{"id":3973,"date":"2022-06-11T15:49:57","date_gmt":"2022-06-11T22:49:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/chendricks\/?p=3973"},"modified":"2022-06-11T15:49:57","modified_gmt":"2022-06-11T22:49:57","slug":"entangling-pedagogy-technology-edtechethics-part-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/chendricks\/2022\/06\/11\/entangling-pedagogy-technology-edtechethics-part-4\/","title":{"rendered":"Entangling Pedagogy and Technology (EdTechEthics Part 4)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Tree<\/a>

Tree roots image<\/a> from Pixabay.com, used under <\/a>the Pixabay license.<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

I’m continuing a series of blog posts on ethics and educational technology<\/a>, this time with a discussion of a recent open access paper by Tim Fawns called “An Entangled Pedagogy: Looking Beyond the Pedagogy\u2014Technology Dichotomy.”<\/a><\/p>\n

This paper doesn’t provide a framework for thinking about ethical considerations in educational technology, but rather talks about the importance of considering how technology and pedagogy are entangled with each other, and also with broader contexts and values, including ethical ones. It helps me think further about how ethics and other values are already embedded in educational technology decisions and uses, and also adds complexity to how I’ve been thinking about this topic–after reading and reflecting on this article I am thinking even more about how ethical evaluation of ed tech tools may differ across different types of uses, contexts, and pedagogical purposes.<\/p>\n

I’m going to use this post to take some notes for myself on points from the article I am finding particularly generative at the moment, and then do some reflections on implications for thinking about ethical principles or a framework for an ethical approach to educational technology at a post-secondary institution.<\/p>\n

Also, I’m excited that there is a workshop about entangled pedagogy, led by Tim Fawns and Maha Bali<\/a>, as part of MYFest 2022<\/a>. I’m really looking forward to digging into these ideas further then!<\/p>\n

Caveat: this is an incredibly rich article with some complexity that I’m still not sure I fully understand. And I am only going to be able to do a rough summary of many of the author’s very insightful arguments. If anyone reads things differently, or thinks something else is more prominent in the article than I’m indicating here, I’m happy to discuss further in comments!<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Some notes on the article<\/h2>\n

Entangling pedagogy and technology<\/h3>\n

Fawns begins by noting that it is fairly common for educators and educational technologists to speak of the importance of pedagogy driving choices and use of technology, in order to avoid the idea that the technology should drive pedagogical goals and methods. He argues, though, that things are more complicated than that, that the two are much more entangled with each other, and with other things as well.<\/p>\n

Fawns notes that a pedagogy first approach could lead one to consider pedagogical methods in a standalone, decontextualized fashion, disconnected from the purposes and contexts in which they are used, as well as the technology involved in using them. Fawns points to the common experience during emergency remote teaching in the Covid-19 pandemic in which educators often took whatever technology was available and used it in ways to imitate the in-person teaching methods they had used previously. According to Fawns, this is an example of how “choices about technology, tasks, social configurations and resources . . . [can be] restricted by what is possible within an already-constrained conception of teaching.” (Note, this article is online only at this time, and even the PDF does not have page numbers, so I am not including page numbers for quotes.)<\/p>\n

Of course, in the early days of the pandemic folks had to change very quickly with little notice, and doing whatever one could in the time one had makes complete sense! Still, it bears considering that when one has the time and supports to design and teach an online course carefully, trying to replicate teaching methods from the in-person experience may miss some opportunities to do different things that a certain kind of technology may allow, and may not support approaches that work better for an online environment than an in-person one.<\/p>\n

Instead of considering either technology or pedagogy as distinct and decontextualized elements, Fawns argues that it makes more sense to focus on their relationships with each other: “Taking neither individual teachers nor technology, as the unit of analysis, but a holistic view of entangled elements, provides a stronger basis for taking complexity into account (Edwards 2010<\/a>; Fenwick 2015<\/a>).”<\/p>\n

Illusion and reality: Entangled pedagogy<\/h2>\n

Both pedagogical methods and technology, though, are also entangled with broader contexts–for example, with the people, organizations, systems, and practices in which they are embedded, as well as the purposes and values that shape and are shaped by those contexts. Not recognizing this complexity can lead to what Fawns calls two illusory views:<\/p>\n

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  1. Technology drives pedagogy with little to no agency on the part of individual educators, and little reference to differences based on contexts.\n