{"id":8712,"date":"2019-04-11T10:55:56","date_gmt":"2019-04-11T08:55:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newinsights.oeb.global\/?p=8712"},"modified":"2022-01-20T11:53:35","modified_gmt":"2022-01-20T09:53:35","slug":"the-teleology-of-ed-tech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oeb.global\/oeb-insights\/the-teleology-of-ed-tech\/","title":{"rendered":"The Teleology of Ed-Tech"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Audrey<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

There is a certain teleology to the way in which the history of education technology gets told. Its developments are often laid out in a narrative that posits that, as time has passed, education has become increasingly and necessarily technological. It\u2019s a history that crescendos, if not culminates, with the introduction of the computer. And that is key: the computer as the culmination. This story works to position the digital classroom as inevitable, a computational vision for teaching and learning as inescapable.<\/strong>

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That this is the story that gets told should not come as a surprise. After all, the field of education technology is, by definition and design, now almost inextricably tied to the computer. The job of the educational technologist is<\/em> \u201ced-tech\u201d — it\u2019s right there in the name. The stories that education technologists tell about the past, present, and future of teaching and learning all require ed-tech. To riff on a phrase from literary theorist Frederic Jameson, it is easier (for some ed-tech types, at least) to imagine the end of the university than to imagine the end of the LMS.

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The teleology is a trap.

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(The learning management system is also a trap, but that\u2019s a different essay.)

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I started work on my book Teaching Machines<\/em>, I wrote a proposal and an initial chapter outline that replicated precisely this type of historical predestination. I imagined that the book would start with the multiple-choice teaching machine designed by psychologist Sidney Pressey in the 1920s and his failure to successfully manufacture and market the device, and it would end with the \u201cKids Can\u2019t Wait\u201d campaign that Steve Jobs launched in the 1980s in an attempt to get schools to purchase Apple II computers. \u201cYou can\u2019t stop there,\u201d one education journalist insisted in his feedback to my pitch. \u201cYou have to talk about Microsoft too! You have to talk about Bill Gates!\u201d \u201cYou can\u2019t stop at the Eighties,\u201d another writer advised. \u201cWhat about the Internet? What about \u2018mobile\u2019? What about AI?\u201d

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I\u2019d argue that this is one of the flaws of so many books written about ed-tech\u2019s past: this insistence that the scope of the story must be stretched to include the computer. Indeed, many books assume that the most exciting part of the story \u2013 the foreshadowing! the climax! the happy ending! — must be the bit about the dawn of the computer or the arrival of the Internet, and as such these books tend to rush through what happened prior to that. Anything that occurred before the \u201cdigital classroom\u201d is treated simply a precursor to the computer, only interesting or relevant insofar as it points towards the superiority of the computer. One is meant to feel some narrative sense of relief, no doubt, that the computer finally came along. \u201cProgress.\u201d

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is certainly how the teaching machines of the mid-twentieth century \u2013 pre-digital machines — are often depicted. They\u2019re written about as failures \u2013 commercial failures, if nothing else. All credit is given to the promise of computer, which was looming on the horizon according to this version of events, rather than any other factors — technological or otherwise — for squashing the idea and preventing the widespread adoption of teaching machines.

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But teaching machines and the pedagogy that accompanied the devices, \u201cprogrammed instruction,\u201d weren\u2019t just a blip. The ideas behind these developments \u2013 breaking lessons down into small, \u201cbite-sized\u201d content for instruction and assessment, for example, along with the insistence that this would foster \u201cindividualization\u201d in education by allowing students to move forward and master concepts at their own pace \u2013 were picked up by textbook publishers. They were picked up by the early advocates for computer-based instruction. Even without long-term commercial success for the teaching machine-makers, their ideas about programmed instruction have become \u201chard-coded,\u201d if you will, into all sorts of educational technologies and pedagogical practices.

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, I decided to rethink my book (ignoring a lot of advice and admonitions, I confess). Instead of writing a narrative that, inadvertently or not, positioned the educational psychology of the 1950s and 1960s as merely a prelude to the educational computing of the 1970s and 1980s, I\u2019m focusing exclusively on those earlier decades.

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By moving more slowly through this time period, I avoid another major problem with how the history of ed-tech frequently gets told: teleology \u2013 the story that computers are inevitable \u2013 is also a framework that grants agency to technology at the expense of any other social, economic, or political issues. It is as though the history of education technology, to borrow from Wired Magazine<\/em> founder Kevin Kelly is necessarily \u201cwhat technology wants.\u201d The success or failure of a technology is because of the technology, not because of price or policy or other priorities.

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By focusing on teaching machines \u2013 on those pre-digital devices designed to automate instruction \u2013 my book moves more slowly through the 1950s and 1960s, examining events beyond the machines themselves. I want people to remember that the story of ed-tech isn\u2019t simply a story of tech<\/em>, and the story teaching machines isn\u2019t simply a story of machines. It isn\u2019t simply a story of B. F. Skinner, the name most closely associated with the teaching machines\u2019 development. It\u2019s much more than that. It\u2019s a story of the twentieth century faith in science and technology and the post-War fascination with gadgetry. It\u2019s the story of automation, standardization, and personalization. It\u2019s a story of businesses\u2019 long-running interest in (and skepticism about) selling products to schools. It\u2019s the story of the rise of educational psychology as a field and the field\u2019s encouragement of psycho-technologies. It\u2019s the story of changing expectations of what the school curriculum should look like and how it should be designed and delivered. It\u2019s the story of how the education system has transformed itself as enrollments grew through the twentieth century and expectations of who schools should serve \u2013 some students, all students, business interests, or national defense, for example \u2013 changed.

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The teleology of education technology \u2013 a story that grants agency and ascendancy to the machine itself — strips away so much of this context. And I wonder if one of the reasons that education technology is not viewed as having a deep and rich intellectual tradition is because that tradition and that history have been brushed aside in order to link together a series of press releases and product announcements, promising that the future of education will be necessarily computerized.

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Written by Audrey Watters<\/a>, Education writer at Hack Education, independent scholar and author and keynote speaker at OEB Global 2019.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is a certain teleology to the way in which the history of education technology gets told. Its developments are often laid out in a narrative that posits that, as time has passed, education has become increasingly and necessarily technological. It\u2019s a history that crescendos, if not culminates, with the introduction of the computer. And […]<\/p>\n

<\/div>
<\/div>
<\/path><\/svg><\/span><\/a><\/svg><\/span><\/a><\/path><\/svg><\/span><\/a><\/path><\/svg><\/span><\/a><\/path><\/path><\/svg><\/span><\/a><\/path><\/svg><\/span><\/a><\/div>
<\/div><\/div>
<\/div>","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":8713,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[753,209],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community-resources","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oeb.global\/oeb-insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oeb.global\/oeb-insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oeb.global\/oeb-insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oeb.global\/oeb-insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oeb.global\/oeb-insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8712"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/oeb.global\/oeb-insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8806,"href":"https:\/\/oeb.global\/oeb-insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8712\/revisions\/8806"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oeb.global\/oeb-insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oeb.global\/oeb-insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oeb.global\/oeb-insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oeb.global\/oeb-insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}