6. TOWARD A SOCIOLOGY OF, EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY

Stephen T. Kerr

UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

6.1 INTRODUCTION

Common images of technology, including educational technology, highlight its rational, ordered, and controlled aspects. These are the qualities that many observers see as its advantages, the qualities that encouraged the United States to construct ingenious railway systems in the last century, to develop a national network of telegraph and telephone communication, and later to blanket the nation with television signals. In the American mind, technology seems to be linked with notions of efficiency and progress; it is a distinguishing and preeminent value, a characteristic of the way Americans perceive the world in general, and the possible avenues for resolving social problems in particular (Boorstin, 1973; Segal, 1985).

Education is one of those arenas in which Americans have long assumed that technological solutions might bring increased efficiency, order, and productivity. Our current interest in computers and multimedia was preceded by a century of experimentation with precisely articulated techniques for organizing school practice, carefully specific approaches to the design of school buildings (down to the furniture they would contain), and an abiding enthusiasm for systematic methods of presenting textual and visual materials (Saettler, 1968; Godfrey, 1965).

There was a kind of mechanistic enthusiasm about many of these efforts. If we could just find the right approach, the thinking seemed to go, we could address the problems of schooling and improve education immensely. The world of the student, the classroom, the school, was, in this interpretation, a machine (perhaps a computer) needing only the right program to run smoothly.

But technology frequently has effects in areas other than those intended by its creators. Railroads were not merely a better way to move goods across the country; they also brought standard time and a leveling of regional and cultural differences. Telephones allowed workers in different

locations to speak with each other, but they also changed the ways workplaces were organized and the image of what office work was. Television altered the political culture of the country in ways we still struggle to comprehend. Those who predicted the social effects that might flow from these new technologies typically either missed entirely or foresaw inaccurately what their impact might be.

Similarly with schools and education, the focus of researchers interested in educational technology has usually been on what is perceived to be the outcome of these approaches on what is thought of as their principal target: learning by pupils. Occasionally, other topics related to the way technology is perceived and used have been studied. Attitudes and opinions by teachers and principals about the use of computers are an example. Generally, however, there have been few attempts to define a "sociology of educational technology" (exceptions: Kerr & Taylor, 1985; Hlynka & Belland, 199 1). In their 1992 review, Scott, Cole, and Engel also went beyond traditional images to focus on what they called a "cultural constructivist perspective." The task here, then, has these parts: to say what ought to be included under such a rubric, to review the relatively small number of works from within the field that touch on these issues, and the larger number of works from related fields or on related topics that may be productive in helping us think about a sociology of educational technology; and, finally, to consider future directions for work in this field.

6. 1. 1 What to Include?

To decide what we should consider under the suggested heading of a "sociology of educational technology," we need to think about two sets of issues: those that are important to sociologists, and those that are important to educators 'and to educational technologists. Sociology is concerned with many things, but if there is a primary assertion, it is that we cannot adequately explain social phenomena if we look only at individuals. Rather, we must examine how people interact in group settings, and how those settings shape and constrain individual action.

Defining what is central to educators (including educational technologists) is also difficult, but central is probably (to borrow a sociological term) cultural reproduction the passing on to the next generation of values, skills, and knowledge that are judged to be critical, and the improvement of the general condition of society. Three aspects of this vision of education are important here: (1) direct relationships among educators, students, administrators, parents, community members, and others who define what education is to be ("what happens in schools and classrooms"); (2) attempts to deal with perceived social problems and inequities, and thus provide a better life for the next generation ("what happens after they finish"); and (3) efforts to reshape the educational system itself, so that it carries out its work in new ways and thus contributes to social improvement.

The questions about educational technology's social effects that will be considered here, then, are principally those relating (or potentially relating) to what sociologists call collectivities: groups of individuals (teachers, students, administrators, parents), organizations, and social movements.

6.1.1.1. Sociology of Organizations. If our primary interest is in how educational technology affects the ways that people work together in schools, then what key topics ought we to consider? Certainly a prime focus must be organizations, the ways that schools are structured so as to carry out their work. It is important to note that we can use the term organization to refer to more than the administration of schools or universities. It can also refer to the organization of classrooms, of interactions among students or among teachers, of the ways individuals seek to shape their work environment to accomplish particular ends, and so forth.

Organizational sociology is a well-established field, and there have been some studies on educational organizations. Subparts of this field include the functioning of schools as bureaucracies; the ways in which new organizational forms are born, live, and die; the expectations of actors within the school setting of themselves and of each other (in sociological terms, the roles they play); and the sources of power and control that support various organizational forms.

6.1.1.2. Sociology of Groups and Classes. A second focus of our review here will regard the sociology of groups, including principally groups of ascription (that one is either born into or to which one is assumed to belong by virtue of one's position), but also those of affiliation (groups that one voluntarily joins, or comes to be connected with via one's efforts or work). Important here are the ways that education deals with such groups as those based on gender, class, and race, and how educational technology interacts with those groupings. While this topic has not been central in studies of educational technology, the review here will seek to suggest its importance and the value of further efforts to study it.

6.1.1.3. Sociology of Social Movements. Finally, we will need to consider the sociology of social movements and social change. Social institutions change under certain circumstances, and education is currently in a period where large changes are being suggested from a variety of quarters. Educational technology is often perceived as a harbinger or facilitator of educational change, and so it makes sense for us to examine the sociological literature on these questions and thus try to determine where and how such changes take place, what their relationships are to other shifts in the society, economy, or polity, etc.

Another aspect of education as a social movement, and of educational technology's place there, is what we might call the role of ideology. By ideology here is meant not an explicit, comprehensive, and enforced code of beliefs and practices to which all members of a group are held but rather a set of implicit, often vague, but widely shared set of expectations and assumptions about the social order. Essential here are such issues as the values that technology carries with it, its presumed contribution to the common good, and how it is perceived to interact with individuals' plans and goals.

6.1.1.4. Questions of Sociological Method. As a part of considering these questions, we will also examine briefly some questions of sociological method. Many sociological studies in education are conducted via surveys or questionnaires, instruments that were originally designed as sociological research tools. Inasmuch as sociologists have accumulated considerable experience in working with these methods, we need to note both the advantages and the problems of using such methods. Given especially the popularity of opinion surveys in education, it will be especially important to review the problem of attitudes vs. actions ("what people say vs. what they do").

A further question of interest for educational technologists has to do with the "stance" or position of the researcher. Most of the studies of attitudes and opinions that have been done in educational technology assume that the researcher stands in a neutral position, "outside the fray." Some examples from sociological research using the ethnomethodological paradigm are introduced, and their possible significance for further work on educational technology are considered.

The conclusion seeks to bring the discussion back specifically to the field of educational technology by asking how the effects surveyed in the preceding sections might play out in real school situations. How might educational technology affect the organization of classes, schools, and education as a social institution? How might the fates of particular groups (women, minorities) intersect with the ways educational technology is or is not used within schools? And finally, how might the prospects for long-term change in education as a social institution be altered by educational technology.