Chapter 3 Ed Tech as an Undiscipline

The Ed Tech Suitcase

Consider packing a suitcase for a trip. It will contain many different items—clothes, toiletries, books, electrical items, maybe food and drink or gifts. Some of these items bear a relation to others, for example types of clothes, and others are seemingly unrelated, for example a hair dryer. Each brings its own function, which has a separate existence and relates to other items outside the case, but within the case they form a new category, that of “items I need for my trip.” In this sense, the suitcase resembles the ed tech field, or at least a gathering of ed tech individuals, for example at a conference.

If you attend a chemistry conference and have lunch with strangers, then it is highly likely that nearly all of them will have chemistry doctorates. This is not the case at an ed tech conference, where the lunch table might have people with expertise in computer science, philosophy, psychology, art, history, or engineering. This diversity is a strength of the field, although it brings with it issues of the lack of a shared knowledge base, as set out above. The contents of the individual suitcases representing the chemistry conference will have many similarities, but the ed tech suitcases will contain many different items. From this perspective, then, the aim is not to make the items of the suitcases standard but to find means by which they meet the overall aim of usefulness for each individual and are not random items not needed. This suggests a different way of approaching ed tech beyond making it a discipline.

Techniques for developing commonality among individuals can include running primers for people new to ed tech, explicitly bringing multidisciplinary perspectives to bear on tech issues, having common problems to address, crowd-sourcing principles, and so on. This is akin to making the suitcase items individual while also making their combined contents mutually useful. The approach is to reach some form of consensus, but that consensus itself is fluid and changeable, varying over time and location, just as the contents of the suitcase will vary depending on specific trips. This perspective on ed tech allows it to remain more fluid and malleable than a discipline.

Another view of the suitcase metaphor is not as the container for the field but as the case for the individual ed tech practitioner, who will bring items for the case that are unique to them representing their background, and over time the case itself will become customized. Just as people add stickers to their cases recording their trips, so too the case becomes a record of the journey itself. There is a German metaphor for a case, a Reisebegleiter, which translates as “travelling companion” but also carries connotations of something that goes with you through life. This creates an interplay between temporary and longer-term travel. Deepwell (2020) explores this interplay by referring to an artwork that she developed called the Travelling Monument Kit. This was a suitcase that contained representations of monuments, such as miniature Eiffel Tower models. The artwork explores “the relationship between travelling and permanence. Travelling is all about leaving things behind, discovering new ones and changing perspectives. . . . [I]t’s about change. Monuments are normally fixed in place and time, permanent markers of things to be remembered.” The Travelling Monument Kit is a suitcase that reverses this notion and contains permanent objects or monuments of travel. It “explores how we can create lasting meaning amidst change. . . . It’s about creating something solid and strong, a connection, to bring things into perspective.”

For the individual ed tech practitioner, the suitcase becomes something akin to the Travelling Monument Kit across their career. The “monuments” include original disciplinary knowledge, and as they progress to unknown areas in ed tech they seek to make these connections and gather more “monuments.” They might be technologies, conceptual frameworks, methodologies, or connections with other individuals, events, or projects. This perspective emphasizes two aspects that ed tech should seek to preserve and cherish. The first is that it recognizes previous experience as valid in this context; the second is that it is unique and unpredictable. Everyone’s kit will be different, and it is by developing that kit that the person brings understanding to an often new and changing area. Again, such a perspective might suggest ways of thinking about and facilitating this in ed tech. We can provide the equivalent of travel guides to help navigate these travels, without prescribing the actual journey, and portfolio accreditation such as the Association for Learning Technology’s certified membership process, which operates on a portfolio allowing recognition of different experiences.

Art History and National Identity

The second analogy in considering ed tech as an undiscipline is to reflect on notions of collective identity, in this case how art relates to national identity, itself a nebulous concept like that of belonging to a discipline. Art history often has a complex relationship with notions of nationality, heritage, politics, and history. This relationship varies across nations, time periods, and forms of art, and in this section, I will focus on the Welsh context. Hewison (1987) was one of the first critics to question the generally accepted heritage approach that often focused on preserving country houses, stately homes, and national monuments. In The Heritage Industry, he argued that museums were guilty of creating a sanitized, detached version of the past, divorced from much of its reality, controversy, and connection to modern living, which stifled the capacity for creative change. Writing of English heritage, Hewison made the strong claim that, “individually, museums are fine institutions, dedicated to the high values of preservation, education and truth; collectively, their growth in numbers points to the imaginative death of this country” (p. 8). Wright (1985) similarly criticized what he termed the “museumification” of the heritage industry and its influence on modern consciousness, arguing that the national past addresses the question of “cultural authenticity,” but this is distinct from a question of historiographical truth and is subject to specific, and highly political, interpretations.

Although Wright (1985) and Hewison (1987) were writing about the English heritage tradition, similar critiques have arisen elsewhere. There have been recent shifts in approaches to heritage, however. For example, Orange (2008) observes that there has been a more recent shift from the traditional focus of heritage to include “industrial heritage.” Although this might address some of the concerns about the exclusion of particular narratives and an unrepresentative version of the past, she notes that “industrial ruins are problematic public spaces due to the complex range of issues and emotions they can invoke” (p. 90).

Smith (2006) addresses these concerns by declaring that “there is no such thing as heritage,” by which she means that it cannot be regarded as an uncontested truth; she proposes, rather, that we view it not as an object but “as a cultural and social process, which engages with acts of remembering that work to create ways to understand and engage with the present” (p. 2). It is the present-day cultural activities that these objects are part of that gives them meaning, she contends. In this account of heritage, the present is as significant as the past and Smith (p. 3) argues against a notion of “inherent cultural value or significance” to artifacts. For Smith, heritage can be seen as both the practice of the heritage industry and a cultural practice in identity making.

Heritage, then, can be seen as fulfilling an important role of preservation, preventing many buildings from falling into disrepair and artworks from entering private collections. It is not a politically neutral approach, however, and what merits “saving” in heritage terms, in what condition, and how this is presented in relation to current society are all contentious issues. This is particularly so when heritage relates to national identity, as it so often does.

Heritage and national identity are closely aligned, as Harrison (2010) argues, through the construction of an agreed canon of art. This canon “might be understood to represent ideological tools that circulate the values on which particular visions of nationhood are established” (p. 15). The collection of objects—be they buildings, paintings, sculptures, or monuments—is considered part of the canon because these objects express the values that culture wishes to promote and the narratives central to the notion of nationhood. Canetti (1962) argues that “crowd symbols” are significant in constructing national shared values. For England, they suggest, the sea is a crowd symbol, whereas for France it is the French Revolution, and perhaps for Wales mountains play a similar role. These crowd symbols are more significant than history or territory, and they represent common, well-understood symbols, which could sustain a popular feeling of nationhood. The heritage canon, then, can be seen as a means of manifesting these crowd symbols in the form of artifacts.

What constitutes national identity is often a complex issue, however, that goes beyond these crowd symbols. Anderson (2006, p. 3) notes that “nation, nationality, nationalism—all have proved notoriously difficult to define, let alone to analyse.” This is frustrating for those involved in the heritage industry since nationality is both entirely an “imagined community” and a persistent and strong identifier for many people. Anderson argues that it is best viewed as a cultural artifact. But this is perhaps to underplay its resilience and significance. To be useful, then, a concept of nationhood as it relates to art must be rooted in some aspect of everyday life.

It is perhaps a sense of identity that heritage appeals to when we consider nationhood. If nationality is viewed at least in part as an issue of identity, then Mead (1934) suggests that an individual’s identity is created by the degree to which that person absorbs the values of their community, summarized in the phrase “self reflects society.” Snow (2001) also argues that identity is largely constructed socially and includes, as well as Mead’s sense of belonging, a sense of difference from other communities. Identity is seen as a shared sense of “we-ness” developed through shared attributes and experiences and in contrast to one or more sets of others. National identity, then, is both an imagined and a real community, with a strong sense of everyday validity to many. It can be seen as representing the stories that we tell about ourselves, and heritage is the tool for framing those stories.

Turning now to ed tech, by attempting to frame it as an undiscipline, or something less rigorously bounded than a discipline, practitioners within it seek to avoid the museumification process identified above. A discipline can be seen as analogous to a museum, seeking to curate the works, methods, and figures that represent the core artifacts or canon. This canon involves the use of gatekeepers who decide what is worthy of inclusion, just as the heritage industry determines which buildings are worthy of preservation. This process inevitably has a backward-looking emphasis, and for good reason it is resistant to change, as Kuhn’s theory of paradigm shifts argues. However, in an area such as ed tech, this process might not be appropriate. It is too multidisciplinary, so in effect it is a series of museums, and it is more in a state of flux, so the process of heritage is not deeply rooted. However, as with national identity, there is an identity among ed tech practitioners, some shared crowd symbols, and common values. This identity is both meaningful and entirely imagined, just like national identity.

One solution, therefore, is to look for examples of institutions that have sought to address the issue of museumification and remain dynamic while reflecting identity and helping to engage in a constructive dialogue on what that identity means. One such example is the Museum of Welsh Life, in St Fagans, near Cardiff. It has a specific remit to reflect the everyday lives of Welsh people. It is an open-air museum (the first such in Britain), featuring buildings of Wales from the Iron Age to the 1960s. There are over 40 buildings, which have been either relocated from other sites in Wales or reconstructed, including houses, a farm, a school, a chapel, and a Workmen’s Institute. The museum focuses on representing typical buildings, rather than exceptional or unique ones, since it seeks to represent all aspects of Welsh life.

As such, it can be seen as a direct reaction to notions of national identity shaped around paintings or exceptional works or the lives of the elite. Mason (2005, p. 22) suggests that the museum “operates as a space in which it is possible to identify competing definitions of Welshness.”

By representing everyday life in an outdoor setting, the museum seeks to create a view across different aspects of Welsh identity. In ed tech, this can be replicated by turning away from the deification of individuals in technology (e.g., Steve Jobs as a role model) and instead focusing on what might be termed more everyday artifacts or, in this case, practical benefits for learners. The more open approach allows for a constant dialogue on what it means to be an educational technologist. For example, when the Museum of Modern Life unveiled a restored church, St Teilo’s, it recovered original wall paintings from before the Reformation. They were bright and graphic, depicting scenes from the Passion for an illiterate audience. However, they did not match modern sensibilities about what a church in Wales looked like, with its strong Methodist tradition. This led to debate about the true identity of Welshness, which was largely positive. Similarly, an approach in ed tech that encourages reflection on what it means to engage in educational technology is generally useful in moving the area forward. For instance, when Watters (2019) published a list of a decade of ed tech failures, many found it a useful reminder and check, whereas others wondered about the inclusion or omission of some entries, and still others wanted a counter-list of successes. We can view this kind of work as a form of dialogue-inducing curation, which—like St Teilo’s church—allows people to position themselves in relation to it. Maintaining a perspective that actively resists museumification while recognizing the importance and shifting nature of identity can be used to generate such artifacts and promote the discussion about them.

Digital Mudlarking

The final metaphor for the consideration of ed tech as an undiscipline is that of mudlarking. Wikipedia describes a mudlark as “someone who scavenges in river mud for items of value, a term used especially to describe those who scavenged this way in London during the late 18th and 19th centuries” (Wikipedia, 2021).

I was enamoured of the stories that my mother, a Cockney, told me of growing up using the Thames as a beach, playground, and treasure trove, so I have always found the idea of mudlarks intriguing. Mudlarks have a decidedly Dickensian feel, but we should not let the romantic images detract from the dangerous reality, an unhealthy and risky pursuit undertaken by the poorest of children for meagre returns.

Mudlarking has seen something of a modern-day revival, particularly with the advent of metal detectors. Maiklem (2019) provides a detailed account of the life of the modern mudlarker, and there are some resonances in what she describes with ed tech as a discipline.

As mentioned above, one of the elements of ed tech that makes the idea of a discipline an ill fit is that it does not have the foundations of other disciplines. People come to it from different fields, what it actually is might not be clearly defined, and there is no shared sense of history. So, thinking about a history of ed tech is less akin to the archaeological dig that one might undertake in other fields since there is no agreed boundary for what such an excavation should cover or even what the artifacts worth recovering would be. It is also very dynamic and constantly in flux, like conducting such a dig in sand. If you are an ed tech practitioner, then, the sense is less of an excavation and more of hurried gathering and acquisition. Ed tech practitioners can be seen to operate like mudlarks, gathering artifacts that have been exposed by the last tide of technology. These artifacts can be seen as examples of good practice, pertinent research, or useful concepts that have applications across different technologies. Examples might be approaches to support learners at a distance, effective methods to encourage online dialogue, frameworks for ethics of application, and so on.

Consider, for example, that over the past 20 years we have witnessed initial elearning interest, the web 2.0 bubble, rapid interest in MOOCs, current hype about AI, application of data, and the online pivot as substantial trends in ed tech. We can view each of them as a tide, depositing knowledge artifacts that will be washed away by the next big wave unless they are carefully gathered and restored by the digital mudlarks. After each of these waves, there is a space momentarily revealed where reflection and research can be found. These artifacts are shaped by the tide but have value and currency independently. I argued in 25 Years of Ed Tech (Weller, 2020) that one of the problems with ed tech as a field is that it does not value its own history. In this metaphor, it pays attention only to each new tide, so these contributions are forgotten or lost.

This became evident during the online pivot when a number of articles appeared declaring the ineffectiveness of online learning. For example, Rayment-Pickard (2020) argued that online education worked against widening participation. There were the usual claims about the mystique of face-to-face lectures. Zimmerman (2020), for example, claimed that remote learning led to the death of charisma. Supiano (2020) asked “Can You Create Learning Communities Online?” Although useful advice was offered, that it was posed as a question—as if it had never been realized previously—was telling about the lack of penetration that online learning has realized in the mainstream.

Many such articles exhibited an ignorance of the preceding 20 years of online learning and 50 years of distance education. This is where the digital mudlarkers can reveal their treasures. For example, the first thing to note is that online learning traditionally has served a different audience. It has affordances different from those of face-to-face learning, particularly in allowing learners to partake asynchronously and structure their learning according to their own convenience and preference. Having an appreciation of knowledge acquired from previous waves of ed tech helps individuals and institutions to frame their responses in circumstances such as the online pivot.

Metaphors are also interesting when they do not quite fit and offer some insight into this mismatch. For example, one aspect of this mudlarking metaphor to be cautious about is the connotation of a tide. This plays into notions of technological change as inevitable and irresistible. We could argue that it is our job to shape the direction or flow of the tide as much as to gather what is deposited, but I would add that as a practitioner it sometimes does feel like a tide—you have little say, for instance, in whether your institution is going to adopt MOOCs.

Overall, though, educational technologists need to ensure that value can be gathered from each of these waves and that it is preserved and shared. Maiklem (2019) posits that mudlarking is a skill that took time and patience, requiring many fruitless hours in the Thames mud before she developed the appropriate skills, which is referred to as ‘getting your eye in’ by mudlarkers. The skill to spot objects of interest amid the general detritus can also be said to be a defining characteristic of the educational technologist—it takes time to get “your eye in” and appreciate what is important and useful in new technological developments and to separate them from the pro- or anti-technology rhetoric.