Refocusing Zuboff’s ‘division of learning’ on Education

This paper examines the concept of the ‘division of learning’, and the broader thesis of ‘surveillance capitalism’ within which it is situated, in terms of its relevance to education. It begins with defining the term, before suggesting two key ways in which aligning the ‘division of learning’ with perspectives from educational research might provide productive insights for both domains. The first considers the impact of increasing ‘datafication’ in education, where platform technologies are proliferating as powerful actors that both mediate and shape educational activity. Here the ‘division of learning’ offers useful insights concerning the disparities resulting from learning in and learning from educational platforms. The second explores the extent to which education theory might offer ways to develop the concept of the ‘division of learning’, through critique of the term ‘learning’ itself, as well as the foregrounding of questions of educational ‘purpose’. Here the ‘division of learning’ is suggested to maintain, rather than challenge, the dominant practices of data exploitation, for which further engagement with a purposive, political, and emancipatory form of ‘data science’ is suggested.

Artificial Intelligence in Education

Digital technology is constantly permeating and transforming all social systems, and education is not an exception. In the last decade, the unstoppable development of Artificial Intelligence, based on machine learning algorithms and fuelled by Big Data, has given a new push to the hope of improving learning-based machines, and providing educational systems with ‘effective’ solutions. Educators, educational researchers and policymakers, in general, lack the knowledge and expertise to understand the underlying logic of these new ‘black boxes’, and we do not have sufficient research-based evidence to understand the consequences that an excessive use of screens has in students’ development. This paper first discusses the notions behind what Big Data is and what it means in our current society; how data is the new currency that has driven the use of algorithms in all areas of our society, and specifically in the field of Artificial Intelligence; and the concept of ‘black boxes’, and its possible impact on education. Then, it discusses the underlying educational discourses, pointing out the need to analyse not only their contributions but also their possible negative effects. It finishes with considerations and a proposed agenda for further studying this phenomenon.

Critical Data Studies and Data Science in Higher Education

This paper discusses an explorative approach on strengthening critical data literacy using data science methods and a theoretical framing intersecting educational science and media theory. The goal is to path a way from data-driven to data-discursive perspectives of data and datafication in higher education. Therefore, the paper focuses on a case study, a higher education course project in 2019 and 2020 on education and data science, based on problem-based learning. The paper closes with a discussion on the challenges on strengthening data literacy in higher education, offering insights into data practices and the pitfalls of working with and reflecting on digital data.

Global Education Industry - Exploring the state of affairs in Austria

Digitization initiatives in the field of education always correspond with developments in the education industry. In recent years, globally networked development dynamics have emerged that are essentially characterized by an education-industrial complex and are also relevant in Austria. While on the one hand the corona-induced developmental boosts of 'digital' education are welcomed, especially in edtech contexts, on the other hand the international discourses on the problematic role of the global education industry can no longer be ignored. This contribution ties in with these discourses and explores the current state of affairs in Austria. The lack of alternatives to an innovation path, which is often suggested by industry, education policy and education technology, is questioned.

Digital Capitalism and Critical Media Education

Digital capitalism has produced a new concentration of capital, knowledge, and power unprecedented in history. Quantification is fundamental to digital and capitalistic structural principles. In view of a comprehensive quantification and measurement of life and society, questions of meaning and significance must be asked beyond quantifying process structures. The first part of the article identifies capitalistic and digital structural principles, showing affinities between both principles. The second part points out central challenges and problem areas of digital capitalism. The third part discusses the manoeuvres of the IT industry in Germany to gain more influence on the education sector. Against the background of these developments, the last part outlines the need for alternative pathways and presents dimensions of a critical media education.[1] [1] The article is based on two German language publications (Niesyto, 2017a, 2021).

Technology giants, educational policy and a preliminary mapping of networks and channels of influence in a Norwegian context

The article looks at the debate regarding the influence of the technology giants on educational policy. What strategies have existed on the part of the technology giants? Who have been the major actors within education? What kind of relations and networks have been established? The first part of the article focuses on relevant research internationally showing that the technology giants have taken the lead and that their objectives are to develop new long-term policy agendas. The development has been significantly intensified and to some extent changed during the pandemic. This has resulted in the emergence of new multisector coalitions and more complex networks which have potentially profound pedagogical implications. The second part accounts for a preliminary mapping of networks and channels of influence in a Norwegian context. Despite the differences between countries, political and educational systems, traditions and values, there are a number of the similarities in the field of educational technology. These include on a general level how the use of new technology is valued as a way of improving teaching and learning, but also how networks and relations are developed and function. The project that precedes the article is based on literature studies and inspired by network ethnographic approaches.

Towards a Closer Look at the Pipes and Joints of Educational Data Infrastructures

More recently, scholars in the field Critical Data Studies have turned attention to the infrastructures by means of which educational data is produced, processed, circulated, and consumed. While respective studies have rightly emphasized the social, cultural, political, and economic factors that are shaping these infrastructures, the technical dimension of these developments has remained largely unexplored. As a consequence, analyses are easily deemed irrelevant by technologists and designers engaged in educational datamining and learning analytics. This paper therefore aims to broaden the analytic scope of Critical Data Studies in education and to engage more closely with the technical dimension of the emerging educational data infrastructures. Towards this end, the paper outlines a technogenetic account of (digital) infrastructures and standards, and provides a case-study to illustrate how this account can be leveraged to unravel assumptions and perspectives implied in an educational technology standard such as the Experience API. The results of the case study indicate that while the Experience API is highly abstract and generic nature, it lends itself to a rather restricted idea of learning and education.

Digital Capitalism, Datafication, and Media Education

As digitization and datafication continue to extend into all areas of society, digital capitalism becomes equally ubiquitous and universal. Digital capitalism, and related phenomena such as data, surveillance or platform capitalism, operate on the basis of a comprehensive expropriation and exploitation of personal data profiles. It functionalizes life worlds and places of education to an unprecedented extent. This special issue is responding to the following questions: What position/s can media education in research and application take to respond to these developments? Which theories, concepts and methods help to formulate adequate analytical, critical and transformative answers?

A feminist Critique to digital consent

This paper presents a feminist critique to digital consent and argues that the current system is flawed. The online surveillance adtech industry that funds the web had to use a mechanism that commodifies people, rendering their behaviors into data - products that can be sold and traded for the highest bidder. This was made possible by objectifying, dehumanizing and decontextualizing human engagement and identity into measurable and quantifiable data units. In this way, digital consent serves as an authorizing and legalizing instrument to the business model of spying, selling and trading people in the online ecosystem. Using four key feminist approaches - process, embodiment, network and context - this article shows the way digital consent is a mechanism that transfers responsibility to people and enables an exploitative-extractivist market to exist. The design of digital consent creates a specific interface that teaches people to behave in ways that preserve the asymmetric power relations. Consequently, the article shows the broader educational effects of digital consent which conceives people as products with narrow agency and understanding of what they can do, think and imagine. The article concludes with a refusal to provide an easy solution to a flawed system.

Critical is not political

Data literacy is slowly becoming a more prominent feature of contemporary society. Some argue that people need to obtain new competencies to mitigate and engage with the multiplicity of ways in which they are affected by data. Literacy as such is positioned as a pathway towards empowerment, enable people to make informed choices about their data environment and increasing their ability to actively participate in the discussion that determines the socio-technical systems that will impact their lives. In this article, I will argue that we need to account for the externalities that emerge from the mere act of centring data in a literacy approach and unpack the assumptions that underpin the concept. To advance the argument that data literacy needs to be (re)politicize, both in terms of the perceived competencies need in a data society and the 'neutrality of the practice in itself. To ensure that the audience will have more thoughtful and actionable pathways forward data literacy should learn from other disciplines that have a more thorough analysis of dismantling power structures, engaging with inequality and encouraging political participation.