The “digital subjects” of twenty-first-century education: On datafication, educational technology and subject formation

Abstract

How are young people constituted as subjects in schools today, as digital technology becomes increasingly widespread? Buzz words for twenty-first-century education include “creativity”, “critique”, “collaboration”, “communication”, or sets of core skills that are often linked to the now classic flexible, entrepreneurial selves of neoliberal imaginaries (Miller & Rose, 2008; Sennett, 1998). This chapter overviews recent critical scholarship on education and technology in the twenty-first-century, highlighting three aspects: practices, datafication and subject formation. It then explores subjectivation in more detail, looking closely at one worked example to map the kinds of future students imagined in current policy (in Germany and across Europe). Mainstream policies for education in a digital world foreground three digital subject figures: The User, the Critic, and the Maker. Each of these, in some ways, re-establishes dominant power relations and relations of inequality in today’s schools. On the margins of the policy discourse are, however, further subject figures which interrupt dominant imaginaries: The Expert, the Ecosoph, and the Social Designer. The chapter suggests that these marginal subject figures illustrate diffraction patterns in today’s world in which we can think otherwise about what constitutes a livable, legitimate life.

Digital transformation in education: navigating its impact amidst war

“…Features of the impact of the digital age on education were considered in the work of Macgilchrist (2018). For the author, the issue of individual human existence has always been at the center of humanitarian problems; however, the digital society has increased the importance of person-oriented education and contributed to the creation of a new educational reality, characterized by such trends as the involvement of new subjects in the learning process.…”

“…− global challenges of the digital revolution and their impact on changing the content and forms of educational activities through the introduction of digital technologies; − changes in students' social-communicative, cognitive and personal psychological features under the influence of the digital environment; − changing the functions of the teacher in the digital information and educational space, acquiring new roles; − changing the content, forms and methods of teacher training in the digital era, the emergence of new educational and information and communication practices in the system of teacher education; − updating the management of teacher education in light of digital transformation; − identifying the advantages and disadvantages of the global digitalization of the education system, assessing the risks of digitalization and identifying possible ways to prevent them (Siafriadin, 2021;Sharma, 2017;Purwantiningsih, 2019;Patel et al, 2000;Nikolic et al, 2020;Misra, 2019;Macgilchrist, 2018;Klasnja-Milicevic, 2021;Ghosn-Chelala, 2018;Fanreza, 2018;Bates, 2019;Azwandi et al, 2019) etc. The purpose of the academic paper was implemented in the following aspects: − to identify the major directions of digital transformation of pedagogical education in Ukraine and abroad; − to indicate the most promising areas of research on digital transformation in pedagogical education.…”

Current Issues of Teacher Education in the Era of Digital Transformation: A Theoretical Review

“…В чем состоит специфика влияния цифровой эпохи применительно к сфере образования? Во все времена вопрос индивидуального человеческого («личностного») бытия находился в фокусе гуманитарной проблематики, однако именно цифровое общество обострило вопрос о значимости личностно-ориентированного образования, способствовало созданию новой образовательной реальности, для которой характерны такие тенденции, как: вовлечение новых субъектов в учебный процесс (Macgilchrist, 2018); обновление форм управления образовательной деятельностью (Terziev, Pushova, Dimitrovski et al, 2020); стремление педагогов и обучающихся к самоорганизации и автономным формам работы; высокий уровень индивидуализации образования и реализация персонализированных моделей обучения (Klašnja-Milicevic, Ivanovic, 2021); опора на актуализацию субъектно-личностных ресурсов индивида в условиях адаптивного обучения (Ghosn-Chelala, 2018).…”

Hochschulbildung und Digitalisierung – Entwicklungslinien und Trends für die 2020er-Jahre

“…Tatsächlich sind sie das aber keineswegs. Entgegen der vielfach verbreiteten Vorstellung, dass Daten lediglich die Realität abbilden, lässt sich mit Verweis auf die Critical Data Studies (Macgilchrist 2018) ein Verständnis entgegenhalten, wonach Daten niemals neutral sind, sondern in ihnen immer schon bestimmte Wertvorstellungen eingeschrieben sind. Welche das sind -wie beispielsweise im Zusammenhang mit Learning Analytics -, ist eine dringend zu diskutierende grundlegende Fragestellung.…”