Giving Artifacts a Voice? Bringing into Account Technology in Educational Analysis

Abstract

Technologies increasingly shape educational settings and policies. Youth define the etiquette for communication devices even as engineers redefine what these devices are capable of doing. The what and how of technologies are being articulated all across the educational landscape, yet much of the discussion surrounding technologies in education continues to view them as additive rather than constitutive. The socio‐cultural work of persons is categorically privileged over the contributions of artifacts. Unfortunately, this division of objects from subjects obscures the very practical ways in which persons and technologies codetermine one another. This paper examines the theoretical grounding of the relationship between humans and nonhumans in light of recent work in Science and Technology Studies, and highlights the ways in which actor‐network theory might serve to level the playing field and give artifacts a voice.