Critical Theory Reflection

Two questions from our group stuck out to me and made me really think about how the two were connected and also gets at the heart of critical theory. The first question was focused from chapter 7 of the Feenberg book. In this chapter, Feeberg states that “societies are not transformed by political events such as revolutions, but evolve toward new forms in the spaces opened by those events.”  The question brought to the group was if we think this is true, and the answer is yes for the majority of the time. It seems recently there has been revolutions that because of social injustices and economic troubles have caused uprisings in the middle east known as the Arab Spring. Outside of the middle east in the United States the statement holds true and can be seen in today’s political landscape. Most changes do not occur through revolution and political uprising, but through interest convergence with the people in power, that causes changes to system. An example of this can be seen, as I stated earlier, through the recent election and the aftermath of the Republican presidential candidate. Over the next election cycle, there will be a fundamental shift in the parties’ platform, or overt platform. The demographics of the nation has shifted and has started to impact the elections and will continue to impact elections. Republicans do not want to continue the streak of losing the presidency based on these demographics so the people in power will start to shift away from policies that alienate the demographics that they intend to reach out too. This way they can still stay in power, but they do have to shift their policies to account for the change in demographics. This is not political revolution, but is based on interests of the people who are voting. Once the people in power have a reason to listen in order to stay in power then things will start to change. This occurs in daily life outside of politics as well, and in educational settings interest around how to integrate effective technology to help all students.  

This goes along with the second question that we each brought into for our group and that was what does critical theory have to do with educational technology? I will build off of my previous argument and that is that change does not unless there is interest convergence. There has to be enough interest to cause the change or change will not happen. Critical Theory looks to start the process or to point out the inequalities that are occurring. For example, in educational technology if we think technology is great and revolutionary, we will miss the unintended consequences and we will miss the students who the technology is a hindrance on their educational attainment. Critical theory seeks to bring attention to these issue in order for people in the field and general public to be aware of inequities. This develops interest and will hopefully spur change because as we have seen change only occurs when enough interest is put on the topic. In educational technology this is beneficial in that it seems everything that comes a long is going to revolutionize education with little  to no thought being given to if it helps everyone or not.  

Rational Technical Perspective

The rational technical perspective is one based on the thought that we can help solve our problems through technology and that the rational piece being that it is culturally neutral. The way in which it relates to morality in educational technology is that in the field the belief is that everyone should be educated.  The technology is introduced to improve teaching and learning, it goes back to the definition of technology that we discussed early in the semester. Instead, this rational technical perspective is too focused on the technology use in a way that does not help everyone, like our morals are telling us that we should be doing. Educational technology that is used is a lot like traditional ID models and not viewing learning as complex. The thought being is that technology, and the way it is used, is helping everyone but in reality that is not the case. An example in the article is the introduction of word processing and how instead of helping the student it actually negatively affected the students writing. Students who were struggling before and then received the technology with the intent of helping them instead hurt them even more. This is often times overlooked if the majority of the students are doing well and the student who is not doing well is then perceived to be a bad student. It also causes harm in equity issues. Students who were poor, minority, or female had less access to computers. The third way in which it is harmful is through pollution of the environment and the effects that it has on the world. In this country, everyone believes that you should have a fair shot, and that we should help keep our country and world prosperous for the next generation, but technology does not necessarily do that for us. It comes with a price, one if it is not closely watched can devastate what we morally believe in. If people truly have an equal shot students no matter what their background should have a fair shot at a high quality education and access to the same technology that other students have to help them through their education. Technology can be very useful in the classroom if it is planned in advance for the situation that it is used in, not just thrown in because it is new and cool. Teachers also have to be aware that some students might not be able to learn better through the use of technology and provide academic interventions that will help the students learn. We also have to be aware that we are damaging the earth through the use of technology and with that awareness the need to develop cleaner technologies to preserve the planet for our next generations is necessary. If we are too focused on the rational technical perspective we are going away from our morals and we need to ensure that our morals are not being compromised over uses that are not aligned with our morals.