Transitions in education: Educators, digitalisation, and datafication

Abstract

This paper explores educators’ experiences of the digitalisation and datafication of teaching and learning that intensified during the Covid-19 pandemic. It focuses on the transitions, responses, and agency of educators as the rules of their professional world changed. The paper uses data from four focus group discussions with 19 educators from diverse South African contexts including urban and rural, affluent and poor environments, schools, colleges, and universities. Framed by Archer’s (2007, 2012) nuanced concepts of agency, the paper shows how educators working within the structures of very stratified education contexts negotiated their educational projects while the rules were being rewritten as the socio-technical systems in which they taught were—and are—being transformed in ways that are not yet fully understood. Control of the teaching and learning environment has been a key issue as it has become clear how much is outside the jurisdiction of individual educators: the entrenching of big tech in education, stakeholder arrangements including private–state partnerships, and the selection of digital tools and systems. Despite not being explicitly aware of the business models that shape the datafication of their teaching systems, educators discussed their discomfort and unease—while remaining reflexive and active agents showing the ability to reorientate a course of action even within narrow and covert parameters.