Going to school with Google: Digital authorities, commercial ontologies, and the value of critical educational research

Lecture by Lucas Cone, PhD scholar at the Danish School of Education at Aarhus University.

Abstract

In recent years, digital technologies have become increasingly central partners in preparing, conducting, monitoring, and evaluating educational encounters across all levels of education. Spanning learning platforms, data infrastructures, and social media applications, this lecture questions how digital technologies – most often owned by private sector actors – are involved in the redistribution of educational responsibilities, ontologies, and priorities.

Building on fieldwork at a Danish primary school, the lecture explores the performative effects of imbricating students and teachers in a burgeoning digital economy purporting to modernize education and the public sector writ large. I conclude by discussing how post-critical educational research can contribute to exploring and problematizing the day-to-day enactments of digital teaching and learning.