Teachers’ (future) digital work within platform infrastructures

• This paper focuses on the inscribed uses and imaginaries of teachers’ digital work, currently formed through school platform infrastructures. Based on Swedish and Australian project cases, where the public education sector has experienced a substantial marketization and deep penetration of commercial platform infrastructures, we explore current imaginaries and driving forces of digital work. Our ethnographical material is teacher and management interviews, platform studies, activity logs and infrastructural policies. Theoretically, we approach digital work as constituted by socio-technical assemblages, made from social practices and technology inscriptions within cross-platform infrastructures (Plantin et al 2018), that prescribe particular forms of digital work, which make the existing and future work of teachers visible, thinkable and actionable in particular ways. From our two cases superficial differences appear but ultimately the same logics are evident; a highly visible discourse of the teacher professional, in charge of the platform work and simply supported or augmented in their professional judgements. One example is how platform providers and policies promote interoperability and automation across platforms (cf. Perotta et al 2021). In reality and in combination with the business logic of educational platforms (Kerssens & van Dijck 2021), the discourse is highly questionable. It positions teachers as rentieers (Komljenovic 2021), expected to manage digital work seamlessly regardless of platform provider or accompanied by a (robot) colleague or application (Selwyn 2021). Concurrently, teachers are expected to act as creators of school data production for providing school results (Foucault 1975) on platforms where data exploitation however is rule and data ownership unregulated. At least three powerful forces elevate the digital work; 1) disruptive situations, such as the COVID-19 pandemic where teachers are to solve the situation, 2) public sector reform, exposing teachers to increased public accountability, and 3) teacher care for students to provide social support and compensating for structural inequalities. References: Foucault, M. (1975). Surveiller et punir. Gallimard. Kerssens, N., & van Dijck, J. (2021). The platformization of primary education in The Netherlands. Learning, Media and Technology. DOI: 10.1080/17439884.2021.1876725 Komljenovic, J. (2021). The rise of education rentiers: digital platforms, digital data and rents, Learning, Media and Technology, DOI: 10.1080/17439884.2021.1891422 Perotta, C., Gulson K.N., Wiliamson, B., and Witzenberger K. (2021). Automation, APIs and the distributed labour of platform pedagogies in Google Classroom. Critical Studies in Education, 62(1): 97- 113. https://doi.org/10.1080/17508487.2020.1855597 Plantin, J.-C., Lagoze, C., Edwards, P. N., & Sandvig, C. (2018). Infrastructure studies meet platform studies in the age of Google and Facebook. New Media & Society, 20(1), 293-310. Selwyn, N. (2021). Digital labor meets the classroom. Research Intelligence, 145. http://der.monash.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Research-Intelligence-DEC-2020.pdf

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap -- Systemvetenskap, informationssystem och informatik med samhällsvetenskaplig inriktning (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Media and Communications -- Information Systems, Social aspects (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap -- Mänsklig interaktion med IKT (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Media and Communications -- Human Aspects of ICT (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap -- Pedagogiskt arbete (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences -- Pedagogical Work (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Annan samhällsvetenskap -- Arbetslivsstudier (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Other Social Sciences -- Work Sciences (hsv//eng)

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