Four questions to guide edtech
by Will Millard
27th January 2022
Edtech is often seen as something of a panacea, and the DfE is sanguine about its potential for edtech to improve teaching and learning. Edtech company employees – and many teachers – believe edtech can help children and make teachers’ lives easier.
This can be true, but as is so often the case in education, is rarely true all the time. Over the last few years – and particularly in the last 12 months – The Centre for Education and Youth has found itself conducting more and more research into edtech.
Sowing the seeds
Initially, edtech was an important albeit indirect focus in our research. For example, our research with Workfinder showed how technology is one way of improving young people’s access to work-related learning. Likewise, our Making Waves research with Pearson identified how different types of innovations have been used to enhance classroom assessment. Edtech is a prominent feature in many of the report’s case studies, including the Academies Enterprise Trust’s use of the adaptive mathematics assessment platform Eedi, or Eltham Hill School using video conferencing to enable a professional artist to give pupils feedback on their artwork (video conferencing pre-covid – now that really is innovative!).
A Brave New World
We’ve increasingly found ourselves undertaking research with edtech as its primary focus. For example, we’ve a long-standing partnership with Nesta, and have evaluated the impact of three of its edtech-focused funds on recipient edtech companies and schools. Our research with Microsoft looked at the Digital Divide, and how access to edtech varies hugely among pupils and between schools (you can listen to our podcast about this here).
Our research produced with Third Space Learning assembled evidence on how edtech can improve primary students’ achievement in maths. This goal has become especially relevant in the wake of covid-induced learning loss. For example, online video calls can help coordinate the supply of good maths teachers to demand in target areas across the world. Third Space Learning has been linking maths graduates in South Asia to pupils in the UK. Edtech has thus able to support a low-cost product that is accessible to pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds at no identifiable drop in quality.
Four questions to help us guide edtech
1. Who is online?
But we often underestimate the difficulties of getting pupils online, or online in a way that’s conducive to learning. While most children live in families that have a device and internet connection, children from poorer families are less likely to come from families with multiple devices or a quiet place to study, meaning they have to share hardware or struggle to focus. Our DfE-commissioned research in partnership with Ipsos MORI and Sheffield Hallam University is finding that we often over-estimate pupils’ access to hardware.
2. How able are teachers to make the most of edtech products?
In our research for one of the UK’s largest schools service providers, we spent weeks speaking to headteachers, trust leaders and edtech industry experts, and found that, while generally committed to the use of tech in schools, teachers often struggle to make the most out of new platforms. Practitioners called for more traditional approaches to supporting teachers with tech (such as good old fashioned INSET), rather than the ‘self-serve’ customer service and support that has become increasingly common. This was motivated by pragmatism rather than aversion to progress, with school and trust leaders describing how this approach was the most effective way to drive increased adoption and impact of technology in classrooms.
We sometimes romanticise teachers as tech-savvy, young go-getters, and this is often true. But it’s often not true. Teachers – like the rest of us – are quickly frustrated if tech doesn’t work. I’m a tech-savvy young go-getter, but found it difficult to get the interactive whiteboard working when I was teaching. The result was that I didn’t bother using it.We sometimes romanticise teachers as tech-savvy, young go-getters, and this is often true. But it’s often not true. Read more about @TheCFEY's research into #edtech, here: https://cfey.org/2022/01/four-questions-to-guide-edtech/ Click To Tweet
3. What are we doing with children and young people’s data?
Most of us are guilty of clicking ‘accept’ on T+Cs without reading them. Do we apply enough scrutiny to the data edtech companies collect about pupils (and their teachers), and how this is used? This data has the potential to be hugely powerful, for example by enhancing formative assessment and instantly troubleshooting misconceptions. Yet it is also an asset that we often hand over to faceless companies without a true understanding of how it will be stored and used.Most of us are guilty of clicking ‘accept’ on T+Cs without reading them. Do we apply enough scrutiny to the data edtech companies collect about pupils (and their teachers), and how this is used? Read more about @TheCFEY's research into #edtech, here:… Click To Tweet
Most of the data that exists in the world has been collected in the last five years. The rate at which data is acquired and stored by tech companies and governments continues to accelerate. This rapid proliferation has given little opportunity to grapple with the ethical implications of this data harvesting and install suitable legal safeguards. ‘Data rentiers’ who offer free educational services in exchange for user data may increase access for disadvantaged students, but are they sufficiently regulated to protect young people from exploitation? Questions such as this will continue to endure as long as there is technology in education. Edtech companies want their practices to be ethical, but perhaps needs more support in understanding how this can be achieved.
4. Are disadvantaged learners a focus for products from the outset?
Working with edtech companies we’ve found that many didn’t make disadvantaged learners an explicit focus for their product development at the outset, but found an increased focus on these pupils beneficial.
We strongly believe that product development that benefits disadvantaged pupils will benefit all pupils, and that edtech companies should build this into product design from the outset.We strongly believe that product development that benefits disadvantaged pupils will benefit all pupils, and that edtech companies should build this into product design from the outset. Read more about @TheCFEY's research into #edtech, here:… Click To Tweet
If you’re interested in finding out more about our work in edtech, or want to collaborate with us, get in touch!