What is critical in EdTech research?

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There are a number of editors on the CriSTaL editorial board, whose interest is in educational technologies, emerging technologies, ICTs in education, digital education and digital pedagogies, which are some of the many terms that are used in our field. These are usually the editors I, Daniela, as managing editor, draw on, when we get submissions from authors on issues around the use of technology in learning and teaching. We receive many submissions, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, but the rejection rate is also increasing due to the majority of the papers failing to meet CriSTaL’s aim and scope. I invited some of my editorial board colleagues into a conversation to chat about what we would like to see in a paper tackling technologies in learning and teaching and which papers we feel do not suit CriSTaL’s aims and scope. The colleagues who joined me in this conversation were Dr Najma Agherdien, who is in Curriculum and Teaching at the University of Witwatersrand and Dr Nicola Pallitt, an educational technology specialist and senior lecturer at Rhodes University. We shared our reflections with other members of the board, such as Paul Prinsloo, Research Professor in Open and Distance Learning (ODL) in the College of Economic and Management Sciences at the University of South Africa, and Tutaleni Asino, Associate Professor in the Learning, Design and Technology Program at Oklahoma State University, and invited our critical friend Laura Czerniewicz, emeritus professor at the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching at the University of Cape Town, to get an outside perspective as well.