Thursday 11 October 2012

The New Job of Educational Cybernetics

I've been arguing for a long time now that the domain within which I worked, Educational Technology, was moribund, and that many of the individuals who we regularly interacted with professionally (from project colleagues to project funders) would themselves be out of work quite soon.

But the challenge I wish to concentrate on is not the death of educational technology. It is the peril that education itself is in. The work which has changed my life over the last 10 years has focused on an immensely complex issue of how technology has affected the organisation of education. The means by which we, in our Institute for Educational Cybernetics, have addressed the problem have allowed us to cut through the morass of category-bound confusion and false divisions that dominate the education discourse. In short, a cybernetic approach matters.

But of all the issues we have dealt with, it is the relationship between education, technology and economy which is the most important. The regulators of society are people. Education equips them to perform their regulatory function. States regulate (or have regulated) education for this purpose. Increasingly, technologies afford the means of providing education, and what technology does need not be regulated in this way. Increasingly, the marketisation of education similarly leads it towards some kind of deregulation. Government wants to loosen the ties of regulation of education to the level of coordinating the management and allocation of resources between students and institutions (and enforcing a hike in tax rates on students in the future). Increasingly, education finds itself sitting awkwardly within a strangely regulated internal market, which at the same time attempts to open itself to the outside world, but with increasing restrictions relating to immigration and social regulation. It's all a bit crazy - so many conflicting levels. Seeing things clearly must be a priority. How do the regulators work? What are humans that they can regulate a society? What is a society that it is regulated by humans? What is education that it produces in humans this capacity? What is knowledge in its function as an organising principle for education? What is the relationship between education and civilisation?

Educational Cybernetics can help us to do this. But if the resource-base for Educational Cybernetics (Educational Technology) has dried-up, where else does it go? This is my personal challenge. But I passionately believe it is also the challenge for the sector and our society.

6 comments:

dkernohan said...

Firstly, my sympathies.

Secondly, maybe a little hope. As you know I plunged in to this world of "EdTech" rather late - and it's been my observation that most of the people writing about EdTech are no longer writing about EdTech at all. The interesting ones are writing about culture, society and life. EdTech is just an increasingly bare frame to hang more interesting ideas on. The interesting folks add insight, the duller ones platitudes and clunking rhetoric but the framework is no longer important.

With your brain and your cross-disciplinary magpie-ism you could find a home in any academic discipline. Of that I am sure.

Mark Johnson said...

Thanks David.

You're absolutely right. But culture, society and life are also potentially very confused domains. We need precision and clarity! Only with that can we even begin to imagine a way out of the mess we are all in...

Oleg said...

Ironic after our discussion yesterday!

Beatriz Armendariz said...

As you all said over here is almost correct that means. all things have different meaning. and they all goes side by side.

Beatriz Armendariz said...

these all things are absolutely right.such that they seems to be like that everything goes side by side.

Beatriz Armendariz said...

EdTech is just an increasingly bare frame to hang more interesting ideas on. The interesting folks add insight, the duller ones platitudes and clunking rhetoric but the framework is no longer important.