Learning, Media and Technology

Making education manageable: school management systems and the discursive construction of data-driven classrooms by Lulu P. Shi ABSTRACT This study investigates the growing influence of school management systems in U.K. schools, focusing on how these tools discursively conceptualise core aspects of classroom education. Through a discourse analysis of school management product descriptions, this study provides insights into how management tool providers configure roles and practices in the classroom, knowledge, and social relationships. The analysis shows that, through datafication, school management systems reinforce a management-centric perspective on all aspects of education, going beyond purely administrative work. While tool providers often use language familiar to schools such as ‘community’, these terms reflect marketing strategies more than genuine efforts to foster social relations. This study provides a critical perspective on the role of school management systems in reconfiguring the classroom as a site of management.

🟨 New Publication in #LMT 🟪

In this study @lulushi.bsky.social examines the discourse promoted by school management system providers by analysing their websites – the outward-facing narratives intended to speak to potential buyers and users of these tools.

Read more (🔓): tinyurl.com/5a2zdymu

Teacher agency and generative artificial intelligence: teaching in higher education as a responsive, cultural activity by Peter Kahn, Mark Carrigan, Paul Smith, Lisa Murtagh, Ruirui Liu and Fangtong Song ABSTRACT The widespread adoption of Generative Artificial Intelligence tools by students poses a challenge to teachers in Higher Education. This study aimed to explore the nature of teacher agency in a setting where students were making extensive use of Large Language Models. The study was conducted in a research-intensive university in the UK, adopting a sequential mixed methods research design. It found that challenges entailed in university teaching can helpfully be framed in terms of a relationship between the agency of teachers and the agency of students, even as this relationship is subject to cultural influences. Given a reflexive basis for agency, this framing underscores the importance of dialogue between teachers and students, even as the uncertainty generated by Large Language Models undercuts the conditions which make the dialogue possible. The study also highlights the limitations of existing perspectives on higher education pedagogy that see the relation between teaching and learning as something primarily determined by structural considerations. It offers an original conceptualisation of higher education pedagogy that sees teacher agency as incorporating a collective response to shifts in the epistemic agency of students – in a fashion that accounts for the affordances of contemporary digital tools and expertise in their use.

🟨 New Publication in #LMT 🟪

In this paper Kahn, Carrigan, Smith, Murtagh, Liu and Song present a project seeking to make sense of the implications for the agency of university teachers resulting from student use of LLMs in assessed work.

Read more (🔓): tinyurl.com/2udbx73j

Midwifing liberatory education futures with education fiction: on the need to cultivate decolonial imagination by Shandell Houlden and George Veletsianos ABSTRACT This paper argues that for education fiction to be a valuable methodology for studying education technology and futures, it must be rooted in the context of our current era, marked by polycrisis, collapse, and the enduring influence of colonial modernity. We begin with a reflexive analysis of academic knowledge production and then explore how education fiction can inadvertently reproduce colonial logics of these contexts are ignored. Drawing on the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Collective’s concept of ‘hospicing modernity,’ we propose cultivating a decolonial imagination, one that holds grief, complicity, and possibility, as a strategy for midwifing liberatory education futures. We further argue that education fiction can function as a prefigurative method: a space to practice relational, decolonial ways of knowing and worldmaking. This approach is especially urgent in relation to education technologies, which remain deeply entangled with extractive systems.

🟨 New Publication in #LMT 🟪

In this paper Houlden & @veletsianos.bsky.social argue that education fiction is of value insofar as it creates a space for liberation for all beings and all that supports the continuity and regeneration of life on this planet.

Read more: tinyurl.com/zvjcmsdm

Nationhood in/through digital education: proposition for an analytical framework by Tram Ninh and Nelli Piattoeva ABSTRACT This paper develops a research framework to explore the relationship between nationhood, education, and digital transformation, focusing on nationhood’s manifestation and (re)construction in/through digitalising education. We examine two parallel dimensions of digital technologies, the material and symbolic aspects, combining this focus with a social constructionist perspective on nationalism to relate the discourses and affordances of digital technologies to nationhood across three key dimensions of space, time, and people. By revisiting the examples of recent social and education research, we demonstrate the relevance of this integrated analytical framework to research on how education, digital transformation, and nationhood interact to shape contemporary societies. Finally, we propose some potential avenues for future research based on this framework.

🟨 New Publication in #LMT 🟪

In this paper Ninh & Piattoeva aim to develop a research framework for studying national socialisation in education
amid the rapid digital transformations reshaping societies.

Read more (🔓): tinyurl.com/4rwwzwc3

Platform bureaucratization as pedagogy in highly platformized classrooms by Christina Löfving , Annika Bergviken Rensfeldt and Thomas Hillman ABSTRACT This article examines the rise of platform bureaucratization in highly digitalized classrooms. Drawing on an ethnographic study in a Swedish lower secondary school, we examine how teachers and students navigate digital platforms, integrated into routine classroom activities such as attendance management, assignment submission, and plagiarism detection, giving rise to bureaucratic forms of teaching and learning. Employing Sefton-Green’s concepts of textualization, templatization, and trainability, we explore how platforms impose rule-bound, procedural logics onto educational practices. Our findings suggest that these platform-driven bureaucratic processes, although seemingly mundane, reconfigure teacher-student interactions, redistribute pedagogical authority, and introduce complex layers of administrative work into everyday schooling. The article highlights the critical role of teacher knowledge in navigating, interpreting, and occasionally resisting platform-driven standardization, emphasizing the need for educational approaches that critically engage with the political and normative dimensions of platform infrastructures. By conceptualizing platform bureaucratization as pedagogy, the study contributes to discussions on the implications of educational platformization, calling for pedagogies that equip teachers and students to navigate and shape these evolving digital bureaucratic landscapes critically.

🟨 New Publication in #LMT 🟪

In this paper @chrilo.bsky.social, @rensfeldt.bsky.social & @thomashillman.bsky.social examine how highly platformized classroom activities give rise to what the authors call platform bureaucratization.

Read more (🔓): tinyurl.com/49d2tczb

Beyond the story: a three-lens analysis of education fiction By Iosif Gidiotis and Stefan Hrastinski ABSTRACT Education fiction offers unique opportunities to creatively explore education futures, yet approaches for analysing such works remain limited. This paper proposes three interpretive lenses for analysing education fiction: alternative educational imaginaries, narrative and rhetorical mechanics, and critical value for educational scholarship and practice. Each lens is posed alongside guiding questions to support deeper and reflective reading. Applying the lenses to a worked example about artificial intelligence in education shows how literary form, persuasion, and implicit value claims generate practice-relevant insights, without prescribing a single final reading. The lenses aim to bridge speculative storytelling with educational scholarship, demonstrating education fiction’s potential not merely to imagine but to actively shape the future of educational research and practice.

🟨 New Publication in #LMT 🟪

By offering three interpretive lenses for education fiction, this paper by Gidiotis & Hrastinski shows how creative narratives and creative methods can enrich social science research
and discourse, with particular focus on education.

Read more (🔓): tinyurl.com/2p9vwhnc

Navigating generative AI in higher education – six near future scenarios by Tiina Lindell & Christian Stöhr ABSTRACT This study investigates the impact of generative AI (GenAI) on higher engineering education through informed educational fiction. Based on educators’ predictions and analyzed through Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), the study presents six near-future scenarios. These illustrate both potential strategies and the challenges educators face in managing GenAI, including conflicting learning goals, excessive self-direction among students, unpredictable GenAI development, conflicting regulations, changing educators roles and interactions with students, and the forging and AI-ready campus. The results provide new insights into why GenAI might be challenging to manage in education, while also discussing how potential changes are not historically unprecedented. This study contributes to society and academia by offering empirically grounded future projections that reflect educators’ perceptions of managing GenAI. These projections can inform future interventions and support the development of alternative educational futures. In doing so, it advances the discussion on fiction-based research as a method for exploring complex technological transformations.

‪
🟨 New Publication in #LMT 🟪

In this study Lindell & Stöhr explore near-future scenarios on how educators might respond to the challenges posed by #GenAI, as well as the limitations of what they can address independently, based on their own anticipations.

Read more (🔓): tinyurl.com/muprzccu

Generative artificial intelligence in education: (what) are we thinking? Debates linking generative artificial intelligence (Gen-AI) to knowledge work have become increasingly popular, with discussions of technological innovation and information production efficiency ce...

New paper in @lmt-journal.bsky.social : Generative artificial intelligence in education: (what) are we thinking? www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Learning, Media and Technology Theorizing the Future of Generative AI. Guest Editors: Maureen Ebben and Julien Murphy. Volume 50, Issue 3 of Learning, Media and Technology

Looking for some good reading about AI in education? Check out this new special issue "Theorizing the Future of Generative AI in Education" just out @lmt-journal.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/toc/cjem20/5...

Theorizing the future of generative AI in education Published in Learning, Media and Technology (Vol. 50, No. 3, 2025)

I'm excited to (re)share work in @lmt-journal.bsky.social's latest issue.

The issue "pose[s] new questions and suggest[s] novel ways of thinking about GenAI and educational practice, serving as a provocation and inspiration to open up new agendas of inquiry and new directions for theory-building."

Problematising ClassDojo as a digital tool for behaviour management and home-school communication ClassDojo is a popular educational technology platform used by teachers to manage students’ behaviour and communicate with parents. This platform, though, along with other similar digital classroom...

New open access article critically examining ClassDojo, published in @lmt-journal.bsky.social. In it we collate data from across 3 studies to scrutinise ClassDojo & argue it promotes a relationship of obedience between student & teacher @digitalchildau.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Computational social science and critical studies of education and technology: an improbable combination? by Rebecca Eynon and Nabeel Gillani ABSTRACT As belief around the potential of computational social science grows, fuelled by recent advances in machine learning, data scientists are ostensibly becoming the new experts in education. Scholars engaged in critical studies of education and technology have sought to interrogate the growing datafication of education yet tend not to use computational methods as part of this response. In this paper, we discuss the feasibility and desirability of the use of computational approaches as part of a critical research agenda. Presenting and reflecting upon two examples of projects that use computational methods in education to explore questions of equity and justice, we suggest that such approaches might help expand the capacity of critical researchers to highlight existing inequalities, make visible possible approaches for beginning to address such inequalities, and engage marginalised communities in designing and ultimately deploying these possibilities. Drawing upon work within the fields of Critical Data Studies and Science and Technology Studies, we further reflect on the two cases to discuss the possibilities and challenges of reimagining computational methods for critical research in education and technology, focusing on six areas of consideration: criticality, philosophy, inclusivity, context, classification, and responsibility.

🟨 New Publication in #LMT 🟪

In this paper Eynon & Gillani argue that through research that attends to issues of criticality, philosophy, inclusivity, context, classification, and responsibility, computational methods can be valuable in critical EdTech studies.

Read more (🔓): tinyurl.com/yv6utetf

Problematising ClassDojo as a digital tool for behavior management and home-school communication by Kristy Corser, Jamie Manolev and Susan Danby ABSTRACT ClassDojo is a popular educational technology platform used by teachers to manage students’ behaviour and communicate with parents. This platform, though, along with other similar digital classroom management tools, are subject to ongoing debate. This paper critically discusses the use of ClassDojo from different contexts across 3 studies that engaged in multiple data sources, including publicly available online discussion forums, polices and websites (study 1), interviews with teachers and families (study 1 and 2), classroom observations (study 2), and a parent/educator online survey (study 3). Drawing on Foucault's concept of pastoral power and data collected from these different contexts, we show that an app such as ClassDojo may be understood as a key instrument of a technologised pastorate within educational settings that provides a datafied form of behaviour judgement that is context free and technology reliant. We question the boundaries of educational technology, revealing the possible downfalls associated with such technology use in schools, and recommend that education stakeholders critically assess the effectiveness and suitability of digital tools.

🟨 New Publication in #LMT 🟪

In this paper Corser, Manolev & Danby argue that ClassDojo is attempting to govern how teachers give uncontextualised feedback to students about their behaviour that becomes data points of managing discipline and control.

Read more (🔓): tinyurl.com/d7k2racy

The educational robotics imaginary. EdTech industry, educational timescapes and the tyranny of connectivity by Jessica Parola and Emiliano Grimaldi ABSTRACT EdTech industry is creating nowadays a multiform and yet powerful imaginary that makes educational robotics a ‘desirable necessity’. This article problematizes how this imaginary envisions a reconfiguration of the temporalities of education. Theoretically, we draw on the notions of imaginary and timescape to explore emerging robotically mediated educational temporalities and their rhythms, forms of time calculation, temporal relations and modalities. We analyze EdTech’s work of envisioning through a quantitative (Network Text Analysis) and qualitative methodology. We argue that it is possible to identify an envisioned robotically mediated educational temporality which is organized around four temporal logics: tech-driven instruction, connectivity, skill development, and educating to and for the future. Moreover, we critically discuss how through this temporal envisioning a particular kind of subject is positioned at the center of learning. This subject is enmeshed into paradoxes which we capture as the tyranny of connectivity. To conclude, we suggest possibilities to think differently a robotically mediated educational temporality.

🟨 New Publication in #LMT 🟪

In this paper Parola and Grimaldi analyze the envisioning of AI-
based educational #robotics within #EdTech & robotics industry and the educational #timescape that is enacted through it.

Read more: tinyurl.com/46nsnfvt

Defining ‘the Force’ of artificial intelligence in education: exploring the future of teaching through informed speculation by Cornelia Linderoth, Mina Mani, Konrad Schönborn, Magnus Hultén & Linnéa Stenliden ABSTRACT In the ‘Star Wars’ universe, the Force is a powerful energy that can be harnessed for good or evil. Similarly, artificial intelligence (AI) in education is often depicted as a transformative power capable of revolutionizing teaching and learning. This paper explores possible futures in education in relation to generative AI and predictive AI, using informed speculation to offer insights into the future. As our visions for tomorrow’s technology are being defined today, it is important to invite teachers to define the technology we should strive for. This paper presents two co-design workshops involving seven secondary-school teachers with diverse experiences and understandings of AI. Analysis of the workshop recordings informed three narrative episodes that center on lesson-planning in the future, the technical divide, and assessment agency. Education fiction is used as a mode for deep reflection on the results, staging scenarios and exploring the implications of AI in education. The results suggest that while teachers fear changes to their profession, they also offer constructive ideas for AI’s potential use. This informed speculation helps to elaborate on challenges and possibilities AI poses for teachers, providing important insights into how to harness AI effectively in teaching while avoiding techno-solutionism by broadening future perspectives.

🟨 New Publication in #LMT 🟪

For this paper Linderoth, Mani, Schönborn, Hultén & Stenliden engaged teachers in co-design workshops to facilitate informed #speculation on possible futures for education in
the age of #AIED.

Read more (🔓): tinyurl.com/yktz8u9j

Understanding media influences on education policy in contexts of changing digital media cultures by Aspa Baroutsis and Bob Lingard ABSTRACT This critical policy research paper considers the impact of media on education policy, drawing on our empirical research that utilises print and digital newspapers and social media datasets. We acknowledge the broader social shifts in digital technology, advances in digitalisation and datafication, which contribute to mediatisation and deep mediatisation. In considering media/policy imbrications, we analyse three strategies utilised by different actors in the construction of media messaging to influence education policy. These are, celebrity as policy influencer, organisation as mediapreneur, and media as message curators. These actors include a football celebrity, Marcus Rashford, a mediapreneurial international intergovernmental organisation, the OECD, and Australian legacy media curation. The celebrity utilised social media activism to directly change policy decisions; the OECD attempted to manage legacy media reporting of PISA results to affect national policy responses and used social media for policy awareness raising and dissemination; and the Australian legacy media utilised their gatekeeper status to affect the context of influence of policy development and helped constitute discourses that frame policy. We conclude offering a comparative analysis of the three strategies, as well as considering the contribution of our research to the fields of policy sociology in education and media and education policy.

🟨 New Publication in #LMT 🟪

In this paper Baroutsis & Lingard offer a comparative analysis across three media strategies to illustrate how a range of different policy actors use both legacy and social media as policy instruments to influence education policy.

Read more (🔓): tinyurl.com/k5w936rk

The nature of connection: parents’ experiences with school social media by Tiffani Apps, Karley Beckman, Nataszia Pawlicka and Paul Kidson ABSTRACT Contemporary schools have embraced the use of social media platforms, such as Facebook, to connect with parents, students, and the broader community. Despite an established body of critical research that highlights the power of platforms to shape social practice, there is a paucity of research that considers the impacts of school social media practice. This study employs a practice theory lens to examine school social media as practice with a focus on the platform together with the everyday situated experiences of parents. Through in-depth qualitative case studies, the paper aims to understand the experiences of six Australian parents as they manoeuvre within and across school, home and platform fields. Data were collected from an online questionnaire, semi-structured interviews, and social media walkthroughs. Key findings highlighted tensions rather than connections at the intersection of home, school and social media. The obfuscated logic of the platform and limited space for parents to enact protective strategies within school structures amplified these tensions. The increasing concerns surrounding social media platforms and their impact on society, including the participants within this study, highlight the need for greater attention to the subtle ways in which schools, parents and children are implicated under the guise of connection.

🟨 New Publication in #LMT 🟪

In this paper Apps, Beckman, Pawlicka & @drpaulkidson.bsky.social conceptualise school’s social media platforms as a fields of practice, affecting home and school relations.

Read more (🔓): tinyurl.com/2pu7phhb

Theorizing the Future of Generative AI Edited by Maureen Ebben and Julien S. Murphy The articles in this volume share a broader critical discourse with GenAI. While we cannot know what GenAI will mean for education in the long term, the dizzying pace at which it is being infused into educational practices demands new forms of theoretical research to assist us in not merely receiving these new tools as a fait accompli but to critically evaluate their use and contribute to their design. Presently, we find ourselves in a dialectical engagement with GenAI: as we train GenAI tools with our prompts, responses, and the creation of materials that LLMs require, we are unwittingly being trained by GenAI in specific and often unconscious ways. This reflects the interplay between humans and machines that the new materialists describe.

🟨Volume 50, Issue 3 (2025) of LMT🟪

In this Special Issue, guest editors Ebben & Murphy present a collection of articles exploring pressing issues of #GenAI in #education, including new subjectivities, critical pedagogies, strategies of resistance & biases.

Read all articles: tinyurl.com/39p3b4um

With: Rebecca Eynon, Cathy Lewin, Martin Oliver, @benpatrickwill.bsky.social @johnpp.bsky.social, @discoursology.bsky.social, @lucipangrazio.bsky.social & @neilselwyn.bsky.social .

🟨 New Publication in #LMT 🟪

As part of LMT's 20th anniversary, in this editorial eight current and former editors reflect on the journal's achievements and consider its future.

Read more: tinyurl.com/yk7k2hkf

ABSTRACT This paper explores what literacies people need to challenge big tech companies. We selected key digital rights practitioners, who mediate between policy and public awareness and have diverse experiences in working with people to critique and change the power asymmetries we have with big tech companies. Investigating how citizens can negotiate with big tech companies based on the experts’ insights highlighted the inequalities involved and how data literacy stands as a collective and structural barrier. Four key themes emerged from the interviews: contextual awareness, real or imagined concerns, who is responsible for creating and solving problems, and resistance possibilities. Drawing on the Data Citizenship framework, we show how these findings can be translated into civic action which involve different actors: government, Big-Tech, media, NGOs, and society. Importantly, we found it was difficult to imagine what an ‘ideal world’ would look like. Therefore, we argue that once we can imagine and verbalize how we want our data-driven future to look like, it will be easier to proactively strategize and work towards it.

🟨 New Publication in #LMT 🟪

In this paper @elinorcarmi.bsky.social & Nakou ask digital rights NGO practitioners about their experience on what mobilizes citizens to act against Big Tech & how data citizenship can offer possible ways forward for society to take.

Read more (🔓): tinyurl.com/zzutf4xb

ABSTRACT Over the past four decades, Sweden's education system has undergone a profound transformation, shifting from a centralised structure to a market-oriented model characterised by independent schools, deregulation, and competition. This paper introduces an innovative methodological approach to studying this transformation by applying computational text analysis with large language models (LLMs) to 45 years of parliamentary debates. By leveraging these methods and extensive parliamentary open data, we identify thematic patterns, ideological shifts, and policy discourses that have shaped the marketisation of Swedish education. Our methodological contribution lies in demonstrating how LLMs can be employed to scale up traditional discourse analysis, bridging the gap between computational methods and qualitative interpretative approaches. We engage critically with the challenges of algorithmic opacity, validation strategies, and interpretative transparency, addressing concerns about bias and the risks of black-boxed analyses. Combining machine-assisted text analysis with traditional qualitative methodologies, we present a scalable yet nuanced framework for studying education policy debates over time.

🟨 New Publication in #LMT 🟪

In this article Borgström, Karlsson & Lundahl utilise LLMs and computational text analysis to thematise a comprehensive textual database of all parliamentary speeches on independent schools in Sweden.

Read more (🔓): tinyurl.com/4b8z762d

ABSTRACT England’s state primary schools are settings characterised by intensive data production increasingly curated by digital platforms. While much research has focused on how datafication is reshaping schools and childhood, this study examines the impact of platformised systems on the parent–child relationship. Using Deleuze’s work on control societies, a comparative case study design was employed to explore parental and staff consciousness of data practices in primary education, their role in reshaping family values and the resultant sociocultural implications. Data was generated through interviews and documentary analysis of learning platform SeeSaw and its promotional materials. Results demonstrate that platformised education compels a profound shift in the interrelationships between parents, children and teachers by emphasising responsibilised over responsive practices of care. Accordingly, it reconfigures the parent–child relationship by escalating performative regimes with significant consequences for interfamily tension. These findings contribute to contemporary debates on the politics, problems and potential of data-driven approaches when raising and educating children.

🟨 New Publication in #LMT 🟪

In this paper Kelly argues that platforms reconfigure the parent–child relationship in the school context through regimes of hypervisibility and performativity that penetrate core educational values and engender new ways of being.

Read more: tinyurl.com/36zbw8xf

ABSTRACT This conceptual article provides an outline of Manuel DeLanda’s concept of ‘parametrization' and its methodological possibilities for inquiry into emerging platform ecologies in education. Traditionally, education research has treated ‘the digital' as separate from the analog. However, transdisciplinary literature has shown how connective technologies blur these distinctions, expanding the scope of education research to include the interplay of social, technical, and political-economic relations within ‘the digital.' This complexity presents challenges for researchers in prioritizing aspects of these relations. To address this tension, we turn to DeLanda’s ‘parametrization' for setting inquiry parameters with ‘control knobs' to adjust the focus on relevant actors, activities, and interactions. By examining the influence of digital platforms like Google in educational settings, we illustrate how parametrization allows researchers to navigate scales and relations, offering insights into the nuanced impacts of digital technologies on teaching and learning practices.

🟨 New Publication in #LMT 🟪

In this paper @philnichols.bsky.social, LeBlanc & @alliethrall.bsky.social offer ‘parametrization' to better capture the interplay of digital practices as territorialized and coded in different ways, across different scales.

Read more (🔓): tinyurl.com/58m4zrdp

ABSTRACT This paper discusses critical and participatory approaches to screencapture to account for the layered, embodied, and mobile ways people work with/across screens in a postdigital era. While screencapture methods have been a mainstay of multimodal, video- based research in education, there has been less theorizing of screens as active participants in broader sociotechnical assemblages. In this paper, we theorize screencapture from a sociomaterial lens that frames all activity as comprised of human and technological actors acting as dynamic participants in sociotechnical systems. We propose three approaches to screencapture – self-generated screencapture video, researcher-generated screencapture, and elicited screencapture – as a heuristic for researchers to look at and not through screens. Through three case study examples of each approach to screencapture, we trace five critical considerations: ethics, positionality, ephemerality, layering, and co-construction. These critical considerations emerge differently across the three approaches to screencapture, helping researchers challenge extractive or voyeuristic procedures for recording screens in educational research

🟨 New Publication in #LMT 🟪

In this article @amystorn.bsky.social & @rabani.bsky.social invite researchers to engage screencapture not only as a mode of data collection but as a site of inquiry – one that reflects, mediates, and conditions practice.

Read more: tinyurl.com/3rj9s8fj

ABSTRACT Children in current times are likely to encounter algorithms, particularly recommendation systems, as part of their everyday media experiences. In this paper we consider children’s use of algorithms from a media literacy perspective, namely through curatorship practices. We detail a pilot workshop where children had opportunities to develop understandings and critically reflect on algorithms through non-digital media production. Children engaged in the process of curation through a series of activities where they took photos and then curated these images in a variety of ways. The activity provided opportunities for the children to critically reflect on algorithms, specifically recommendation systems, in ways that moved them beyond experience. One part of the pilot was to consider the inter-relations evident between digital and more traditional texts, materials and resources and the opportunities afforded when diverse materials and tools are brought together in the one event. The pilot explored different activities to help participants consider how algorithms are part of, and impact, their everyday literacy and media practices.

🟨New Publication in #LMT 🟪

Here @amandalevido.bsky.social, @aleeshajoy.bsky.social, @dezuanni.bsky.social & Woods report on a study, designed to raise understandings of how to teach children about algorithmic practices through practice-based workshops.

Read more (🔓): tinyurl.com/2ucyf7na

ABSTRACT Research syntheses are an important approach to capture and synthesize empirical studies in educational technology. However, despite their proclaimed impartial summary of available research, imbalances exist as to whose research is included due to publication language or in regard to the visibility of entire scientific communities. Using the concepts of academic hegemony and WEIRD research, a bibliometric analysis is conducted in order to explore how research syntheses of authors located in one of the so-called academic core countries – the U.S.A. – are positioned in international comparison, and how this potentially shapes the discourse on educational technology. For the bibliometric analysis, a corpus with N = 446 research syntheses is considered, comprised of 95 U.S.-authored and 351 non-U.S.-authored syntheses. Findings reveal that U.S.-authored syntheses are relatively self-referential and also draw heavily on databases of U.S.-based professional societies in their literature search. Over half of the syntheses cite other U.S.-based research, followed by Chilean, British, Canadian, Australian and German research. In contrast, U.S.-authored syntheses are cited globally, accentuating their perceived importance and influence. Findings point to the need to consider underlying influences and contextual factors for research syntheses in educational technology, reflect on citation practices and generalizability of findings from educational research.

🟨New Publication in #LMT 🟪

In their study Buntins, Bedenlier & @zawacki-richter.bsky.social show how syntheses in educational technology research are potential contributors to global imbalances in knowledge construction.

Read more (🔓): tinyurl.com/3fjskh62

Collectively produced epistemic objects and their necessary incompleteness for professional learning on a large-scale online platform ABSTRACT This article presents a theoretical approach to examining professional knowledge practices on online platforms, employing the concept of epistemic objects and their incompleteness, and analysing how objects are actively produced and negotiated through interactions among users and the platform. We illustrate this approach by conducting an interaction analysis of two threads from Stack Overflow, a prominent online platform where millions of software developers ask and answer programming-related questions. The findings demonstrate that the incompleteness of epistemic objects is central to understanding how professionals collectively engage with and produce knowledge online. They also highlight the role of specific technical features of platforms and the embeddedness of objects – and, thereby, the platforms themselves – in the broader professional domain. The article discusses the potential of the theoretical approach for investigating online platforms as sites for professional learning and calls for educational programs and platform designs that support professionals’ engagements with epistemic objects.

In their analysis of Stack Overflow threads Seredko, @thomashillman.bsky.social & Lundin illustrate how epistemic objects are locally produced as sociomaterial accomplishments and are intertwined with the broader material context of a professional domain.

Read more (🔓): tinyurl.com/2pk34k2e

This new Special Issue will be officially launched and discussed during a launch event on March 27th 2025, 2:00-3:30 PM (UK time). Hosted by @srhe.bsky.social and facilitaded by guest editor @jkom.bsky.social.
Catch many of the authors during this webinar by registering here: tinyurl.com/mksr24dn

Algorithmic futuring: predictive infrastructures of valuation and investment in the assetization of edtech by Ben Williamson, Carolina Valladares Celis, Arathi Sriprakash, Jessica Pykett and Keri Facer ABSTRACT Futures of education are increasingly defined through predictive technologies and methods. We conceptualize ‘algorithmic futuring’ as the use of data-driven digital methods and predictive infrastructures to anticipate educational futures and animate actions in the present towards their materialization. Specifically, we focus on algorithmic futuring in the education technology investment industry, and the role of predictive infrastructures of valuation and investment in the assetization of edtech. Edtech investment actors make predictions based on the calculated future asset value of digital technologies. Methods and narratives of algorithmic futuring produced through predictive infrastructures are intended to render an assetized future of education seemingly attractive, attainable, and actionable. Our analysis foregrounds three forms of algorithmic futuring practised by an edtech investment organization: forecasting targets; managing uncertainty; and provoking assetization. Each has significant impacts on what futures are put into motion in the present, and exploit a gap in public investment in edtech futures.

In this article @benpatrickwill.bsky.social, Celis, @arathings.bsky.social, Pykett & @kerifacer.bsky.social illuminate how #edtech investment is shaped through futuring methods that incorporate both data-driven and textual practices and technologies.

Read more (🔓): tinyurl.com/3kpyd9yp