1. Technology Determinism in Educational
Technology Research: Some Alternative
Ways of Thinking about the Relationship
between Learning and Technology
Martin Oliver (2011)
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TECHNOLOGICAL DETERMINISM
• TD is a term used to describe a set of claims made
about the relationship between “technology” and
“society”
• The belief that technology is the major cause of social
change
• Technology shapes society in some way includes social
practice such as learning
• Technology influences society, but society does not
influence technology
• Technological development is an autonomous process
independent of society
4. Four Theoretical Perspectives on the
Relationship between Learning and
Technology
• Activity Theory
• Communities of Practice
• Actor-Network Theory
• Social Construction of Technology
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5. ACTIVITY THEORY
• This concept is built based on Vygotsky’s work
• It is also known as cultural-historical activity theory
• The unit of analysis is a subject (person) who works by
using an object (tool) Purposeful use of technology
within social and historical context
• This theory is used to build deep understanding of
specific cases
• Activist theory is very useful for exploring the case of
technology use in systematic way discussing the
central role of tools
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6. Cont’d …
• Within this theory, technology is understood
historically, in fact the researchers focus on
learning and technology and make narrow
interpretation about historical context
• Vygosky argued that technology and cultural
contexts must be discussed holistically
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7. COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE
• This concepts are built based on Wenger’s work
(1998) which provide alternative perspective on
the relationship between technology and
practice
• This theory describes learning to identity and
competence performance within society
learning and participation
• Wenger (1998) proposed two concepts
participation and reification
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8. Reification
• The process of formalization and abstraction of
practice, so that it can be shared.
• Reification includes any kind of representation of
practice from words, terminologies, rules, and
tools.
• Technology could be understood as a reification
of particular kind of practice
• Technology needs social intervention in practice
which tries to meet the people needs
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9. Cont’d ….
• Reification has no deterministic power if
community chooses to ignore the
technology, it cannot force social change
because practice is changed through
wider social activity
• Using technology as reification of
particular kind of practice, it could be
reshaped technology, but the action needs
power of social context
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10. ACTOR-NETWORK THEORY (ANT)
• This theory is developed within science and technology
studies
• This theory explores how people work with things in
order to sustain social process
• The differences between ANT and other theories
heterogeneous work, actants, punctualization
• Exploring the effect of the action of technology means
emphasizing how technology becomes socially
constituted
• People see technology not in its impact, but how
technology works in specific institution
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11. Cont’d ….
• The idea of heterogeneity refers to bits and
pieces people, technologies, materials, and
processes.
• Actants people, technology, resource. If they
work well, no need to understand them because
it is assumed to be stable and as matter of
indifference
• Actants could be understood as “black box”
when the operation is failed, we can open it to
see what goes wrong
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12. Assumptions of ANT
1. Social practice involves networks that
consist of things working together
2. Successful social practice results from
the process of heterogonous engineering
bits and pieces from social, technical,
conceptual, textual which are fitted
together
3. This theory focus on how networks are
formed and sustained
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13. SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF
TECHNOLOGY (SCOT)
• This theory adapts the principle of science and
technology studies
• The Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) has
grown out of the tenets of social constructivism and the
sociology of scientific knowledge.
• SCOT views the development of technology as an
interactive process or discourse among technologists or
engineers and relevant (or interested) social groups.
• SCOT may be defined as an interactive sociotechnical
process that shapes all forms of technology.
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14. Why SCOT?
• Technologies or innovations – like the wheel,
the printing press, the bicycle, the assembly line,
computers – all shape and organize the world
and our lives.
• Individuals – you and me – decide what
technologies or parts of a technology are useful,
profitable, or comfortable – meaningful.
• Groups – assemblies of individuals – form,
each characterized by particular variables, each
group holding a stake in a technology.
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15. Cont’d……
• These relevant groups or “stakeholders” include
scientists, technologists, economists, politicians,
entrepreneurs, you, and me.
• Each stakeholder characterizes innovations with variant
problems and solutions – they interpret the innovation
differently.
– One innovation may be a solution – but, also have a
bug. If the “bug” or problem isn’t resolved, the
innovation will fail – relevant social groups – or
stakeholders will not buy in.
• In resolving the problems – accepted more or less by
significant groups -- the social has shaped the technical.
Hence, sociotechnical.
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