Classroom Chairs Are EdTech, Too!
Civics of Tech announcements:
Book Club This Week: Our book club will discuss the 2020 book Data Feminism by Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein this Thursday on March 16th, 2023 from 8-9:30pm EST/7-8:30pm CST/6-7:30pm MST/5-6:30pm PST! The book is available in multiple formats, including audiobook, and a paperback version was just released! Register on our Events page or click here.
AERA Meet-Up: We are planning to hold an in-person Civics of Technology meet-up at the upcoming American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Meeting in Chicago on April 13–16, 2023. Please check back to our blog posts, Events page, and Twitter account for updates.
Next “Talking Tech” Monthly Meeting on 04/04!: We hold a “Talking Tech” event on the first Tuesday of every month from 8-9pm EST/7-8pm CST/6-7pm MST/5-6pm PST. These Zoom meetings include discussions of current events, new books or articles, and more. Participants can bring topics, articles, or ideas to discuss. Join us on Tuesday on April 4th for our third Talking Tech. Register on our Events page or click here.
by Jacob Pleasants and Dan Krutka
We have always found analyses of “mundane” technologies to be compelling. Everyday technologies are not flashy, but their very “everyday-ness” makes them important elements of our lived realities. This is why our 5th critical question about technology asks: Why is it difficult to imagine our world without the technology? Based on Neil Postman’s 1998 talk, our curriculum explains:
Technology tends to become mythic: We get so used to older technologies that we start to see them as part of the natural world. Postman argued we should view technologies we are used to, such as the alphabet (writing) or airplanes, as “a strange intruder.” This means becoming more aware of what technology does to us and for us.
To encourage students to widen their thinking of technology beyond the newest digital apps or “innovations,” Dan has often asked students to consider chairs as an educational technology. What types of activities do classroom chairs and desks encourage? How would school be different if classrooms didn’t have them? While they might not generate much media buzz, everyday things like chairs shape our world every bit as much as our smartphones. As David Edgerton argues in The Shock of the Old (2007), our urge to tell stories only about the latest inventions and innovations often causes us to overlook more important stories about the technologies that we actually use.
This is why Neil Selwyn’s newest article on the modern classroom chair struck a chord with us. The article is published in Power & Education and titled, “The modern classroom chair: Exploring the ‘coercive design’ of contemporary schooling.” The article is open access and the abstract reads as follows:
This paper explores the role of material design as a form of institutional power within contemporary school settings. Drawing on concepts of ‘coercive design’ and ‘hostile architecture’ from design studies, the paper examines three ‘innovative’ designs for classroom chairs – relatively mundane but integral elements of the regulation and disciplining of school space. It is argued that the design intentions of these material objects reveal a number of constrained, conservative intentions to maintain the traditional ordered notion of the classroom as a place where students stay in their seats and engage in work. Tellingly, however, this corporeal manipulation and moderation is now couched in claims around desirable physiological and cognitive conditions for learning – with students’ bodies seen as objects to arrange and constrain in ways deemed conducive for learning. The paper problematises this de-socialised view of classrooms, alongside the underpinning sense of design solutionism and (mis)appropriation of ‘learning science’ by product designers to justify their products’ capacities to somehow cause learning to take place.
Although he examines “innovative” designs of classroom furniture, chairs are about as mundane as technologies come. And as he argues, they play an important (though not determinative) part in shaping the social relations of the classroom. The furniture of a classroom is every bit as consequential as the digital technologies that tend to garner the most attention. What does that furniture do? What kinds of narratives and philosophies of schooling do they enable and constrain? Selwyn’s critiques three “progressive” chairs: the ‘turn and learn’ stool (UK), In2It’ seating (US), and the The Espy Zone chair (Australia). His critiques raise our attention to questions we ought to ask (but rarely do) of all of our classroom technologies.
Selwyn shows how interrogating classroom furniture (and the discourse surrounding it) can reveal much about our orientations toward teaching, learning, and schooling. The “innovative” chairs that he examines are steeped in “learning language” that carries with it all sorts of assumptions about what ought to occur (and not occur) in classrooms. Chairs are not just functional objects that exist as independent entities. They are better thought of as material Actors using the concepts of Actor Network Theory (Latour, 2005) or as material elements of dispositifs if one prefers the concepts of Foucault (1980).
More than anything, Selwyn encourages us to take classroom chairs seriously as educational technologies.
After reading this article, we couldn’t help but turn back to our 5th critical question: Why is it difficult to imagine our world without classroom chairs? We might ask, what do chairs undo in our social arrangements? Instead of simply thinking about what chairs schools should purchase to make students’ docile stillness more palatable, what if we also valued chairs that could be stacked and stored—put away so our classroom spaces might allow for open spaces, natural movement, and different types of pedagogies. Does every classroom even need chairs? We might consider not just which chairs support educational experiences for students, but whether we even want or need chairs?
References
Edgerton, D. (2007). The shock of the old: Technology and global history since 1900. Oxford University Press.
Foucault, M. (1980). Power/Knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings 1972-1977 Michel Foucault (ed., Gordon Colin). Pantheon Books.
Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford University Press.
Postman, N. (1998, March 28). Five things we need to know about technological change [Address]. Denver, Colorado.
Selwyn, N. (2023). The modern classroom chair: Exploring the ‘coercive design’ of contemporary schooling. Power & Education, 1-14.