Educational Development in the Postdigital Era

Abstract

The recent COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted a pressing need to better theorize the role of digital technologies in education, given the widespread “mainstreaming” of software platforms and online teaching. Digital technologies are now, more than ever, structural elements of the educational landscape, rather than merely peripheral devices that augment existing practices. Drawing on the concept of the “postdigital,” recent educational research has argued for just such a shift in perspective, away from viewing technologies simply as “tools” for enhancement, and toward greater recognition of the ways digital systems and infrastructures are already profoundly interrelated with the everyday activities of teaching and learning. In particular, such perspectives emphasize the role of the digital in the economic, political, and material dimensions of education. This chapter will utilize the concept of the postdigital in order to examine the ways in which education in the Asia Pacific region appears to be increasingly embroiled in the wider sociotechnical systems and political economies of digital technology, as well as growing environmental concerns related to technology. The chapter will focus on artificial intelligence (AI) as a prominent example of current digital technology being utilized for educational development, as well as a key illustration of the “postdigital” ways technologies are interrelated with economic, political, and material dimensions of education. The specific national context for this examination will be China, which has produced one of the most ambitious strategies for the technological development of education in the Asia Pacific region.