Looking beyond learning: notes towards the

critical study of educational technology

NEIL SELWYN

London Knowledge Lab

Institute of Education – University of London, UK

paper to be published in the Journal of Computer Assisted Learning (2010)

Please reference as:

Selwyn, N. (2010) ‘Looking beyond learning: notes towards the critical study of
educational technology’ Journal of Computer Assisted Learning 26, 1

email: n.selwyn@ioe.ac.uk
postal: London Knowledge Lab, 23-29 Emerald Street, London, WC1N 3QS
Looking beyond learning: notes towards the
critical study of educational technology

Abstract: This paper makes a case for academic research and writing that looks beyond
the learning potential of technology and, instead, seeks to develop social scientific
accounts of the often compromised and constrained realities of education technology use
‘on the ground’. The paper discusses how this ‘critical’ approach differs from the ways
that educational technology scholarship has tended to be pursued to date. These
differences include viewing technology as being socially constructed and negotiated
rather than imbued with pre-determined characteristics; developing objective and realistic
accounts of technology use in situ; and producing ‘context rich’ analyses of the social
conflicts and politics that underpin the use of technology in educational settings. The
paper concludes by encouraging academic researchers and writers to show greater
interest in the issues of democracy and social justice that surround educational
technology.

Keywords: technology, education, research, theory, sociology

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Looking beyond learning: notes towards the
critical study of educational technology

Introduction

The twenty-fifth anniversary of JCAL should be cause both for celebration and
contemplation amongst the educational technology community. Everyone involved with
the journal can look back at the last quarter of a century with a well-deserved sense of
accomplishment and pride. Yet the occasion also provides an opportunity to reflect on
how the academic study of educational technology has developed over the last three
decades and, perhaps most importantly, to think creatively about how the field may
progress into the next decade. In this latter sense at least, a set of issues relating to
process and purpose certainly merit further consideration as digital technology becomes a
standard feature of contemporary education provision and practice.

As many readers may have noticed, self-reflection and self-analysis are not common
features of the educational technology literature. Indeed, it could be argued that the rapid
development of digital technology has ensured that educational technologists scarcely
have time to keep abreast of their topic of study, yet alone cogitate on the more complex
issues of definition and motivation that underpin their endeavours (although see
Januszewski and Molenda 2007 as a notable exception). In fact, many people working in
the field would probably refute the existence of a discrete ‘academic tribe’ of educational
technologists altogether – contending that ‘education technology’ serves merely as a flag
of convenience for a loose assortment of technologically-minded psychologists,
pedagogy experts, maths and science educators, computer scientists, systems developers
and the like.

With these issues in mind, there is a clear need for those of us currently working in the
area of education and technology to take stock of who we are, what it is we do, and how
and why we do it. With a view to stimulating further discussion and debate the present
paper now goes on to raise a number of straightforward but possibly contentious points
regarding the future development of the field. In particular, it is argued that the academic
study of educational technology has grown to be dominated by an (often abstracted)
interest in the processes of how people can learn with digital technology. While issues
relating to the design, development and implementation of ‘effective’ learning
technologies will continue to be of central importance to the field, it is reasoned that
greater attention now needs to be paid to how digital technologies are actually being used
– for better and worse – in ‘real-world’ educational settings. In this sense, it is contended
that the academic study of educational technology needs to be pursued more vigorously
along social scientific lines, with researchers and writers showing a keener interest in the
social, political, economic, cultural and historical contexts within which educational
technology use (and non-use) is located.

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The remainder of this paper therefore develops a set of related arguments on the theme of
supporting what can be termed the critical study of educational technology. The paper
first outlines the terms of reference for a critical approach, while also justifying the need
for academic work that focuses on the social conflicts and politics of educational
technology use at individual, institutional and societal levels of analysis. In this sense the
paper positions itself alongside the burgeoning tradition in education scholarship for
critical and democratically minded analyses of education. As Gert Biesta and others have
argued, making sense of contemporary education entails focusing on a range of issues
‘beyond learning’ – not least the political and democratic dimensions of education that
are often overlooked in the relentless asking of “questions about the efficiency and
effectiveness of the educational process” (Biesta 2006, p. 22).

Against this background, the paper then considers the implications that a critical
approach has for the established ways that educational technology scholarship has been
understood and pursued over the past three decades. In particular it is contended that
more research is required that moves away from a ‘means-end’ way of thinking about
how best to harness the presumed inherent educational potential of digital technology
and, instead, focuses on the socially contested and ‘socially shaped’ nature of technology.
This shift in thinking, in turn, compels academic research and writing to look beyond
issues of learning, and instead develop ‘context-rich’ accounts of the often compromised
and constrained social realities of technology use ‘on the ground’ in educational settings.
Only by giving greater credence to these critical issues, it is reasoned, can academic
writers and researchers then go on to develop meaningful proposals for changing the
politics of educational technology provision and practice. The paper therefore concludes
by proposing a broadening of the academic ‘technological imagination’ to include issues
of democracy, social justice and empowerment.

The need for a critical study of educational technology

Educational technology can be a frustrating area of academic scholarship to follow. On

one hand, thousands of hours and millions of dollars are directed towards the optimistic
exploration of how technology is capable of supporting, assisting and even enhancing the
act of learning. On the other hand, as anyone involved with the day-to-day realities of
contemporary education in its different guises will attest, many of the fundamental
elements of learning and teaching remain largely untouched by the potential of
educational technology. As such, an obvious disparity between rhetoric and reality runs
throughout much of the past twenty-five years of educational technology scholarship. As
Diana Laurillard (2008, p.1) observes wryly, “education is on the brink of being
transformed through learning technologies; however, it has been on that brink for some
decades now”. Whilst similar tensions between rhetoric and reality can be found within
many areas of applied academic study, a particularly resilient strain of cognitive
dissonance appears to pervade the educational technology literature. Despite a long
history of eagerly anticipated but largely unrealised technological transformation,
academics continue to focus on the ‘what ifs’ and ‘best case’ examples of educational
technology – often producing compelling evidence of educational potential, but only on

4
occasion acknowledging the individual and institutional ‘barriers’ that are presumed to be
restricting the realisation of this potential in practice. As such, the academic study of
educational technology could be accused of having worked itself into an analytic corner –
well-able to discuss how educational technologies could and should be used, but less
competent and confident in discussing how and why educational technologies are
actually being used.

Against this background, there is clearly scope to reassess and perhaps broaden the ways
in which the academic study of educational technology is understood and approached.
While not intending to wholly devalue or dismiss the work in question, it could be argued
that the last twenty-five years of educational technology scholarship has produced and
privileged a set of rather specific understandings of the use of technology for teaching
and learning. As the remainder of this paper will go on to argue, the educational
technology research and writing of the 2010s and beyond would be enhanced greatly if
educational technology could be seen as more than a predominantly technical issue of
aligning mind and machine. The paper will instead make a case for placing more
emphasis on understanding the often uneven, contested and contradictory realities of
technology use within educational settings - therefore seeing educational technology as a
profoundly social, cultural and political concern.

Despite some prominent exceptions (e.g. Cuban 2001, Schofield 1995), the relationship
between education, technology and society has certainly not constituted a major part of
the educational technology ‘worldview’ to date. Indeed, much of the academic study of
educational technology that has taken place over the past twenty-five years is perhaps
described most accurately as the study of ‘learning technology’ – i.e. work that focuses
on the role of technology in facilitating, supporting and (it is assumed) enhancing the act
of learning. In this sense, academic investigations of digital technology use in education
have tended to focus either on the process of technological development and design, or
else the process of learners using technology – therefore drawing predominantly on a
range of theories of instruction and learning that seek to explain how and why
technology-enhanced learning can take place. Indeed, the academic study of educational
technology has long been dominated by theoretical and philosophical accounts from what
can be termed the ‘learning sciences’ – from the early behaviourist theories of writers
such as BF Skinner, to later cognitivist, constructivist, constructionist and socio-cultural
descriptions inspired by the likes of Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky. Latterly, these largely
psychological concerns have been augmented by theories of human computer interaction,
systems development and the science of design (e.g. Simon 1969) as academic attention
has also been drawn towards the design and production processes of technology enhanced
learning.

As was implied earlier, these conceptual and theoretical preoccupations have resulted in
rather specific understandings of the nature of technology use in education – especially
with regards to the social nature of educational technology. Of course, the majority of
studies that take a ‘learning science’ perspective on educational technology now pay
close attention to the technical and the social processes of learning with digital
technology. Indeed, socio-cultural accounts of technology-based learning tend to place

5
great emphasis on the socially collaborative nature of learning where the construction of
knowledge by learners is seen to be nurtured and supported by wider communities of
learners, teachers, technologies and other objects. In this sense, the majority of current
educational technology research and writing would concur with the notion of learners and
digital technologies being ‘blended’ with a wide range of other human and non-human
elements that together form the ‘learning environment’. Yet while going some way to
explaining how technology-based learning can take place, such approaches go little way
to explaining why technology-based learning actually takes place (or not) in ‘real-life’
contexts. At best the learning science approach tends to frame ‘ineffective’ use of
technologies for learning in terms of various assets and deficiencies within the learning
environment – not least the perceived technological and psychological strengths and
shortcomings of individual learners, their tutors and educational institutions. All told, the
emerging received wisdom amongst many educational technologists regarding the
apparent ‘failure’ of educational technology in practice is that educational institutions and
those within them often lack what it takes “to go with the technological flow” (Dale et al.
2004).

In this sense, while much of the contemporary educational technology literature takes
great care to emphasise the immediate social processes surrounding an individual
learner’s use of technology, there is far less concern with developing an understanding of
how this technology use ‘fits’ (or not) within the wider social contexts that make up
education and society – what sociologists often refer to as the social ‘milieu’ of
technology use. In educational terms these milieu can include institutions such as schools,
colleges and universities, as well as settings such as museums, libraries and training
centres. Similarly, learning often takes place within the context of the household, the
workplace and wider community settings. Moreover, these contexts are themselves set
within a range of even wider social milieu (not least commercial marketplaces, nation-
states and global economies). Whilst perhaps not immediately apparent to the observer of
a classroom setting, it would be foolhardy to attempt to explain any aspect of education
and digital technology in the twenty-first century without some recourse to these wider
influences.

It therefore seems sensible to contend that academic researchers and writers should give
greater acknowledgement to the influences on educational technology above and beyond
the context of the individual learner and their immediate learning environment. Put
bluntly, as technology-based education and ‘e-learning’ continue to grow in societal
significance then it follows that the use of technology in education needs to be
understood in societal terms. For instance, this includes acknowledging the clear linkages
between educational technology use and ‘macro’ elements of the social structure of
society such as global economics, labour markets and political and cultural institutions.
Similarly, at the ‘micro’ level of the individual, the act of technology-based learning also
needs to be understood as being entwined with many other dimensions of social life. The
study of educational technology should therefore be seen in profoundly social scientific
terms – moving beyond making sense of the ‘science’ of learning, and pursuing what can
be termed the critical study of technology-based social action and social life within the
social world of education.

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Steps towards the critical study of educational technology

Adopting a ‘critical’ approach towards educational technology does not entail a dogmatic
adherence to any particular theoretical stance, school-of-thought or ‘-ism’. Rather the
critical perspective is rooted in a broader recognition of technology and education as a set
of profoundly political processes and practices that are best described in terms of issues
of power, control, conflict and resistance. As such, much of the underlying impetus for a
critical approach towards educational technology stems from a desire to foster and
support issues of empowerment, equality, social justice and participatory democracy (see
Gunter 2009). These ambitions are perhaps best summarised by Amin and Thrift’s (2005,
p.221) four-point agenda for critical scholarship, i.e.:

“First, a powerful sense of engagement with politics and the political. Second, and
following on, a consistent belief that there must be better ways of doing things
than are currently found in the world. Third, a necessary orientation to a critique
of power and exploitation that both blight people’s current lives and stop better
ways of doing things from coming into existence. Fourth, a constant and
unremitting critical reflexivity towards our own practices: no one is allowed to
claim that they have the one and only answer or the one and only privileged
vantage point. Indeed, to make such a claim is to become a part of the problem”.

As this brief manifesto suggests, a critical approach involves asking a number of

questions about education and technology that are distinctly different from the questions
usually found in the educational technology literature. Perhaps more importantly, these
questions are asked for a distinctly different set of reasons than is usually the case in the
academic study of educational technology. As such the shifts in perspective associated
with the critical study of education and technology imply a number of alterations to the
ways that educational technology scholarship is understood and pursued. Some of these
issues are now discussed in further detail:

i) Moving beyond a ‘means-end’ way of thinking

First and foremost, the critical study of technology and education is underpinned by a
rejection of any ‘common-sense’ understandings of the imperatives and potentials of
educational technology. As Boody (2001, p.7) points out, many of the arguments about
the benefits of digital technology in education take the form of ‘means-end thinking’ –
i.e. thinking that starts from a given end and then strives to find the means of
accomplishment. While producing neat analyses and models of technology use, such
thinking tends to fail to consider fully the nature and value of the end, the by-products or
unintended consequences of its implementation or the connections between this given
end and other important ends.

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In particular, a critical approach seeks to move beyond the deterministic assumption that
technologies possess inherent qualities and are therefore capable of having particular
‘impacts’ or ‘effects’ on learners, teachers and educational institutions if used in a correct
manner. The critical approach is also distanced from the associated understanding that
individuals and institutions are placed in a position of having to respond to technological
change and make best use of technologies that they are presented with. This
commonplace logic - evident in much thinking about educational technology - is
illustrated in Clay Shirky’s (2008, p.307) recent observation that …

“… our control over [digital] tools is much more like steering a kayak. We are
being pushed rapidly down a route largely determined by the technological
environment. We have a small degree of control over the spread of these tools, but
that control does not extend to being able to reverse, or even radically alter, the
direction we’re moving in”.

The technologically determinist perspective that “social progress is driven by

technological innovation, which in turn follows an ‘inevitable’ course” (Smith 1994,
p.38) has a long lineage in popular and academic understandings of the ‘effects’ of
technology and society. For example, a determinist way of thinking underpins the range
of popular claims that video games cause violent behaviour, or that internet use leads to
asocial behaviour. Whilst appealing to those who wish to construct bounded ‘scientific’
explanations and models, the dangers of this way of thinking about the use of technology
in educational settings lie primarily in the simplistic conclusions that they logically lead
towards. In particular, this way of thinking usually reaches conclusions that recommend
the overcoming of any constraining influences or impediments within the immediate
educational context, so that the inherent beneficial effects of technology may be more
fully felt.

Indeed, current discussion and debate about the use of digital technology in educational
settings often follows this decidedly externalist logic – “treating new technologies as
autonomous forces that compel society to change” (Nye 2007, p.27). The pretext of much
academic work in the field is that technology is set inevitably to change educational
contexts for the better. Thinking along these lines, it follows that the main task of
educational technology analysts is to identify the impediments and deficiencies that are
delaying and opposing the march of technological progress.

In contrast, the critical study of educational technology starts from the premise that
“devices and machines are not things ‘out there’ that invade life” (Nye 2007, p. ix). More
emphasis is placed on understanding the development and implementation of
technological innovations as set within specific social and economic contexts, instead of
new technologies somehow having inevitable internal logics of development regardless
of circumstance (see Williams 1974). Following this line of argument, for example, it is
accepted that there can be no pre-determined outcomes to the development and
implementation of educational technologies. Instead any technological artefact is seen as
being subjected continually to a series of complex interactions and negotiations with the

8
social, economic, political and cultural contexts that it emerges into. Understanding
technology as being ‘socially shaped’ therefore allows for analyses that ‘open up the
black box of technology’ (Bijker et al. 1987) and consider the organisational, political,
economic and cultural factors which pattern the design, development, production,
marketing, implementation and ‘end use’ of a technological artefact (see Selwyn 2008).
Gaining a full sense of how and why educational technologies are being used in the ways
that they are is therefore underpinned by understandings of how these technologies are
socially constructed, shaped and negotiated by a range of actors and interests.

ii) Asking ‘state-of-the-actual’ questions

Making sense of the socially constructed nature of technology has clear implications for
how the study of educational technology is pursued. In particular the critical approach is
based upon understanding the ‘here-and-now’ realities rather than future possibilities and
potentials of educational technology. As implied at the beginning of this paper, the
academic study of educational technology is often drawn inexorably towards a forward-
looking, ‘leading-edge’ perspective. As such, many educational technology
commentators, writers and researchers tend to show most interest in what could be
termed ‘state-of-the-art’ issues – addressing questions of what could happen, and what
should happen once the latest technologies and digital media are placed into educational
settings. Yet the practical significance of an avowedly ‘state-of-the-art’ perspective on
technology and education is often limited – tending to underplay social influences and
relations, and offering little useful and insight into how present arrangements may be
improved or ameliorated. As David Nye (2007, p.35) reflects, “all technological
predictions and forecasts are in essence little narratives about the future. They are not
full-scale narratives of utopia, but they are usually presented as stories about a better
world to come”.

In contrast, the critical study of educational technology retains a firm “commitment to the
here and now, the empirical and the demonstratable” (Cavanagh 2007, p.7), thus
producing academic accounts of digital technology that concentrate on developing ‘thick’
descriptions of the present uses of technologies in situ rather than speculative predictions
and forecasts of the near future. As Beer and Burrows (2007, para 1.1) contend:

“At a time of rapid socio-cultural change a renewed emphasis on good – critical,

distinctive and thick – sociological descriptions of emergent digital phenomena,
ahead of any headlong rush into analytics, seems to us to be a sensible idea. We
need to understand some of the basic parameters of our new digital objects of
sociological study before we can satisfactorily locate them within any broader
frames of theoretical reference”.

In this manner, the critical study of educational technology seeks to address the use of
digital technology in terms of ‘state-of-the-actual’ as opposed to ‘state-of-the-art’
questions – i.e. questions concerning what is actually taking place when a digital

9
technology meets an educational setting and, from a historical perspective, how this
compares to what has taken place in the recent past. These questions fall broadly into
three basic forms, i.e.: What is the use of technology in educational settings actually like?
Why is technology use in educational settings the way it is? What are the consequences
of what happens with technologies in educational settings? As these deceptively simple
questions imply, the critical analysis of technology (non)use approaches educational
technology as a site of ongoing negotiation and, often, intense social conflict and
struggle. Addressing these questions therefore requires a deliberate focus on the problems
and the ‘messy realities’ of education technology use – showing a particular interest
where technologies are not being used, or being used in ways that suppress and
disadvantage. In this sense, a critical approach leads to forms of questioning that are
perhaps more challenging and awkward than is usually found in the educational
technology literature – developing lines of enquiry that are often less forward-looking,
undoubtedly less ‘high tech’ but certainly no less important.

iii) Developing context-rich analyses

A critical approach therefore seeks to develop analyses of educational technology that are
‘context-rich’ rather than context-free. As such the critical study of educational
technology offers a counterbalance to the often abstracted claims surrounding digital
technology and education. As Charles Crook (2008) has argued, current debates over
technology and education are often predicated upon presumed ‘spontaneous
appropriations’ of digital technologies by individual learners, independent of other
commitments to learning through formal educational provision. Many accounts of
educational technology tend, for example, to privilege the immediate context of the
individual learner and technological artefact at the expense of all others, or at best
consider the use of digital technologies with one particular group of learners or in one
particular context. As David Buckingham (2007) has observed, the educational
technology literature abounds with in-depth investigations of ‘model’ education
institutions and classrooms with enthusiastic tutors and well-resourced students basking
in the glow of the ‘Hawthorne effect’ of the attention of researchers. In contrast, the
critical approach attempts to examine the use of technology in educational settings from
the perspectives of all of the various contexts that shape and define educational
technology – from the concerns of government and industry, to the concerns of the
classroom and the home. If the meaning of educational technology is seen to be
inseparable from the conditions under which it is generated and experienced, then the use
of digital technologies within educational settings is best understood as being situated
within all of the social interests, relationships and restrictions that are associated with the
formal and informal provision of education.

In this spirit, the critical study of educational technology can be seen as involving at least
three different levels of description. Of course, the micro-level of the individual tutor and
learner is undeniably important and merits sustained consideration – not least in terms of
the continued importance of immediate ‘local’ contexts in framing learning processes and
practices. In this sense it would be erroneous to perceive technology-based learning as

10
somehow “detached from the spatial condition of common locality” (Thompson 1995,
p.32). Yet these micro-level concerns should be set against what can be termed ‘the
bigger picture’ of educational technology – i.e. the meso-level of the processes and
procedures of educational institutions, and the macro-level of wider cultural, societal,
political and economic values (see Zhao and Frank 2003, Selwyn 2007). Often these
levels of description are not immediately tangible and obvious. Before a technological
artefact is used (or not) by a learner, for example, the said technology will have been
party to a complex of vested ‘other’ interests above and beyond the actions of its initial
designers and producers. These other interests range from marketers and journalists to
(quasi)government agencies, teacher unions and consumer interest groups – all having a
significant but often subtle bearing on the shaping of educational technology, and all
therefore meriting sustained scrutiny and questioning. Only by making sense of all these
levels of description can academic researchers and writers hope to develop a rich and
nuanced understanding of what Frank Webster (2005, p.453) calls ‘the intimate
connectedness’ between ‘wider contexts and conceptualisations’ and the ‘merely
particular’.

iv) Developing understanding and action

The final tenet of the critical approach relates to what is to be done with the results of
academic studies of education and technology. As much of the previous discussion has
implied, the impetus for taking a critical approach towards the study of educational
technology is rooted in the high-minded but well-intentioned aim of making educational
fairer as well as merely better or more ‘effective’. Critical analyses therefore seek to
address the fact that the use of digital technology in educational settings is often not a
wholly inclusive, dialogic or equitable process in which all actors have equal power in
participating, and where all actors can determine what educational technology is or how it
is used. The critical take on educational technology is therefore often driven by a desire
to redress the imbalances of power that reside within most educational uses of
technology. In this sense, the act of critical research and writing strives for what Ernest
House describes as ‘deliberative democratic’ outcomes, where academics “use
procedures that incorporate the views of insiders and outsiders, give voice to the marginal
and excluded, employ reasoned criteria in extended deliberation, and engage in dialogical
interactions with significant audiences and stakeholders in the evaluation” (House 1999,
p.xix).

Thus, instead of indulging in what C. Wright Mills (1959) derided as ‘abstracted

empiricism’, a critical approach seeks to identify, highlight and overcome the many
contradictions and conflicts that surround the use of technology in educational settings.
The academic study of educational technology is therefore pursued with an over-arching
intention of developing culturally plausible suggestions as to how current inequalities and
hegemonies may be countered, and how digital technology use in educational settings
may be reshaped along fairer and more equitable lines. This suggests a tradition of
educational technology scholarship that builds upon Ann Oakley’s (2000) notion of
social science research that is democratic, interventionist and emancipatory. In this spirit,

11
the academic study of educational technology can be used to identify spaces where
opportunities exist to resist, disrupt and alter the technology-based reproduction of the
‘power differential that runs through capitalist society’ (Kirkpatrick 2004, p.10).
Attempts can be made, for example, to detail and test the opportunities available to
educators, learners and other interested parties to take advantage of the inherently
political processes of technology production and use in educational settings. As Wiebe
Bijker (1995) reasons, only by exploring and exposing the social roots of technology can
academics hope to make the technological amenable to democratic interpretation and
intervention. In this sense, a critical approach to the study of educational technology
attempts to produce analyses that highlight the practices, processes and liminal spaces in
educational settings where technology use can be challenged and reconfigured along
more equitable and empowering lines.

Conclusion

This paper has attempted to outline briefly the advantages of applying a critical social
scientific approach to the study of educational technology. On one hand, the paper has
shown how a critical approach allows a number of ‘big questions’ to be asked about
technology and education – not least how individual learning technologies fit into wider
socio-technical systems and networks, as well as what connections and linkages exist
between educational technology and macro-level concerns of globalisation, the
knowledge economy and late modernity. In contrast to these grand concerns, the paper
has also shown how a critical approach offers a direct ‘way in’ to unpacking the micro-
level social processes that underpin the use of digital technologies in educational settings.
From both these perspectives, the principal advantage of a critical approach should be
seen as the ability to develop a more socially grounded understanding of the ‘messy’
realities of educational technology ‘as it happens’. In approaching education and
technology as a site of intense social conflict, a critical approach therefore allows
educational technologists to move beyond asking whether or not a particular technology
‘works’ in a technical or pedagogic sense. Instead, a critical approach allows researchers
and writers to address questions of how digital technologies (re)produce social relations
and in whose interests they serve (see Apple 2004).

In extolling the virtues of a critical stance on education and technology this paper’s
intention has not been to indulge in academic one-upmanship or convey an arrogant
belief that one particular intellectual approach is more privileged and correct than any
other. Indeed, the paper has not set out to contend that a critical approach is somehow
superior to existing modes of inquiry and analysis. Rather, it should be concluded that a
critical approach offers an important additional dimension to the study of educational
technology – providing an often challenging but ultimately complementary perspective to
the learning-centred studies that have dominated the field over the past twenty-five years
or so. Of course, it would be unreasonable to expect all writers and researchers working
in the academic field of educational technology to perform an immediate volte-face in
their thinking. Yet showing an increased awareness of the critical aspects of technology-

12
based education would certainly go some way towards lessening the disparity between
the ‘rhetoric’ of educational technology scholarship and the ‘reality’ of educational
technology practice. In this spirit readers are urged to look beyond the established
educational technology literature and seek out recent writing and research by the likes of
Torin Monahan, Andrew Hope, Nicola Johnson and other young scholars who are
currently at the forefront of engaging in critical studies of education, technology and
society. While usually not published in journals such as JCAL, these authors provide
exemplary critical accounts of education and technology that can inform and inspire the
specialist study of educational technology. Taking these examples as a starting point, it
would be rewarding for everyone concerned to see the increased presence of critical
discussion and debate throughout JCAL’s next twenty-five years.

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