were publicly regulated & run and delivered mass institutionalised schooling, intended for societal or public good (Riep). But this previously held conception of public education (especially in the Global South) is being re-imagined by pressures of privatisation, marketisation, and commodification. A reconfiguration of education is being driven by global technology companies intent on inserting themselves into the education system, via the codification of education in tandem with a horizontal coalition of educators, influencers and third-party brokers who genuinely believe in the mission to transform public education. Predictions include societal changes that will require shifts in employment and education and “accelerated workforce reskilling”. A large proportion of these efforts to retrain schooling are driven by proprietary digital products and services, developed and offered by for-profit companies.
Support for ICTs in education supposes greater accountability of the government and 4IR has also been positioned by politicians as a mechanism for delivery. We are called to believe that this “revolution” will enabling Africa to “leapfrog into the future”. The pandemic has magnified the depth of penetration and demonstrated that remote provision is possible. These figures about growth and uptake can be used to support the notion of a “short cuts” into a technology future and offer reassurance to those who are concerned about being left behind, as change marches forward.
References
Andersson, Annika & Grönlund, Åke. (2009). A Conceptual Framework for E-Learning in Developing Countries: A Critical Review of Research Challenges. EJISDC. 38. 1-16. 10.1002/j.1681-4835.2009.tb00271.x.
Chang, E. (2019) Beyond workforce preparation: contested visions of ‘twenty-first century’ education reform, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 40:1 29-45, DOI: 10.1080/01596306.2018.1549702
Decuypere, M. (2019). Researching educational apps: Ecologies, technologies, subjectivities and learning regimes. Learning, Media and Technology. DOI:10.1080/17439884.2019.1667824
Decuypere, M. & Williamson, B (2021) Breaking open the black box of edtech brokers – new project and PhD studentship Available https://codeactsineducation.wordpress.com/2021/06/02/black-box-of-edtech-brokers/
Riep, C. (2021) Unmasking Global Education Industries and Their Capital Accumulation Strategies. On Materiality and Discourse (Unpublished doctoral thesis), University of Alberta https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-w2ya-vj09
Samnan Ali, M. Amaad Uppal, Stephen R. Gulliver, (2018) “A conceptual framework highlighting elearning implementation barriers”, Information Technology & People, Vol. 31 Issue: 1, pp.156-180,
Verger, A., C. Lubienski, G. Steiner-Khamsi. (2016). “The Emergence and Structuring of the Global Education Industry: Towards an Analytical Framework”. In Verger, A., C. Lubienski, G. Steiner-Khamsi (eds). World Yearbook of Education 2016: The Global Education Industry. New York: Routledge
Williamson, Ben & Hogan. Anna (2021) Pandemic privatization and digitalization in higher education