Is education better because of us? How ed tech can answer the call to produce research that matters

Abstract

Despite the enormous investment in educational technology research, there are sincere questions about whether it is having a meaningful effect on issues that really matter. Put simply, is education better because of us? In this paper we argue that our field is not having the impact it could, due largely to our instrumentalist approach to ed tech research. Instrumentalism transforms the educational problems we study into little more than opportunities to efficiently deploy technologies and other resources that are presumed to optimize educational systems. But despite instrumentalism’s near-ubiquity, there is an alternative. By analyzing a case study of research characterized by researcher immersion and entanglement with the situation under study, we show how educational technology can resist the instrumentalist tendencies that reduce even the most serious problem into simply another resource to be optimized. In large part this occurs as we adopt practices that demand that we change ourselves—striving on our parts for more sensitivity, more understanding, more caring—so we are up to the task helping education become more just, more humane, and more focused on students’ existential development.