The Constance and Fear of Change in Educational Technology

If the only constant is change, than surely the next most constant is resistance. People have been learning with technology since the earliest semblance of the human species. I am not sure what literature there is on the earliest homo-sapiens and Neanderthals, but I expect the true history of educational technology begins with the discovery of fire and primitive charcoal drawings on cave walls. Here too though, resistance was likely met if the audience disagreed with depiction of the drawing, and as is human nature, it likely ended in violence. This information is paraphrased from the Comparative Civilisations course I am presently teaching to grade 12 students, and bent to fit the topic of this post.

In my general research on this topic, I found Tony Bates “A short history of educational technology” (Bates, 2014) to be a concise overview of the issue, and useful in identifying things that were (but not immediately) to me, obvious. By this I mean: what constitutes educational technology? For example: 2800 years ago, Moses with his chiselled tablets conveyed defining societal norms. By 2500 years ago resistance returns as the written word was deemed controversial in that it would trump the power of oral text, and students would forget much of their acquired knowledge because they would not have to memorise it. In a modern context, a similar debate rages in secondary schools. On one side, advice given to student teachers like myself, circa 2008: “don’t have students copy notes, it does not improve their learning.” On the other side: “Some students need the kinesthetic connection with what they are hearing in class, and this is best achieved by having them copy notes, rather than having them spoon fed the information”. This is resistance to the educational technology of printed power point notes. Resistance is a common theme throughout the history of learning technology, from the advent of the printing press, to the debate over cable in the classroom, to the reliance on digital technology and now the omnipresence of the capacity to learn beyond traditional brick and mortar classrooms for the cost of your internet bill each month.

What I found myself wondering as I considered these similarities was “what were these opponents actually railing against? Was it the capacity to learn? Was it the possibility that these educational advancements would cause educational regression? I hypothesise that it is more about a loss of control. Socrates was opposed to written language because it opened up the possibility of critique, and with it, the possibility that he was wrong (Bates, 2014). This would diminish his level of control. In the same way teachers presently fear abandoning traditional teaching methods because they don’t have full control over something as widespread as the internet. If they don’t have control over the medium, they also don’t have control over their students, or learning. And, missing these essential things, they fear they may not have control over their future gainful employment.

Change is scary. Technology is scary. Changing technology – scary. Control is comforting. And, as history has shown in relation to educational technology, is the primary concern when pitted against change; but, as history has also shown, it is never the right path forward.

Bates, T. (2014). A short history of educational technology. Online Learning and Distance Education resources. Retrieved from https://www.tonybates.ca/2014/12/10/a-short-history-of-educational-technology/