Beyond Nature & Culture: A Praxiography of the Digital Classroom

Abstract: Education systems around the world face great challenges as social distancing measures force physical classrooms to close down in order to mitigate the spread of sars-cov-2. Consequently, teachers and students have resorted to digital classrooms. This research investigates the resulting edtech market (re)formation, with a purpose to understand how edtech might be organized. Based on the integration of three literatures (pedagogy, human-computer interaction, and markets-as-practice) and with the vantage point in one Swedish edtech platform, practices are traced throughout the edtech market. The central site was identified as the newly formed digital classroom, in which a participant observation is conducted. Further, the concept of affordance is used to bridge the gap between organization studies and IT, allowing for an extensive praxiography of the platform itself. Together, these studies investigate the process of reterritorialization in search of emergent pedagogical practices and pedagogical value. The discussion highlights the importance of the agencements formed between teachers, students, and digital platforms - rather than any particular component part. Hence, the author emphasizes the importance of implementation (the 'how') in edtech innovation, rather than any particular tool (the 'what'). Finally, such successful implementation is tied to learning, affirmation, and experimentation. Aiming to provide practical relevance, the thesis includes an in-depth, practice-based example of how one might successfully conduct discussion-based seminars, given the restrictions and opportunities of the digital classroom.