Critical Perspectives on Educational Technology Tuesday 15th October 2013 Provoking opening remarks Avril Loveless, Professor of Education,

University of Brighton Welcome to all Thank you to the writers of the papers, colleagues joining us from around the university and across the country, Liz for making it happen, Tim for having the simple idea of bringing us together to talk about ideas and ways forward. Its a pleasure and a privilege to meet with everyone this morning and I look forward to the discussions and conversations. Tim has kept the group small in order to promote conversation and engagement with each others perspectives and provocations. Id like to make three points to put into the provocation pot today..the provocations of pedagogy, theory and story. 1. The provocations of pedagogy and teacher knowledge - we have been bewitched, bothered and bewildered in trying to figure out how and why knowledgeable teachers might use digital technologies in their practice. For example: a. Some of us have spent over 30 years puzzling and trying things out with educational technologiesfrom Kemmis Atkins and Wright (1977) discussing paradigms of use of technologies instructional, emancipatory, revelatory and conjectural; to Fisher et al (2012) discussing a framework of learning purposes distributed cognition, engagement, communication/collaboration, and knowledge-building; b. David Perkins and his colleagues (1993) contributed the concept of Person-Plus, as we learn in a surround in which tools offer opportunities for access, retrieval, representation and construction of information and knowledge; c. We use digital tools for conceptual representation and construction, helping us to explore the question what would happen if? within different curriculums and disciplines; d. We have grappled with our understandings of teacher knowledge and what does it take to be ready, willing and able to use digital tools what, how and the why? - from Lee Shulman (1987) to Wolfgang Klafki (2000). 2. The provocations of theory and how we have a range of theoretical tools offered in the provocation papers today. a. I recognise my own influences and style of thinking as sociocultural, developed through my own biography in the classroom influenced by social constructivism in the 1980s (see Loveless and Williamson 2013);

Page 1 of 3

b. I have been recently thinking about the framework of Dorothy Holland and her colleagues in their 1998 book Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds . This has helped me to muse on the ways in which we might be enacting some of these threads in our work and in our discussions today.. i. Figured worlds shared purposes, meanings and understandings in networks and communities; ii. Positional identities power, status, rank, privilege which cut across our figured worlds; iii. Authoring spaces marshalling our resources of our position to answer back in the world; iv. Making worlds using imagination, improvisation to create and enact new communities and social capabilities. 3. The provocations of story . Travelling on the train to the symposium I met a young man called Tom. He was using a variety of digital devices to keep in touch with his friends and listen to music on the journey. I asked him what he thought about some of the titles of the symposium papers. He responded to The rise of technology and the decline of education with: That is an outrageous statement! He then told me the stories of the role of technologies in his learning life as a person with mental health difficulties of acute anxiety and being severely dyslexic. School had made him think that he could do nothing and was thick. He has just recently completed a university degree with the help of learning support tutors and a wide range of technologies to help him to access, retrieve, store, organise, represent and construct in modes that were appropriate to his needs. The traditional approaches to the lecture, seminar tutorial and essay had to be dismantled and re-imagined for him. He also spoke with enthusiasm about how much he loves learning and now feels confident in his own learning, gladly supporting others and giving back.. His story didnt quite fit with some of the provocations and critiques that I had been rehearsing. Good. He had answered back and made new worlds for himself and others. While you are here in Brighton, do try to take some time to visit the Subversive Design exhibition in Brighton Museum across the road. As we walk into that exhibition, there is a text on the wall: George Orwell Politics and the English Language 1946 In our age there is no such things as keeping out of politics. All issues are political. Discuss .. References .

Page 2 of 3

Fisher, T., Denning, T., Higgins, C., & Loveless, A. (2012) Teachers' knowing how to use technology: exploring a conceptual framework for purposeful learning activity. Curriculum Journal 23:3 307-325 Holland, D., Lachicotte, W., Skinner, D., & Cain, C. (1998) Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: Harvard University Press. Kemmis, S., Atkins, R., & Wright, E. (1977) How do students learn? (Vol. Occasional Paper 5), Norwich: Centre for Applied Research in Education, University of East Anglia. Klafki, W. (2000) Didaktik Analysis as the Core of Preparation of Instruction, in I. Westbury, S. Hopmann & K. Riquarts (eds) Teaching as a Reflective Practice: the German didaktik tradition: 197-206, Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Salomon, G. (1993) Distributed cognitions - psychological and educational considerations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shulman, L. S. (1987) Knowledge and Teaching: Foundations of the New Reform, Harvard Educational Review, 57,1: 1-22.

Page 3 of 3