A year of remote teaching motivated to think more about the relationship between education and technology. So what do I do when I want to learn about something? I start by reading a book. In this instance, it was Neil Selwyn’s Education and Technology: Key Issues and Debates, 2nd edition, 2017. Today I will focus on Chapter 3, “A Short History of Education and Technology”, but let me first set the stage with some Chapter 2 quotes that advise caution in our thinking, and to avoid being too adoring or vilifying of today’s push for digital technology use in education.
Anyone who is studying education and technology therefore needs to steer clear of assuming that digital technology has the ability to change things for the better. History reminds us that technical fixes tend to produce uneven results, very rarely resulting in similar outcomes across the population and often just replacing one social problem with another. Even when [it] is seen to ‘work’, it can be difficult to ascertain why… Often, [it] will only deal with the surface manifestations of a problem rather than its roots… In particular, some of the most misleading assumptions about education and technology are the deterministic claims of technologies possessing inherent qualities and being capable of having predictable ‘impacts’ or ‘effects’ on students, teachers and educational institutions if used in a correct manner.
Selwyn goes on to state the dangers of technological determinism and simplistic ‘cause-and-effect’ instrumentalist viewpoints. It’s not just a matter of figuring out “the impediments that are delaying the march of technological process”, but worse, it blinkers one’s view and reduces adaptability to the ensuing unpredictable outcomes. Selwyn briefly discusses the assumption (prevalent from 1980-2000) that computers and subsequently e-mail would lead to a paperless office. But in fact, paper used increased. In surveying his brief history of education and technology, Selwyn will approach the subject by looking at how society shapes and uses technology, in contrast to marching through each development as an upward evolutionary arc of increasing technology.
Chapter 3 focuses on four technologies of the 20th century: film, radio, TV, and the (micro)computer. Unlike the staying power of the textbook (17th century) and the chalkboard (19th century), these four have had mixed success in sustained widespread use. I will provide just brief highlights along with some of my thoughts on each of these, and if you’re interested in the details, I highly recommend Selwyn’s very readable and thoughtful book for the full story.
The famous inventor Thomas Edison was a champion of educational film in the early 1900s. He thought it would displace textbooks and completely revolutionize the educational system. He put in money and resources, commissioning educational films related to relaying the wonders of science and the natural world. There was plenty of enthusiasm for this venture, and historians looking back found that “early ‘experimental’ studies… found that groups of students using film were ‘greatly superior in learning information and concepts’ when compared to students using traditional methods.” Does this sound familiar? The same language is adopted today arguing that study X has shown result Y which enhances student learning of Z, which is then extrapolated as a general methodology for learning anything and everything.
But then the use of that technology declines over time. Subsequent studies question the positive results from the earlier studies. Enthusiasm is curbed. Blame is assigned. The costs were too high. The implementation was wrong. Teachers were Luddites resisting the new technology. It didn’t fit with lesson plans and other institutional requirements. The list goes on.
In the mid-1900s, Groundhog Day replays the situation but now the new technology is radio. I didn’t know much about this and found it interesting to learn that World Radio University (established in 1937) “broadcasted classes in 24 languages to 31 countries”, and that there were many “Schools of the Air” which offered supplemental instruction reaching over a million students in the U.S. in its heyday. Rise and Fall. Repeat. Supplanted by the next emerging technology: television. Enthusiasm reached new heights. What could be better than a medium so engaging with access to the very best teachers surpassing anything you could experience in your local school classroom. Sounds like a MOOC to me. Why, we should bring it into the classroom! And in American Samoa, 80% of students were “spending between one-quarter and one-third of their class time watching televised lessons, which were then supplemented by follow-up exercises and question periods led by teachers. Similar ‘immersive’ projects in US states suggested that television-viewing students could improve their position in league tables of test scores when compared to national norms.” Active-learning flipped classroom, anyone?
And then there’s the computer. Selwyn describes a 1966 study where students from a ‘deprived’ school found themselves immersed in “computer terminal, light pens and screens to teach reading and arithmetic” and apparently loved it. New studies trumpeted the successes of computer-assisted learning to reduce the drop-out rate, not to mention freeing up teachers to do other important things, or even giving them the axe and saving money on manpower. Quoting a 1985 study by Stonier and Conlin: “Not the least of the successes was the testimony of a girl who stated that the computer was the first math teacher who had never yelled at her.”
When I was going to the equivalent of grade school in the 1980s, computer-assisted education had not permeated my country’s education system. I did find computers fascinating, not least because you could play cool games. I would visit friends who would have home computers (Apple II clones were in vogue) and I borrowed books from the library to teach myself BASIC. I would write out programs on paper and when I had a chance to visit a friend and we had played a few games on it, I would type in my program to see if it worked the way I had anticipated. These were my “educational” excuses for why my parents should let me visit those friends, preferably more often. Looking back on those experiences, I wonder if that subtly moved me towards computational chemistry mainly by getting me comfortable with using the command line.
Computers are certainly ubiquitous in education today, but perhaps not in the same way envisioned by its early prophets. They have certainly made data analysis a whole lot easier in class but also when students are writing up their lab reports or working on their problem sets. Access to data repositories in real-time thanks to the Internet allows me to design small group in-class work that, I think, promotes useful learning of the material. Without the technology and bandwidth of today, classes may have ground to a halt during the Covid pandemic. As a teacher, I’m very grateful to the Internet as a resource helping me put together what I hope are engaging classes for my students. There is reason to think that some of our 21st century digital technologies are significantly transforming education and that we might not see a replay of Groundhog Day. But we should also learn the lessons of the past. I’ll quote Selwyn again (from the end of Chapter 3).
We have seen… how successive introductions of film, radio, television and micro-computing into education were accompanied by considerable hyperbole and hucksterism. Many claims were made about the enhanced nature of technology-based learning and the resulting improvements to learning, as well as the establishment of ‘fairer’ conditions for ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ students and schools. We also saw how research ‘evidence’ was produced quickly to ‘prove’ the ‘effect’ of these technologies, especially in terms of learning gains – regardless of the fact that this evidence was inconclusive and equivocal… it is notable how many of the ‘educational’ rationales for these technologies were based on ambitions towards the mechanisation of the teacher’s work, increased efficiency and economies of scale…
In general, the twentieth century was a period where many people were keen to proclaim the ‘power’ of various technologies to affect substantial societal change… The flaw in this reasoning… was that ‘social problems are much more complex than are technological problems’ [quoting a Manhattan Project physicist]… [there is] a clear ‘cycle’ of events that is more or less repeated with each ‘wave’ of technology development. This cycle is seen to begin with substantial promises for the transformative potential of the technology backed by research evidence and other instances of scientific credibility. Yet… educators go on to make inconsistent use of the new technologies for a variety of technical, professional and personal reasons. Perhaps most importantly, few changes appear to occur in the arrangements of educational institutions. A number of rationales are then proposed to explain this ‘lack of impact’…
It’s difficult to see where things are headed when you’re in the thick of it. The historical perspective is useful to consider when one has the benefit of hindsight. Even if our present ‘wave’ proves transformative, it will likely unfold in a way differently from that predicted by its present champions. I suspect thinking about the relationship between technical and social problems is important, but I haven’t quite wrapped my head around what this means. Also, Selwyn’s caution against educational hyperbole and hucksterism still stands. And there will be a lot of it. Separating the wheat from the chaff will not be easy; it might be even more difficult with the so-called information explosion. But even that’s an old story, repeated for a new generation with different technology. To quote from the Matrix movies that also feature cycles: “some things never change… but some things do.”
Stay tuned for more on Selywn’s book in future posts!
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