Educational technology as school reform: Using actor-network theory to understand recent Latin American educational policies

Abstract

Latin America has experienced, in the last 10 years, a wave of massive programs of educational technology that were framed as global strategies for school reform. I would like to problematize the opposition between digital media and schooling and look at how they become connected in the reform network that is taking place in these technology-driven reform programs. My approach is grounded on Actor-Network-Theory, a historical and political sociology of educational reform, and an anthropological and materialist view of local practices. In this chapter, I analyze the rhetoric and the strategies of one-netbook-per-child national programs in Latin America, particularly of Conectar Igualdad from Argentina, using documental sources and data records from fieldwork in schools. I study these programs as networks that bring new actors and dynamics into educational systems, and on new discursive configurations around educational change that are simultaneously global and local, imbued with particular inflections and orientations.