University of Glasgow | 22-25 August 2023
At the end of August, the University of Glasgow hosted this year’s ECER (European Conference on Educational Research) on the theme The Value of Diversity in Education and Educational Research, at which I was able to give a talk (see previous post) as well as act as a discussant. My stay there was financially supported by the internal research funding of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz.
Valentin Dander (HCH Potsdam), Theo Hug (University of Innsbruck) and Rachel Shanks (University of Aberdeen) had organised the Symposium with the titel Customized Diversity? Critical Explorations of Educational Capitalism to address the following questions:
- How are today’s globalized assemblages of educational capitalism relevant to issues of diversity?
- What kind of ideas and values are underpinning the concept and where do they come from?
- Which goals, methods and forms of critical media education are important to strengthen democratic and sustainable development paths in media development, in the use and design of digital media?
- What is the role of media educational research for designing for knowledge diversity and viable futures of education?
The symposium consisted of Four Talks, which I then had the opportunity to comment on and discuss:
- Adaptive Learning – the New Mantra? Ideas About the Use of New Technology in Tomorrow’s School (Geir Haugsbakk & Siri Wieberg Klausen | Norway University of Applied Sciences (INN University))
- Changing Knowledge Ecologies in Educational Research Production in Austria, Germany, and Italy: Towards Customized Knowledge Diversity? (Ulrike Stadler-Altmann | Humboldt University of Berlin, Barbara Gross | University of Technology Chemnitz & Theo Hug | Universität Innsbruck)
- The Future of Our Children in the Hands of Three Giants Called McGoogle, MacMicrosoft and Fitzapple (Andrew McLaughlin & Rachel Shanks | University of Aberdeen)
- Teaching for Digital Citizenship: Affective Polarization in Scottish Schools (David Lundie | University of Glasgow)
In my Commentary, I was particularly concerned with highlighting what I saw as the connecting lines to then open up two perspectives to stimulate further discussions: firstly, a somewhat historically-informed perspective on the re-appearance of the reduction of Bildung and education; secondly, reflections on the objectification of knowledge that ›plays beautifully into capitalism’s cards‹.
Connecting Lines: The Involvement of Tech Companies in the Context of Education and The Question of Knowledge and it’s Re-Production
Line I: On a level that may seem superficial at first, appears the ›Provision‹ of Learning Tools by Tech Companies. The talks addressed an important point that also Shoshana Zuboff emphasises: The accumulation of ›knowledge and knowers‹. Zuboff writes that »intellect and expertise […] [are] being concentrated in a handful of companies« (Zuboff 2018: 222) – which weighs heavily in the educational context in that »schools and teachers, rather than having a feast at a digital banquet, find their menus reduced. Their ability to choose the best tools replaced by resourcefulness, the most competent making the best of what is available.« (McLaughlin/Shanks). Timewise the education sector is lagging behind. Where capital, technical know-how, marketing know-how and data are accumulated, however, things move quickly.
Line II: The papers addressed that in the face of frequent Technological Optimism all too often there are positivist accounts of supposed customisation due to increasing ›knowledge‹ about – in this case – learners.
To be continued. Perspective I
What becomes apparent, in my view, is firstly the historically recurring emergence of a Reduction of Bildung and Education. This reduction is based on ideas of measurability and evidence (among others Aronova et al. 2017; Hofhues/Riettiens 2023/in press; Selwyn et al. 2023). Here, an orientation towards optimisation logics becomes apparent, because: Particularly in the context of learning tools and learning analytics it is suggested that, for example, learning processes can be made more ›effective‹ through digital data and can thus be optimised. (Digital) Data appear here both as an ›objective‹ means of description and as a kind of ›universal remedy‹ with which processes can be better analysed and optimised. Those developments around the collection, evaluation, and use of data in contexts of formal education thus become readable as an understanding of learning characterised by optimisation. This is interested in evidence, follows the desire for controllability of Bildung and education, and materialises in socio-technical systems. At the same time, it perpetuates the data-based attempt at precise predictions and determinability with regard to human beings as deficient beings that need to be further developed (among others Dederich/Zirfas 2021). However, human beings – according to my critique – do not fully merge into this (see previous post).
To be continued. Perspective II
With regard to the production of knowledge my second perspective moves in the interplay of education, Bildung and capitalism: learning tools and the like are based on path logics that limit the »space of possibilities«, because »in a sense [they] put the learners on rails« (Seemann et al. 2022: 52). These rails take a discursively negotiated and narrowed path that leads the learners to the next path decision and so on. With Peter Becker and William Clark, for example Adaptive Learning Tools can be read as Little Tools of Knowledge – a concept that originally stems from the research context around bureaucracies and helps analysing »the relations between authority and objectivity« (Becker/Clark 2001: 1; Garz/Riettiens 2023). The focus here is thus on the epistemic effects of those tools, which arise in particular from the fact that the knowledge reduced in them is given a kind of objective coating.
Peter Becker and William Clark refer to the concept of dehumanisation, which they trace back to Weber’s reflections on capitalism: capitalism would function all the better, »the more [bureaucracy; L. R.] ›dehumanizes [entmenschlicht],‹ […]. Instead of the personal interest, favor, grace, gratitude, which motivated the master of older orders, modern culture, the more complex and specialized it becomes, demands, for the external apparatus underpinning it« (Weber 1976: 563 in Becker/Clark 2001: 4). Little tools of knowledge thus become a central component of this dehumanised apparatus and appear like disembodied »self-evident facts and truths« (Becker/Clark 2001: 5; see also Haraway 1988; Preciado 2021).
My discussant point was and is therefore the following: Dehumanisation and Disembodiment seem to be increased by Technification and Digitisation, which is especially problematic regarding the tech companies behind them and their capitalist interests. For when we talk about former top managers of Google (Haugsbakk/Wieberg Klausen) or giant tech companies founding, financing, and providing concepts, platforms as well as learning and analytic tools in the field of education (McLaughlin/Shanks), then the dehumanisation that Weber already described as particularly ›helpful‹ for capitalism is especially problematic. Thus, digitisation can be read as an optimising force in an already highly developed capitalism (Pfeiffer 2021), as: On the one hand, the underlying market-shaped interests are disguised and even given a sometimes positive veneer #charityWashing. On the other hand, the underlying ideas of human beings as deficient beings, who appear to be optimisable if only enough data and consequently ›knowledge‹ about them are available, are also concealed. Contrary to a diversity-sensitive or even diversity-promoting customisation standardisations, normalisations and disciplinarisations are emerging in the disembodied learning tools and platforms, which further nourish ›dehumanised‹ capitalism. [short version]
Bibliography
Aronova, Elena/Oertzen, Christine von/Sepkoski, David (eds.) (2017): Data Histories, in: Osiris. A Research Journal Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences 32.
Becker, Peter/Clark, William (2001): Introduction, in: Little Tools of Knowledge. Historical Essays on Academic and Bureaucratic Practices. Michigan, pp. 1-34.
Dederich, Markus/Zirfas, Jörg (2021): Idealtypen einer pädagogischen Anthropologie der Optimierung, in Henrike Terhart/Sandra Hofhues/Elke Kleinau (eds.): Optimierung. Anschlüsse an den 27. Kongress der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Erziehungswissenschaft, pp. 63–81. Opladen.
Garz, Jona T./Riettiens, Lilli (2023): Small Forms and Formats and their Epistemic Effects on [History of Education] Publishing. [Talk]
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Preciado, Paul (2021): Can the monster speak? Report to an Academy of Psychoanalysts. London.
Seemann, Michael/Macgilchrist, Felicitas/Richter, Christoph/Allert, Heidrun/Geuter, Jürgen (2022): Konzeptstudie. Werte und Strukturen der Nationalen Bildungsplattform. Wikimedia Deutschland. Online [29.08.2023].
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Zuboff, Shoshana (2018): Das Zeitalter des Überwachungskapitalismus. Frankfurt a. M.
Lilli Riettiens 