Educational technologies as matters of care

Abstract

Schools, teaching, and learning environments have long been understood and idealised as places of care. Within feminist studies and Science and Technology Studies (STS), scholars have proposed a shift to include non-humans in what we propose to conceive as care arrangements. Drawing on Tronto's feminist ethics of care [1993. Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care. Routledge], we investigate educational technologies as ‘matters of care’, facilitating and enabling different modes of care. We pay particular attention to the role that educational technologies assume in schools’ care arrangements. The paper is based on a study of four school information systems in Germany. We identify how these systems can be conceived of as antagonists, intermediaries, recipients of care or means to receive care and critically reflect on how this allows us to imagine modes of care with technology in order to create good educational futures.