A Justice-Oriented Conceptual and Analytical Framework for Decolonising and Desecularising the Field of Educational Technology

Abstract

Education systems globally are increasingly being shaped by the logics, assumptions and pedagogical underpinnings of educational technology (EdTech) products, services, programmes, policies, and systems. These often promote rationalistic, secular, universal, objectivist, (post)modernist, written, behaviourist, and individualistic ways of being, marginalising religious, spiritual, oral, subjective, critical, and communitarian ways of being. Given that technological ways of being have been propagated globally, these logics are no longer predominantly promoted by those in the Global North, but by techno-solutionists globally, although the core-to-periphery flows of ideology and funding are still prominent. This article develops a conceptual and analytical framework for decolonising and desecularising the field of EdTech. Concepts are drawn from various discourses: the desecularisation of knowledge to set the ontological framing; embodied cognition to set the epistemological framing; and social justice and decolonial discourses to set the axiological framing. From this, the article develops the Dimensions of Human Injustice Analytical Framework—covering material, ontological and epistemic, and (geo)political injustices—to assist policymakers, educators, EdTech developers, and international development practitioners in identifying and confronting coloniality in their EdTech. Acknowledging the complexity and contentions within decolonial thought, this article does not claim a unified stance on achieving justice but aims to offer a tool for deconstructing and questioning injustices.