ZHCES Seminar Series
TOPIC:
Technocentrism and social fields in the Indian EdTech movement: formation, reproduction and resistance
SPEAKER:
Prof. Patricia Burch
Rossier School of Education, University of Southern California, California USA
About the Speaker: Patricia Burch (PhD, Stanford University) is an Associate Professor at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles California. Burch’s research focuses on education policy, organizational and institutional theory, qualitative and mixed methods research, and evidence based policy and practice. Burch's recent publications include Mixed Methods Research for Policy and Program Evaluation (SAGE, 2016). Hidden Markets: The New Education Privatization, (Routledge, 2009), Equal Scrutiny: Privatization and Accountability in Digital Education(Harvard Education Press, 2015). Burch’s work has appeared in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Teachers College Record, Educational Researcher, and other notable journals. Burch regularly collaborates with government agencies and non-governmental organizations on program evaluation and in improving program design and policy effectiveness, with specific attention to equity and quality.
Abstract: All over the globe, educational technology (EdTech) is being sold to schools as a central mechanism for improving access to quality learning for high poverty populations. There is a growing scholarship that interrogates the institutional drivers of the ‘EdTech craze’. Building on this work, this paper examines how technocentrism as a specific strain of neoliberalism is reflected at both the organizational and institutional levels, both by private and public sectors in the case of school education in India. We argue that using institutional theory to explain complex multi-layered reforms means looking in tandem at macro principles defined through interactions in the organizational field and the re-experiencing and transformation of those processes at the micro level.
Keywords: Educational technology (EdTech), new institutionalism, organizational field, sensemaking, neoliberalism, India
DATE: 28th March, 2019 (Thursday)
TIME: 3:00 pm
Room No. 207, SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES II
(All are Welcome)