Underdetermination, Assemblage Studies and Educational Technology: Rethinking Causality and Re-Energising Politics

Abstract

This article examines underdetermination as a key theoretical assumption in an emerging body of educational research. Underdetermination is described as a broad philosophical position that assumes that social, scientific and technological phenomena cannot be reduced to linear relationships between antecedents and consequences, for instance through the canonical progression from scientific hypotheses to experimentation and then empirical truths. Rather, phenomena are underdetermined by constellations of social and material influences that make the choice of univocal explanations problematic. The principle of underdetermination is implicit in a recent strand of educational research that critiques orthodox interpretations of scientific practices, innovation processes and policy dynamics, recasting them as social, material and political “assemblages”. In the article, I analyse the philosophical and epistemological tenets of underdetermination, in order to clarify its nature as a “first principle” in this emerging body of research. By doing so, the article brings into view a broader theoretical debate that has great bearing on future research efforts. The article critically considers the continued theoretical relevance of underdetermination, whilst acknowledging critical arguments mounted against it, namely ontological relativism and political weakness. Some supplementing theoretical ideas are explored in the conclusion.

Assembling New Toolboxes of Methods and Theories for Innovative Critical Research on Educational Technology

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The Digital Culture Of The Academy And The Limits Of Technology

“…Comparable arguments have been made by other scholars exploring the nature of higher education institutions as they function within a complex network of relationships between entities and actors in modern societies (Guthrie, 2019;Mohammid & Sinanan, 2020;Perrotta, 2021). While Guthrie (2019) reiterates the linkage between technology use in higher education and its role in shaping and accelerating knowledge production by highlighting challenges related to the 4th Industrial Revolution, a study by Mohammid & Sinanan (2020) draw attention to the social and cultural embeddedness in digital media use in higher education, as technology use in this context are appropriated and reappropriated in multiple ways by human agents.…”

Uso de estrategias apoyadas en TIC y virtualidad: una oportunidad para explorar las posibilidades del entorno digital

“…La complejidad del fenómeno de la enseñanza necesita marcos conceptuales alternativos que puedan explicar mejor el fenómeno, por ejemplo, la teoría rizomática (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). Esta teoría ofrece diferentes herramientas que apoyan un pensamiento más complejo y no lineal sobre prácticas pedagógicas, una de ellas el concepto de «assamblage» (Perrotta, 2021). Se refiere a un grupo de elementos materiales e inmateriales que son heterogéneos y se juntan de diferentes maneras y tiempos para producir una actividad en particular.…”