Learning to live with edtech skepticism

"Skeptic" (CC BY-SA 2.0) by string_bass_dave

We all have a tendency to read articles and research that support our own preferences and ideas. We may try to achieve a healthy balance, but somehow any research that criticises our own standpoint is just a little harder to accept. Cognitive bias is always a factor and pure objectivity is extremely hard, if not impossible.

Those of us who believe that educational technology can play a vital role in making teaching and learning more collaborative, empowering and inclusive are often frustrated by other teachers who simply chose to continue teaching the way they always have done. How can they ignore all the seemingly convincing articles and research findings that we recommend? Maybe we need to realise that all those articles are not going to win them over and that other tactics are needed. This problem is illustrated well in an interview in EdSurge with Lauren Herckis, an anthropologist at Carnegie Mellon University, Why Professors Doubt Education Research (listen to the audio file of the interview below). She discusses the problem of why many educators show little interest in the findings of research into the use of technology in education. It may be a frustrating standpoint for those of us who believe in the benefits of educational technology, but we should maybe see it simply as a pragmatic approach to teaching.

Then there are people who will say, "I've been teaching since I was a graduate student. My students are very happy with the teaching. I feel pretty good about my teaching. I understand that you have a PhD in curriculum design, but I don't really need that.”

There's also the suspicion that the modern research is too much theory and too little practical experience. If you've been teaching for 20-30 years and feel good about it why complicate things? You can certainly be an excellent teacher without embracing technology.

For faculty who believe that teaching is an art, that it is just something that you develop with experience and time, that you can't learn from a book, you need to learn by doing more or learn from your students, no amount of exposure to learning science research is going to disrupt their sense that this is something they learn by doing, or that they need to follow their gut on.

Given the lack of time many teachers have for course development, the prospect of completely overhauling a perfectly good course is not particularly attractive, no matter how well grounded the changes may be in current research. Good teaching does not need technology and we need to remember this. Instead of trying to win them over, we should try to see if there are any elements of their course that they feel could be improved or any time-consuming elements that they would like to cut down. Maybe there's a digital tool that could help somewhere? Take it from there.

Here's the audio interview with Lauren Herckis.