Media, cognition and assemblage perspectives on ICT in education: a three-part study in an early-adopter Indian school

Abstract

Digital technology is expected to change education systems, and discussions around the nature of this change have started to move beyond technocentrism or unfounded optimism, to focus on the nuances of integrating digital technology into the education system. This thesis attempts to bring together three theoretical perspectives that seem relevant for this field: (i) the role of dominant forms of media in shaping human cognition and institutions; (ii) contemporary theories of cognition that show the mind to be more embodied and distributed than was earlier acknowledged; and (iii) relational perspectives of learning and education, as opposed to the dominant focus on individualised, factorised learning outcomes. Three empirical studies, focused on the classroom as a learning assemblage, were conducted at a private school in Mumbai, India known for its technological innovativeness: (i) a case study of the school’s implementation of the flipped classroom; (ii) an observational study of a regular eighthgrade mathematics classroom studying 3D mensuration; and (iii) a design-based research (DBR) study where we designed and implemented a browser-based touch-interaction application, for another eighth-grade classroom also studying 3D mensuration. Analysis of classroom interactions suggest that the static representations in textual media placed specific constraints on discussions of 3D geometry. The dynamic representations in digital media encouraged lines of flight into more dynamic understandings of 3D shapes and the equations relating their dimensional measurements; however, reterritorialization was significantly constrained by other text-bound aspects of the learning assemblage as well as of the broader educational assemblage, especially the text-based examination. To re-arrange the education system in a digital age, therefore, will require close attention to how various bodies in the educational assemblage – learning spaces, administrative bureaucracies, and conceptual systems – are affected by the introduction of digital media. This relational understanding will help policymakers, practitioners and researchers guide the complex cultural reterritorialization of the educational network, from its text-based foundations to more digitally rooted institutions.