Researchers from the University of Oxford have been awarded funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), to look at the impact of technology on educational and social equity in schools in England.
Funded via the ESRC Education Research Programme, the project, which is being led by the Department of Education in collaboration with the Oxford Internet Institute, was one of only nine to get funding.
Professor Rebecca Eynon, who is leading the project entitled ‘Towards equity focused approaches to EdTech: a socio-technical perspective’, said: “For decades, technology has been promoted as a way to address inequity in schools with advocates suggesting that more digital resources lead to greater educational and social equity. We know that the provision of resources, such as systems designed to provide students with extra support in and outside the classroom, or automating certain tasks to free up time for the teacher, can be highly significant. However, such a view tends to assume technology is a neutral tool that can be relied on to bring about uniformly positive effects for education.
“What is needed is more research that aims to theorise the technology itself – for example to unpack the implicit biases and values EdTech may encode and promote – alongside a richer understanding of how EdTech is actually used in the classroom, how it reconfigures pedagogical relationships, and how its use varies across different school contexts.”
Taking this socio-technical perspective, the study will conduct seven ethnographies in secondary schools in England to capture and explore the multi-faceted implications of the use of technology and the ways it can reinforce or reconfigure educational and social inequity.
The second central aim of the study is to engage with social scientists, data scientists, EdTech companies, policy makers, teachers, students and the wider public to inform the design and implementation of equity-focused approaches to EdTech in the future, through a range of activities including the creation of educational resources for data scientists and EdTech developers, and a series of futures workshops for all stakeholders.
Outputs to disseminate the work will also include blogs, videos, podcasts, academic papers, a book, conference presentations, reports and datasets for the UK data archive.
Rebecca continued: “The research hopes to significantly enhance academic, practice and policy understanding and shape future EdTech design and use in England and beyond.
“We’re thrilled to be undertaking this much needed rich ethnographic study which will contribute to academic understandings of the relationships between equity, digital technologies, teaching and learning.”
The research will be conducted by Professor Rebecca Eynon of the Department of Education and Oxford Internet Institute, supported by Dr Laura Hakimi of the Oxford Internet Institute, two post-doctoral researchers at the Department of Education – to be appointed – and an advisory group consisting of experts from policy, practice and academia. The advisory board will provide feedback on early stage research findings and facilitate knowledge exchange and impact.
Professor Alison Park, Interim Executive Chair of the Economic and Social Research Council, said: “Through the Education Research Programme, ESRC is funding important new research that will generate insights and help address ongoing challenges for the UK’s compulsory education systems, including how to attract, educate and retain excellent teachers, and how to adopt and harness the benefits of new technologies.
“The programme will support both teachers and children by tackling issues such as resilience, participation, recruitment, training and retention.
“The research will use the power of social science to generate a range of exciting outputs that have the potential to directly transform UK education and create a more inclusive and supportive learning environment.”
Professor Gemma Moss, Director of the Education Research Programme, said: “This is an exciting opportunity for the education research community to work in partnership with other stakeholders and find new ways of tackling some long-lasting challenges in school-based education.
“The programme recognises the devolved nature of education in the UK and in this context is looking to develop stronger links between research, policy and practice that can generate new insights relevant to local contexts.”
Laura’s postdoctoral research uses ethnographic methodologies to explore the ways in which digital technologies are being used in classrooms and how the use of such systems can reinforce or reconfigure existing educational and social inequity.
Laura completed a DPhil in Education with the Learning and New Technologies research group at the Department of Education in 2015, and also holds an MSc in Evidence for Public Policy and Practice from the Institute of Education. She is a strong advocate of participatory methodologies and action research.
Publications
Hakimi L, Eynon R, Murphy VA. The Ethics of Using Digital Trace Data in Education: A Thematic Review of the Research Landscape. Review of Educational Research. 2021;91(5):671-717.
Denton-Calabrese, T., Mustain, P., Geniets, A., Hakimi, L., Winters, N. (2021) Empowerment beyond skills: Computing and the enhancement of self-concept in the go_girl code+create program. Computers and Education Vol.175
Geniets, A., O’Donovan, J., Hakimi, L., Winters, N. (eds) (2021) Training for Community Health: Bridging the Global Health Care Gap: OUP
Lena Zlock is researching the integration of digital technology into structures of teaching, learning, and education in higher education. Her particular focus is on the digital humanities and the potential for digital methods to transform humanistic study. She works with Professor Niall Winters and Dr. James Robson.
Lena’s research interests stem from her education as an M.St. student and Ertegun Graduate Scholar in Modern Languages at the University of Oxford, and as a B.A. student in History at Stanford University. As an undergraduate, she started the Voltaire Library Project, a digitally and data-driven study of the 6,763-book collection of French Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire (you can read more about the project here and here). She has been interested in the application of digital technology to humanistic teaching since her days in Princeton Day School, where she developed an interdisciplinary curriculum on Mexico City (visit the course website here).
Her research on Voltaire led her to think more broadly about the place of digital methods in the humanities classroom, and how new technologies will revolutionise the liberal arts and higher education. As a DPhil candidate, Lena will examine the negotiation and implementation of new learning technologies within the University of Oxford at undergraduate and graduate levels.
Lena is involved in a number of digital humanities initiatives in Oxford. She previously served as the inaugural fellow of the Voltaire Lab at Oxford’s Voltaire Foundation. As a master’s student, Lena co-formulated the convergence agenda for Oxford digital humanities with Professor Howard Hotson, and is currently employed by the Humanities Division to assist with the development of an M.St. degree in Digital Scholarship (read more here). Lena set up and helps to run the History of the Book blog for the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages and the Oxford Book History Twitter account.
Lena welcomes inquiries from undergraduate and postgraduate students from Oxford and beyond seeking to get involved with the digital humanities in any capacity. The History of the Book blog also welcomes inquiries from prospective contributors.
Lara has been working in online education for the last six years, supporting universities and academics in their transition to blended and online learning.
Some of the notable projects she has worked on include:
- The development and presentation of the University of Cape Town’s first accredited blended postgraduate diploma.
- The creation of an online tutor training course for GetSmarter’s academic staff.
- A blended learning collaboration between the University of Namibia and the University of Cape Town to transform the current MSc in Civil Engineering to a blended format.
- The development and presentation of GetSmarter’s first international short course with Goldsmiths, University of London.
Lara completed her Masters in Higher Education at the University of Cape Town in 2019. In her doctoral study she plans to explore the affordances and limitations of online education with regard to different subject matter.
Her areas of interest are online education, higher education, pedagogy, digital literacy, and digital inequalities.
Isobel is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Education. Alongside her academic work, Isobel is also an independent consultant and researcher for organisations including Plan International, FCDO, Save the Children and the Landworkers’ Alliance.
Her doctoral thesis critically explored the ‘gender data revolution’ in international development through an in-depth case study of a smartphone-based data collection project working with young women in Bangladesh. During her time in Bangladesh Isobel was appointed a ‘Visiting Research Fellow’ at the Centre for Sustainable Development at the University of Liberal Arts (ULAB) in Dhaka. She contributed to research activities at the CSD, including studies of Oxfam’s PROTIC project, which worked with rural women to create smartphone-based information services on climate adaptation strategies; pro-poor technology schemes in the Teknaf peninsula; and the effect of climate change on fishing villages in the Sunderbans. Additionally, Isobel taught classes for the modules ‘Introduction to Sustainable Development’ and ‘Economic Grassroots Development’.
These experiences in Bangladesh motivated Isobel to seek out further opportunities to utilise her skills and experience to help fight the climate crisis and support the movement for climate and environmental justice. This led to her working as the research assistant for the Nuffield funded ‘Trust and Climate Change: Information for Teaching in a Digital Age’ project. This initiative brought together the Education Department and Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford with secondary schools and teachers to draft a research agenda to transform climate change teaching. She then went on to become the research assistant for the ‘Climate Change Education Futures in India’ project, which sought to develop and deploy a framework for Climate Change Education (CCE) in India and beyond to increase the effectiveness of large-scale online CCE programmes. Since completing her DPhil, Isobel has undertaken the role of Postdoctoral Researcher on the Refugee Health Education Programme (RHEP), which utilises participatory research techniques to develop a collaborative and scalable health education curriculum for refugees and survivors of trafficking and torture.
Previously Isobel was a researcher on the Goldman Sachs funded technology and educational inclusion project Go_Girl:Code+Create, which explored the ways learning to code might benefit disadvantaged young women in the UK. She holds a MSc in Gender from the London School of Economics, for which she was awarded a Distinction and the Betty Scharf prize for best dissertation. Isobel has worked as a consultant and researcher for numerous international development organisations from Plan International to CGIAR on topics such as: gender and diversity in STEM; social media and gender-based violence; gender and conflict; early marriage and pregnancy and school dropout in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs); the effect of gender on early learning in LMICs; the motivations of and barriers facing new entrants to agroecological farming; and, how public engagement in urban and peri-urban farm enterprise affects health, well-being and consumption habits.
In her free time Isobel likes to grow food and flowers, and volunteers at her local community garden and a regenerative farm. She is passionate about agroecology and food sovereignty. In the future she would like to work collaboratively with others towards the realisation of an environmentally and socially just food system, as she recognises that this is the foundation of an environmentally and socially just world.
Manal is a recipient of the Clarendon Scholarship. Her research is funded by a joint award between the Clarendon Fund and Brasenose College
Her research focuses on the links between social and digital exclusion in the learning of young people. Manal was awarded a distinction for her MSc. in Education (Learning and New Technologies) at the University of Oxford (2017) and is currently building on that work for her doctoral thesis under the supervision of Professor Rebecca Eynon and Professor Niall Winters. Manal holds an Honours BA in Global Affairs (Middle East & North Africa Studies) from George Mason University (2011) and has five years of experience working in the U.S. and the MENA region.
Research interests:
- Feminist Studies
- Critical Approaches in Educational Research