Lessons on How to Practice Everyday Resistance and Refusal
by Michelle Ciccone and Charles Logan
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In this blogpost, we report back on the panel “Practicing Everyday Resistance and Refusal of Ed-Tech,” which we co-organized as part of the Civics of Technology conference in early August. We wanted to put this panel together because over the past several years we have both been grappling with the role that resistance and refusal could and should play in our own practice and research (Ciccone, 2022; Logan, 2020). We have come to believe that a justice-oriented approach to technology integration in schools (Heath et al., 2022) must include the possibility for resistance and refusal, since both types of actions allow us to call attention to and counter the ed-tech imaginary (Watters, 2020) and its harms. But we also know that engaging in resistance and refusal of ed-tech is a complex, fraught process, and unavoidably requires us to make political and pedagogical compromises as we work within (and without) imperfect, hierarchical educational systems. And so, given these realities and challenges, we wanted to learn about how those working in technology integration and technology education develop, carry out, and refine everyday acts of resistance and refusal of ed-tech.
We were lucky to pull together a group of thoughtful panelists, each of whom have personally and professionally inspired both of us, and who represent a cross section of positions within education and the Civics of Technology community. Panelists included Jamie Gravell, an Assistant Professor of Educational Technology at California State University - Stanislaus and former high school social studies teacher and credit recovery coordinator in the District of Columbia Public Schools; Autumm Caines, Instructional Designer at the University of Michigan - Dearborn and part time lecturer at Dearborn and faculty at College Unbound; Marika Pfefferkorn, co-founder of Twin Cities Innovation Alliance and the Executive Director of the Midwest Center for School Transformation Twin Cities, Minnesota; and Ryan Smits, a PhD candidate at the University of North Texas and high school English teacher.
In this post, we want to surface some themes that emerged from this session—both the thoughts shared by panelists and thoughts shared by participants in the audience via Zoom chat and a shared Padlet. Our ultimate goal is to think about the place that resistance and refusal has in our toolkits, and how resistance and refusal might help us to build the more just futures that we’re all working towards.
Resistance and refusal can generate new possibilities
Scholarship from a range of traditions, including feminist, developmental psychology, anthropology, and Indigenous studies, explores resistance and refusal as related but distinct philosophies of action. This work makes clear that resistance and refusal represent a rejection of a status quo, but in doing so they also make room for the opportunity to consider a whole other set of realities. In other words, resistance and refusal should be understood as generative forces.
The panelists related the big and small ways that moments of resistance and refusal have generated alternative possibilities in their institutions and communities. Ryan talked about the need to resist and refuse technosolutionist ideas in order to reshift the conversation towards more effective practices. For example, when he encounters claims that adopting particular ed-tech will increase student engagement and student outcomes, he is able to point to critical education scholarship that finds these claims to be suspect at best. By resisting these technosolutionist claims, Ryan can advocate for a reconsideration of more “analogue” practices that might get tossed aside in favor of an ed-tech centered response.
Autumm shared how a more institution-wide act of refusal also opened up alternative possibilities. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Autumm’s institution made the decision to not purchase a remote proctoring software (Silverman et al., 2021), which represented a moment of refusal that received national attention at the time. But that refusal was not the end of the story, because without access to remote proctoring software, faculty had to turn to alternative assessment methods, and those mostly project-based learning methods are harder to grade, particularly at the scale that many university faculty are required to teach. But because the university was not spending money on remote proctoring software, they were able to hire more (human) graders to assist faculty. Autumm described this as a more “humanistic” solution to the need to move assessment online during remote learning—a solution only available because of the decision to refuse a technology-based solution.
Seriously considering the viability of resisting and refusing particular ed-tech can create space for more imaginative and creative thinking. When Marika and other members in her Twin Cities community learned the school district had entered into a contract with Gaggle, a student monitoring software, without the public’s input, Marika helped to build a coalition to challenge the proliferation of the surveillance technology and the opaque decision-making process used by the school district. As part of these efforts, Marika and her collaborators hosted a three-day idea-a-thon that brought together students, teachers, and community members to dream up alternative visions of community safety that were not beholden to Gaggle’s version of weaponized care. Students led the way in mapping out local communities of care, representing a model whereby solutions are co-produced by those most impacted. Marika reflected, “I think they exploded their own imagination.”
Engaging in resistance and refusal will result in successes and setbacks
The panelists made clear, though, that resistance and refusal often lead to incomplete outcomes. For Jamie, her attempt to advocate for new tools to go into the hands of students met the reality of a district-wide initiative to spend millions of dollars on SmartBoards, a teacher-focused technology. She was frank in her assessment of her resistance’s outcome: “It didn’t work.” Yet even when she failed to persuade the district to purchase technology that centered students, Jamie continued to resist by “showing the district everything [she] could do without [SmartBoards].” Her act of refusal generated new, creative solutions. She collected old iPhones and iPod Touches and “jerry-rigged [a] Wi-fi system that [she] ran in [her] classroom so that kids had access to Internet and it didn't have to go through a teacher.” In combining her refusal with her deep care for her students and their autonomy, Jamie was both living her pedagogical and political commitments while offering the rest of us an example of how we might go about doing the same even when the systems in which we work rebuff our attempts at more widespread change.
While Marika and her collaborators continued to resist and then refuse devices with Gaggle installed on them, the reality was that the district would not provide alternative devices to students, and so if students wanted or needed a school-issued device or email account, complete refusal just wasn’t an option. Undeterred, Marika and her community collaborators emphasized to administrators that the tool was an “excess of resources and that it was criminalizing.” Eventually, the administrators canceled Gaggle’s contract—but their decision was motivated by dwindling financial resources rather than the technology’s harms. So, said Marika, the struggle against criminalizing technology in schools, in all its instantiations, continues.
Resistance and refusal create opportunities to build relationships
That ongoing struggle highlights another important element of resistance and refusal expressed by all panelists. As Marika and her co-authors noted (Shevin et al., 2022), when people come together to resist and refuse unjust technologies and the systems they uphold, success may look like an incomplete victory, but even then, the experience can help people “develop deeper relationships, to better understand our commitments and social contracts to each other, and to hold each other in community.”
Viewed through a relational lens, Jamie’s resistance and refusal succeeded in deepening the connections between her and her students, and Marika’s resistance and refusal led to strengthening “the muscle of [her] community.” Autumm also encouraged us to build community with others within our institutions, particularly students who may be concerned about harmful uses of ed-tech but may be nervous about voicing those concerns to instructors. We can bring these student concerns to decision makers and other faculty when ed-tech procurement and deployment is being discussed. Ryan shared that he opposes the use of PowerPoint because its design can constrain teaching and learning by mediating the relationships being built in the classroom. When his students want to know why he refuses such a ubiquitous technology, Ryan said he and his students “have that conversation,” the consequence of which is closer relations.
Panelists’ experiences again reveal resistance and refusal of ed-tech to be generative, then, in ways that can support continuous efforts across time to cultivate dignity through individual and collective actions. And as Jamie reminded us, it’s important to continue to invite others into this conversation, rather than “judging other folks for their choices when it comes to not resisting in certain ways.” Jamie urged us to demonstrate that we can be the “go-to person” that colleagues feel comfortable turning to with questions they might have about new tools, because those everyday conversations can be an opportunity to raise critical questions or considerations. She hypothesized that if she were more “blatantly resisting tech,” then those conversations may never get to happen. This can certainly be a difficult balance to strike, especially when the harms of particular ed-tech are so deep and its adoption is accelerating. But Jamie’s comments remind us that engaging in resistance and refusal of ed-tech is also about playing a long game, and relationship building is an essential part of that work.
Importance—and risks—of transparency
All four panelists emphasized the strategic importance of transparency with students, colleagues, and community members in terms of sharing with others why you’re making particular decisions to resist or refuse particular ed-tech, and how that resistance and refusal is due to particular pedagogical or justice-oriented commitments. Panelists shared that this interpersonal transparency is an important component to building relationships with others around this work.
But transparency in the classroom also involves risk. That risk can be magnified when resisting and refusing ed-tech may require being clear with your students about your politics, especially in an age when right-wing activists are fomenting attacks against educators fighting for more equitable schools. (For discussion of research on political disclosure with students, check out this 2016 episode of the Visions of Education podcast.) Sometimes, however, the risk comes not from the outside but from within. As one participant put the problem in our group Padlet: “I've been in a roomful of enemies, where it was clear if I spoke up, anything I said would be used to discredit me and my stance. So I shut up. Not going to give them that leverage.” Another participant wrote in the Padlet that “much of [resisting and refusing ed-tech] is about power dynamics for me—higher ed at my [Predominantly White Institution] is still very patriarchal, so when a senior leader wants X, Y, and Z tech, it's harder for a junior faculty like me to disagree (b/c of politics). I've tried and it falls flat. I have to think about what battles are worth fighting.” These participants’ comments underscore the reality that your positionality often determines your ability to resist and refuse ed-tech.
A final thought about transparency comes from another participant’s Padlet comment: “I do better work from within the system than I have been able to outside so I need to be in the job to do the work necessary and that means either quietly refusing or even using problematic tools with eyes wide open.” The panelists reflected on multiple forms of interpersonal transparency; here transparency takes another form: intrapersonal. Resistance and refusal are not about a politics of purity or passing a litmus test but recognizing that we all make compromises. (We are, after all, writing this post in a Google doc.) Given the complexity of resisting and refusing ed-tech, and the necessity for and the dangers of transparency, a starting place might be with yourself. To recognize the ways a tool encourages you to surveil students, for example, and rather than conforming to cop shit in the classroom, say to yourself, “Nope.”
Concluding thoughts
Resisting and refusing ed-tech can feel like an impossible undertaking. And yet, as Audrey Watters reminds us:
We're not stuck. We don't have to surrender. We can refuse, and we should. And we should support students when they refuse. These can be little refusals — small acts of resistance, obfuscations, that come from positions of little to no power. These can be loud refusals in support of those with little to no power. We can push back, and we can demand better.
One way I, Charles, have embraced Watters’ encouraging words is to look for moments to combine little acts of resistance with obfuscation. For example, I was recently in a Zoom webinar about ChatGPT, and within minutes it became clear that the panelists were less interested in taking a critical lens to the chatbot and more focused on enumerating all the amazing things it can do to support students’ learning. Frustrated, I toggled my name in the chat to Anonymous and began posting articles about the underpaid Kenyan workers traumatized by training the model used to create ChatGPT. Was I shouting into the void? The panelists didn’t engage. A few participants responded with the thumbs-up emoji. Maybe the articles I shared are open on a few browsers, buried beneath thirty other tabs, waiting to be rediscovered at just the right time. I had to try. I had to do my best Thoreau impression and offer a counter-friction to slow the AI hype machine. And protected (perhaps less so than I assume) by Zoom’s anonymous option, I felt more comfortable resisting amidst a group of strangers.
During the panel, Autumm reminded us that though resistance and refusal of ed-tech may feel “scary and embarrassing sometimes,” we are in fact not alone: there are many others engaging in this work. But Marika asked a question that I, Michelle, am still wrestling with: how are we connecting the dots, both across communities who are engaging in resistance and refusal of ed-tech as well as across domains—including research, PreK-12, higher education, community and nonprofit organizations, and more—whose work we might plug into, build on, and gain strength from? The Civics of Technology network is one way for us to maintain community around this work. Let’s be more intentional about sharing lessons learned from when we attempt to say no to the harms of ed-tech.
References
Ciccone, M. (2022). Surveillance and the edtech imaginary via the mundane stuff of schooling. In Belinha S. De Abreu (Editor), Media Literacy, Equity, and Justice. Routledge.
Heath, M., Asim, S., Milman, N., & Henderson, J. (2022). Confronting tools of the oppressor: Framing just technology integration in educational technology and teacher education. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 22(4). https://citejournal.org/volume-22/issue-4-22/current-practice/confronting-tools-of-the-oppressor-framing-just-technology-integration-in-educational-technology-and-teacher-education
Logan, C. (2020, October 21). Refusal, partnership, and countering educational technology’s harms. Hybrid Pedagogy. https://hybridpedagogy.org/refusal-partnership-countering-harms/
Shevin, M., Shabazz, A., & Pfefferkorn, M. (2022, July 14). Co-powering an emergent horizon. Stanford Social Innovation Review. https://ssir.org/articles/entry/co_powering_an_emergent_horizon
Silverman, S., Caines, A., Casey, C., de Hurtado, B. G., Riviere, J., Sintjago, A., & Vecchiola, C. (2021). What happens when you close the door on remote proctoring? Moving toward authentic assessments with a people-centered approach. Educational Development in the Time of Crises, 39(3). https://quod.lib.umich.edu/t/tia/17063888.0039.308?view=text;rgn=main
Watters, A. (2020, June 21). The ed-tech imaginary. https://hackeducation.com/2020/06/21/imaginary