Book Review: "Foundations of Educational Technology: Integrative Approaches and Interdisciplinary Perspectives (original) (raw)
Related papers
2021
Our goal in this chapter is to explore the history of educational technology research by identifying research trends across the past 50 years. We surveyed 20 representative research papers from each decade ranging from 1970 to 2020. We used bibliometric data to select these representative papers and then qualitatively analyzed and manually coded them. We found that while the particular technologies investigated consistently changed, research generally progressed from addressing theoretical difficulties to determining the affordances of instructional technologies and finally to studying pedagogical strategies. We saw this trend on a macro level, occurring over 50 years. These findings imply that educational technology research (a) is iterative, beginning with the adoption of new technologies by practitioners; (b) relies on determining the effectiveness of instructional technologies; and (c) ultimately investigates teaching strategies related to technology.
Rethinking educational technology1
The broad logic of the deployment of technologies to support or aid classroom practices at every level goes a long way back and has persisted to this day. Attention is given to the learning of students. This framing is supported by a long tradition of research which has broadly investigated questions characterised by “how”, that is how best to use a particular technology to support the learning of particular content.
Reflections on the state of educational technology
2000
In this article, I comment on the seven articles that appeared in the special issues of Educational Technology Research and Development (1998, 46(4); 1999, 47(2)) and an associated American Educational Research Association (AERA) symposium, as well as other selected developments in educational technology as presented in a recent edited volume (Jacobson & Kozma, in press). I address the importance of the research and development (R&D) described in these articles and ident~Cy five interconnected themes that cut across many of them: the centrality of design, the enabling capabilities of technology, collaboration with new partners, scaling up of projects, and the use of alternative research methodologies. Together, the projects described in these articles are defining new directions for educational technology that put it at the forefront of educational R&D. At the same time, I direct a critique and challenge to traditional instructional systems design (ISD) technology programs.
Educational Technology and the " New Language of Learning " : Lineage and Limitations
Even the most rudimentary definitions of the term “technology” indicate that its meaning extends far beyond artifacts and devices to include processes, methods, means, and applied knowledge. It is therefore surprising how rarely instructional theories, methods, and applications—for example, learning theories, learning designs, or learning environments—are considered specifically as technologies in the relevant literature. This chapter focuses on the instrumental nature of the concepts of “learning” and “learning theory” as used in the field of education and technology—which Gert Biesta (2006) and others have characterized as being manifest in a “new language of learning.” This refers to a vocabulary or discourse that, for example, characterizes “teaching [as the] ‘facilitation of learning’ [and], education [as the] ‘provision of learning opportunities’” (Haugsbak & Nordkvelle, 2007, p. 2). The chapter argues that this vocabulary represents a particular technologization or instrumentalization of education, a process that makes educational practices and priorities appear germane to, or even incomplete without, technological rationalization and reshaping. This chapter traces how this vocabulary casts learning as a natural and universal process, and quite consistently accompanies the promotion of a range of technological artifacts in education. Running from the introduction of “teaching machines” through to current visions of school reform, this theoretical lexicon will be shown to efface its cultural and ideological contingency through a quasi-scientific “neutrality” and a biologically based universality, and to limit the possibility for discourse and practice within the field of education and technology.
Educational technology: what it is and how it works
2021
This theoretical paper elucidates the nature of educational technology and, in the process, sheds light on a number of phenomena in educational systems, from the no-significant-difference phenomenon to the singular lack of replication in studies of educational technologies. Its central thesis is that we are not just users of technologies but coparticipants in them. Our participant roles may range from pressing power switches to designing digital learning systems to performing calculations in our heads. Some technologies may demand our participation only to enact fixed, predesigned orchestrations correctly. Other technologies leave gaps that we can or must fill with novel orchestrations, which we may perform more or less well. Most are a mix of the two, and the mix varies according to context, participant, and use. This participative orchestration is highly distributed: in educational systems, coparticipants include the learner, the teacher, and many others, from textbook authors to ...
I have asked my co-editors at Educational Technology Research & Development (ETR&D) for an opportunity to share a few reflections as my 15 years of service as ETR&D Development Editor draws to a close. These few remarks represent my reflections about some of the things I have observed over the years. The categories into which I have chosen to group these reflections are: (a) writing, publishing, and editing; (b) instructional design and technology research; and (c) attitudes and abilities. The main messages I try to convey are: (a) simple, descriptive language tends to promote understanding, (b) advocacy can easily lead to over-promising and loss of confidence in our professional discipline, and (c) humility and open-minded inquiry are essential for learning and instruction. Some of these remarks may seem disconnected and unnecessarily personal. That is a risk one takes when trying to express what one genuinely believes. I do hope these thoughts will provoke others, as I have been provoked to learn more and more over the years.
Educational Technology: The Influence of Theory
2002
In this paper we explore the role of theories in current practice in educational technology. We review a range of writings from the past 30 years on the nature of learning technology research. We discuss influences on learning technologies from the related fields of Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED) and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). We identify two groups of theories which have been used. The first group are related to principled decisions about the design of learning materials. The second group influence the ways in which we frame our research on learning. Research in learning technologies in the future will need to draw on both groups of theories. In this paper, we draw on our own experiences as educational technologists and the purpose of the paper is to encourage other educational technologists to join with us in reflecting on their own use of theories.