Platform Governance and Education Policy: Power and Politics in Emerging Edtech Ecologies

Abstract

This article develops a framework for understanding and analyzing the intermediary work of platform technologies, and their owners, as an emerging form of platform governance in educational systems. Our investigation is guided by two questions: (a) How do platform technologies shape policy by brokering relations among commercial, technical, and educational actors? And (b) how might these relations contribute to, or compromise, educational equity as they are folded into existing governance regimes? We address these questions by bringing together two critical orientations—critical policy analysis and critical platform studies—to map the power and politics of platformization in and across education systems.

Speculative Capture: Literacy after Platformization

“…With others, we would argue that this "capture" functions as a distinct mode of power that Deleuze (1992) calls control (cf. Holloway & Lewis, 2022;Nichols & Dixon-Román, 2024). Where disciplinary power, in Foucault's (1995) terms, operates through perceived ongoing surveillance in enclosures (i.e.…”

The Next Chapter of Critical Educational Policy Research: Research Informing Policy Design

“…Of note is that their intended effect went beyond individuals with disabilities; today, these cuts benefit everyone, including people pushing strollers, kids riding their bikes, the elderly using walkers, and those rolling a bag. Jaquette and Salazar (2024) and Nichols and Dixon-Román (2024) suggest the need for this design principle in the design of education technology platforms and tools. Both papers describe how these platforms and tools prioritized the needs of the technology (e.g., interoperability and scale without regard for more equitable access) above all other considerations, hence becoming de-facto policy actors.…”

“…These harms are perpetuated, in part, by such race-evasive discourse. Jaquette and Salazar's (2024) and Nichols and Dixon-Román's (2024) analyses find that race-evasive language like "access" and "quality" is used to champion education platforms and tools, and to rationalize the implementation of technologies that replicate the status quo. Echoing these observations, Dhaliwal et al (2024), Zabala-Eisshofer and colleagues (2024), and Vue et al ( 2024) find similar race-evasive discourse used to advocate for corporal punishment (CP), school resource officers (SRO), and CRT bans include key terms like "rational," "safety," "love," "order," "discipline," "protection," and "logical."…”

“…Profit too often comes first, and profit frequently coincides with the interests of the most powerful. Of critical concern to education policy, Nichols and Dixon-Román (2024) highlight the complex ecologies that exist within platforms and the ways these nuances can affect public policy and our schooling process. Researchers, users, and stakeholders must not accept education technology products and platforms at face value but rather interrogate them to understand implications and constraints in place that pri-oritize the tools' needs over-serving and centering the most vulnerable populations.…”

Guest editorial: Artificial intelligence and composing just education futures

“…Concurrent with the accelerations of creative processes through generative AI are perils such as invisiblized and exploitative labour (Bartholomew, 2023; Roberts, 2014; Stewart and Uanhoro, 2023), significant environmental and economic impacts associated with AI infrastructure (Crawford and Jolar, 2018), and disinformation, surveillance, and the amplification at scale of human biases (Buolamwini, 2023; Noble, 2018). In educational settings, we further observe an increasing normalization of student surveillance (LeBlanc et al , 2023; Maughan et al , 2022) encoded into the basic functioning of existing systems, the dominance of commercial EdTech hype around personalized learning, data mining, and learning analytics (Williamson and Eynon, 2020), and the rise of digital platform governance of education systems (Gulson and Witzenberger, 2022; Nichols and Dixon-Román, 2024). These work in tandem with the growing presence of automated writing tutor and assessment systems that position technology as a surefire solution to educational issues, thereby drawing attention away from the cultural and social practices that shape learning (Robinson, 2023; Stornaiuolo et al , 2024).…”