Three features of this statement are typical of national school education ICT
policies. First, there is an assumption that the technological innovation—presented
as an unfolding of successive cycles of technological development—takes place at
some location spatially and temporally outside of the site of use. It belongs to some
other place and time, and teachers and students are persuaded to take it up. Second,
and consistent with the determinism identified by Jordan ( 2011 ), it is the technology
that has the agency—it will reshape how people do things. The subtext (sometimes
explicit) of this discourse is that the development of new skills and greater effec-
tiveness in schools is an imperative, linked to both educational and economic
outcomes that are interrelated, with education servicing a changing economy. Third,
schools—and, by implication, teachers—do not comprehend the opportunities that
new technologies bring or the associated imperatives.
As demonstrated by Jordan ( 2011 ), these assumptions are not new. New tech-
nologies are usually positioned by government policies as a catalyst of educational
change and innovation—good medicine for an ailing school education sector that
must serve the needs of the economy. Across the last several decades of policies
surrounding new technologies in schools, the most predominant characterisation of
the relationship between schools and‘new technology’is that technology is an alien
thing, a thing that needs to be‘introduced’via some artificial means. The tech-
noschool hybrid has been storied as something surgically created—an implant that
is inserted or an appendage that is sutured on, in the most part under duress, needing
persuasion, inducement and preparations by others (preparation of technologies, of
ways of operating, and of teachers). Within this discourse, teachers are positioned
as lacking knowledge, skills and requisite attitudes for the correct and effective
implementation of new technologies. Teachers are not innovators; they feature as
reluctant and ill-prepared receivers of innovation. Jordan ( 2011 , p. 247)—pointing
out the contrast found in such policy documents between how students are repre-
sented (“as tech-savvy, and as expectant of using ICT in their learning”) and how
teachers are represented (“as lagging behind”)—provides a critique of these
assumptions as both inaccurate and as producingflawed policy in terms of guiding
future directions.
These discursive politics can also be found in common approaches to educa-
tional technology research.
50.3 Approaches to Educational Technology Research
Education research is a multidisciplinary undertaking that encompasses a multitude
of subfields, and is influenced by and employs diverse approaches to inquiry. Biesta
( 2015 ) provides a useful heuristic for thinking about trends in education research,
arguing that two distinct traditions have emerged that differ in terms of their
ontological assumptions and axiological intent: that is, two traditions in research
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