Educational Technology: From Foundation to Fashion

Gary Natriello, Professor of Sociology and Education, Ruth L. Gottesman Chair in Educational Research, at Teachers College, Columbia University

Gary Natriello is the Ruth L. Gottesman Professor of Educational Research and Professor of Sociology and Education at Teachers College Columbia University. Professor Natriello is chair of the Department of Human Development and Director of the Graduate Program in Learning Analytics. His most recent book is ‘Creating Learning Settings: Physical, Digital, ad Social Configurations for the Future of Education published by Routledge.

It has now been many decades since digital and networked technologies became a constant, indeed a seemingly essential, element in K-12 schools. For those of us who enjoy working with such technologies and combining them in educational settings the promise of a new set of powerful tools to support teaching and foster learning has not faded, but with time has come the realization that these tools once thought capable of transforming the educational landscape are more fashion than foundation.

Accepting this reality and adapting to it may be the key to becoming comfortable with something less than the benefits often touted by technology purveyors.

Such claims have been too eagerly accepted by educators, who are already strained by increasing oversight from supervisors and the heightened concerns of parents and the public. With each report of new hardware or software—or some special combination deployed to great fanfare—comes a flush of excitement at the promise of turning around a struggling school or district or even better, transforming the lives of students through technology. These promises quickly fade, only to be replaced by new reports of yet more new digital tools to be added to the mix.

Educators confronting the unrealized promises of educational technologies year after year are accustomed to being disappointed as they face the fact that such technologies will not have transformative effects in their lives or those of their students. At times such disappointment turns to anger as the costs of technologies crowd out other learning resources from limited budgets. At other times the disappointment morphs into feelings of betrayal as personal investments of time and sometimes more in mastering new technologies are not repaid by transformational impacts. But it is important to recognize that educator dissatisfaction is to a large extent the product of heightened expectations in the face of on-the-ground realities.

Letting go of unrealistic expectations may be difficult, but it is essential to put digital and networked technologies in proper perspective so educators can get on with the slow gains that might be possible for the educational enterprise. To ease such a transition in our thinking we need a new metaphor to replace the promotional hype that surrounds educational technology. This new metaphor must be attractive and perhaps even a bit exciting in order to capture our attention.

“I want to suggest that we stop treating educational technology as a foundational element of the educational enterprise and start treating it as fashion with all that the term implies.”

With all this in mind, I suggest we stop treating educational technology as a foundational element of the educational enterprise and start treating it as fashion with all that the term implies. What are some features of fashion that make it a suitable metaphor for our purposes? Fashion is at once creative and forward looking while also being rooted in established channels of production and distribution. It leverages individual initiative to have global impact. It marches forward with seasonal changes always attempting to present something fresh while occasionally cycling back to historical forms. It provides a surface, sometimes superficial, presentation layer over enduring patterns of behavior. It generates the need for new adoptions and new resource commitments.

Fashion includes both bespoke products as well as customary and replicable forms, with the former offered at premium prices and the latter sometimes ill-fitting but at lower cost. Institutionally mandated technologies—a special case of fashion-carry the benefits and the limitations of school uniforms. Fashion seeks to gain audience and can sometimes inspire imitators who aim to approximate the experience, fooling only the less sophisticated followers of the field.

Early in the 20^th century, Thomas Edison advocated the motion picture as the technology that would revolutionize education and ultimately replace text books. A hundred years later we are still hearing proclamations of revolutionary or foundational change. We can continue falling for the pitch time and time again or we can embrace the fun of being technology fashionistas. The prospect of such fun may take us further in the end—so let’s give it a try.

Educational Technology