Why Isn’t Technology and Teacher Education Talking More About Justice and Technology?
By Marie K. Heath, Sumreen Asim, Natalie Milman, and Jessa Henderson
By pulling back the curtain and drawing attention to forms of coded inequity, not only do we become more aware of the social dimensions of technology, but we can work together against the emergence of a digital caste system that relies on our naivety when it comes to the neutrality of technology. (Benjamin, 2019, p. 11)
This quote inspired our most recent (open access!) article, Confronting Tools of the Oppressor: Framing Just Technology Integration in Educational Technology and Teacher Education, which aims to pull back the curtain and draw attention to forms of coded inequity in teacher education and technology education.
We wondered why the rich and critical scholarship of sociologists, technologists, and even educational technologists inquiring into the effects of technology and society continually fails to take root in teacher education and educational technology spaces. We also asked what a more just technological approach could look like in teacher education and educational technology.
Technologically Embedded Injustice
We used a theoretical framing of technologically embedded injustice (Benjamin, 2019) and Lorde’s (1979/2018) speech and essay, The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House, as a powerful metaphor for understanding technology as both a tool of power and a process for crafting power. Lorde referred to tools for thinking, particularly patriarchal tools devised by white patriarchy and employed by white feminists to oppress Black women. However, Lorde’s metaphor also serves in conceptualizing technology as a process and a way of doing that demands interrogation.
Technology and Teacher Education and the “imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy”
Using this approach, we historicized the intersection of teacher education and educational technologies. We argued that the fields of educational technology and teacher education have historically upheld intersecting oppressions, in particular hooks’ (n.d.) observation of the interconnected “imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy” (p. 1). We traced the path of U.S. laws and funding grounded in militaristic and economic superiority which institutionalized STEM as necessary progress and reform in education.
The Privatization of a Public Good
We also explored the role of “big tech” in education, and its increasing privatization of a public good. As we note in the article,
Technology corporations embed themselves into the fabric of schooling, subsuming and consuming the traditional “public good” of schools in a democracy. Although their intentions might be considered positive and for the common good, there is a real or potential conflict and disconnect between the need to make profits (and survive in a capitalist society) and the desire to support schools and improve schooling (Boninger et al., 2017).
The laws, policy, funding, and technology companies have all contributed to standards and practices embedded into the fabric of teacher preparation which nudge educators towards technosolutionism in education.
Toward Just Technology in Education
Finally, we propose four intersecting ways forward toward more just technology practices in teacher education: (1) turn to critical theory and Black feminism; (2) work for systemic change through rewritten standards; (3) wrestle with the role of education and technology in a democracy; and (4) interrogate technologies. We returned to our theoretical framing to draw on the queer (Costanza-Chock, 2020) and black feminist scholars (Benjamin, 2019; Noble, 2018) working at the intersection of technological justice. We wrestle with the problem that technology is not only a tool of the oppressor, but also a tool made by the oppressor with the oppressor’s power and privilege baked into its design.
We close with a framing of what just technology in education could be:
We propose that just technology integration in education should lead to full liberation and the promise of a multiracial democracy for all learners. To achieve these aims, just technology should be considered a collective process of crafting and recrafting and using tools to dismantle injustice and rebuild education toward just ends. Just technology always requires an acknowledgment of the existence and impacts of intersectionality and systemic inequality in educational spaces to challenge the system of “imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy” (hooks, n.d.).
Further, just technology integration invites a critical interrogation of the technologies themselves, while also scrutinizing their history, context, and intersections with systems of oppression, to ensure that institutions do not compromise the flourishing of people, regardless of their social group or identity (Gordon da Cruz, 2017). As in Lorde’s (1979/2018) essay, The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House, just technology requires a reconceptualized understanding of tools. Educators might think through the design and use of tools as embodied in joy and Black (Benjamin, 2019; hooks, 1981), queer (Lorde, 1979/2018; Costanza-Chock, 2020), and Indigenous ways of knowing (Shorter & TallBear, 2021; Tuhiwai Smith, 2021), wielded with feminist notions of care and a righteous anger at injustice.
We realize this definition is not definitive, and we welcome your feedback to help our definition evolve even further. Moreover, we hope that you will revise, adapt, challenge, and further this work. Please reach out to us below in the comments or over email with questions and thoughts about the article!
References
Benjamin, R. (2019). Race after technology: Abolitionist tools for the new Jim Code. Polity.
Boninger, F., Molnar, A., & Murray, K. (2017). Asleep at the switch: Schoolhouse commercialism, student privacy, and the failure of policymaking. National Education Policy Center. https://nepc.colorado.edu/sites/default/files/publications/RB%20Trends%202017_2.pdf
Buolamwini, J., & Gebru, T. (2018, January). Gender shades: Intersectional accuracy disparities in commercial gender classification. Proceedings of Machine Learning, 81, 1-15. http://proceedings.mlr.press/v81/buolamwini18a/buolamwini18a.pdf
Costanza-Chock, S. (2020). Design justice: Community-led practices to build the worlds we need. The MIT Press.
Gordon da Cruz, C. (2017). Critical community-engaged scholarship: Communities and universities striving for racial justice. Peabody Journal of Education, 92(3), 363-384.
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
hooks. b. (n.d.). Understanding patriarchy. https://imaginenoborders.org/pdf/zines/UnderstandingPatriarchy.pdf
hooks, b. (1981). Ain’t I a woman: Black women and feminism. South End Press.
Lorde, A. (1979/2018). The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. Penguin Classics.
Shorter, D. D., & TallBear, K. (2021). An introduction to settler science and the ethics of contact. American Indian Culture and Research Journal, 45(1), 1-8.
Tuhiwai Smith, L. (2021). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples. Bloomsbury Publishing.