that new technologies are not substantively different to not-so-new technologies.
Teaching has always been a mediated practice that connects all manner of tech-
nology—inscribing devices, techniques and routines, voice and gesture, furniture
and architecture. The closer we look at so-called new technologies, the more
meaningless conceptual boundaries between new and more traditional technologies
become, and the term technology itself starts to fade away. Philosophically
speaking, this understanding poses a challenge to treating educational technology as
a special domain within teacher education programmes. Yet the history of teacher
education (and of previously institutionalised tools and techniques) is present in the
logics and structures of such programmes (particular materials, tools and techniques
are privileged over others and marked for deliberate reproduction), and the sym-
bolic force of popular representations of‘new technologies’cannot be ignored
within this arrangement. Equally, the special status ascribed to new technologies in
government education policies and in popular discourse does sociomaterial work
that is part of teaching practice assemblages, even when those assemblages involves
critiques of and resistance to dominant positionings.
50.6 Conclusion
In this chapter, I have outlined a number of distinctions that are useful for framing a
critique of educational technology policy and of common approaches to educational
technology research, and for positing more generative approaches to understanding
technology, teaching and innovation, including considerations for teacher education
practices.
In the case of Australia, we see a high level of uptake of new technologies in
schools and in the wider community. Studies that look very closely at the tech-
nology practices of teachers and students identify a proliferation of everyday
innovation, yet government policies evidence old policy discourses that fail to
acknowledge the everydayness of innovation, and that suggest views of teachers as
ill-prepared and unwilling to engage with new technologies. Most existing edu-
cational technology research reflects this positioning of teachers, together with an
externalised conception of innovation. Practice theories suggest ways of under-
standing the complexity of technology usage, where technology is indeterminate,
emergent, and dynamically realised through practice and in relation with a mesh of
both traditional and new arrangements. Sympathetic research methodologies
involve both sophisticated ontological work and close-up analysis of empirical data,
which together produce new ways of understanding and new ways forward for
supporting teachers in their classroom work.
In research undertakings, the termtechnologyshould never be taken for granted
because, more often than not, itis. In policy documents, in curriculum frameworks,
in research literature, and in everyday professional talk, terms liketechnology,
technology integrationandeducational technologyare used without interrogation.
If these terms make their way into research conversations, research instruments and
750 J. Lynch