Digital Agency: Empowering Equity in and through Education

Abstract

This theoretical paper is concerned with conceptualising a major issue that faces all those concerned with and charged with influencing the future of equity in education-the need for digital agency (DA). The paper offers a rationale for this concern, highlights the importance of the concept and its practices, presents the challenges it brings, some current ways in which practices are tackling these challenges, and considers the theoretical foundation for how it might be addressed further in the future. The paper defines DA, and its three component parts-digital competence, digital confidence, and digital accountability. The paper argues that DA is a fundamental requirement for and through education, that it affects all citizens in a global society, and should be enabled through their ongoing and developing digital practices. The paper concludes with recommendations for different educational groups-including policy makers, practitioners, developers, and researchers.

Debates sobre Tecnología y Educación: Caminos contemporáneos y conversaciones pendientes

“…Una competencia basada no solo en el acceso y la utilización optimizada de los datos (en la línea del quantified self del que viene hablándose casi desde el principio de los tiempos de las LA (Swan, 2013y Whitson, 2013, sino también de una aproximación personal y socialmente sostenible (no en vano empezamos a poner cada vez más énfasis en los enfoques de slow media y tech (Patrignani y Whitehouse, 2018;Rauch, 2018). Una competencia que despeje esa sensación de oscuridad y turbidez que rodea a la utilización de herramientas automáticas que traten los datos que producimos en las herramientas telemáticas y nos ayuden -sí, a las personas que aprendemos-a potenciar nuestras posibilidades de toma de decisiones autónoma y enriquecida.…”

Sustaining Digital Technology Use in Professional Communities

“…An example study which illustrates key points about sustainability of digital technology practices, conducted in the UK and Malaysia (Passey and Lee 2018), gathered qualitative data about individual approaches to sustaining uses of digital technologies for learning, teaching, and training. Interviewed participants had used technologies in their careers for learning, teaching, and training purposes for many years.…”

“…A proposed model for future development of sustained effective and innovative uses of technologies is offered in Fig. 1 (from Passey and Lee 2018). Features of this model relate to factors for successful professional development identified earlier by Joyce and Showers (2002): persistence; acknowledgement of the transfer problem; teaching new behaviors; understanding the importance of the underlying theory; proactive and productive use of peers; and flexibility.…”

“…1 Proposed model for future development of sustained effective uses of technologies. (Source: Passey and Lee 2018) evidence indicates that institutions should focus on developing personal characteristics concerned with enquiry and inquisitiveness, highlighting outcome and impact support. This suggests moving away from technical support that focuses on affordances alone, to a focus on outcome and impact support.…”

“…However, evidence argues for a focus of user interface support to be on developing creative and innovative personal characteristics that can be applied to technologies. There is clearly a need for institutions and individuals to consider the growing importance of developing digital agency at a personal level (Passey et al 2018).…”