Una brillante pieza llena de sensatez.
On one hand, he pointed to the burgeoning research literature beginning to highlight detrimental effects of digital technology on learning – particularly in terms of how technology might be altering students’ capacity to process information, think and engage in deep learning. On the other hand, he noted the growing significance of ‘good news’ studies sponsored by the IT industry and other actors who stand to profit from increased technology investment by schools and school systems.
Governments, schools, educators and parents have remained curiously unconcerned with what research evidence actually says. Instead, public opinion on the benefits/harm of technology in education has tended to an evidence-free zone, where many people have been content to act on assumptions and speculation. The IT industry has already become expert at producing polished narratives extoling ‘success’ stories. Glossy images of classrooms full of happy students engaging in creative collaborative work fit perfectly with the aspirations in the public discourse for how technology should save schooling from tradition.
Interesantes citas de Biesta (sospechoso habitual) y Sahlberg. De pasada, casi escondido entre el argumento general un pequeña joya que por si sol merecería toda la atención:
Adding to issues of evidence-building in relation to Ed-Tech, most studies of technology’s possible ‘detrimental’ effects are conducted by researchers in the areas of psychology, neurology and other clinical approaches to learning that often reduce it to an individual process devoid of contextual features. Again, there appears to be little motivation for these researchers to engage with educational academic research or vis-versa, even though connections between research with a clinical approach to learning and education research on the social and cultural contexts of schools and classrooms has the potential for significant mutual benefits. While clinical approaches often produce useful results, perhaps by virtue of their disconnection to the situated contexts where learning takes place, they often lend themselves to reductive and polarizing arguments about the relationship between technology and learning.
El subrayado es mío y apunta a una de las grandes cuestiones de la investigación educativa. Solo puede tener resultados potentes (desde un punto de vista clásico de la investigación científica) cuando se hace aislada de todo contexto. Resultados científicamente poderosos obtenidos justo allí donde no tiene lugar la educación: el laboratorio. Está en juego la incapacidad de mantener juntos laboratorio y realidad.
Fuente: Neil Welwyn, Thomas Hillman, Jonas Linderoth. Is Ed-Tech research nearing its ‘Big Tobacco’ moment? | Lärande och IT.
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