Abstract
The marriage of twenty-first-century horizons of technology and the global ideal constitutes techno-global rationality as it reflects contemporary impulses, frames and teleologies. Fast-paced automation, the importance of cosmopolitanism and the colonial legacy have come to dominate educational discourse and drive calls for streamlined educative practice. Although such efficiency models empower a transactional/linear mode of teaching and learning, they do little to privilege integrative voices, deliberation and intersubjective care found in global citizenship education (GCE) definitions. We argue such rationality has exacerbated a neo-colonial ethic that promulgates economic, political and cultural pressure to control and narrow otherwise diverse learning opportunities. Drawing from recent research into technology and GCE in two International Baccalaureate international schools, we note the importance of communicative outreach and agency in diversity. We also highlight the distorting effects of hyper-rationalised neo-colonial interpretations of global agency. This article will interest those seeking to develop global educational policy and practice along with revitalising interpretations of technology integration.
Keywords
Introduction
Techno-global rationality influences education in increasingly diverse and constraining ways. One means of pinpointing such rationality and problematising its residual educational effects is through the practical development of global citizenship education (GCE). Defined by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO, 2023), GCE is an initiative that ‘aims to empower learners of all ages to assume active roles, both locally and globally, in building more peaceful, tolerant, inclusive and secure societies’. Coupled with technology, GCE enactment signifies the sweep of dominant hierarchies and the opportunities for educators to interrogate normative interpretations of transnationalism.
Background
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Oxfam and UNESCO advocate using technology to advance the global ideal in classrooms. These organisations outline the benefits of a technologically interconnected world, the inventive opportunities of technologically mediated action and the dispersion brought about by collective techno-global action. With these points in mind, the OECD (2018, p. 10) states, ‘As classrooms become more and more technology-rich environments, the way students learn and teachers teach could transform radically’. Likewise, UNESCO indicates that ‘the challenge of creating decent human-centred work is about to get much harder as artificial intelligence (AI), automation and structural transformations remake employment landscapes around the globe’ (UNESCO, 2021, p. 3). With such technological projections in mind, educational organisations have come to view information technologies (IT) as a meaningful way to connect students, inspire collaboration and link with global patterns of thought and action (e.g., demonstrative responses to sustainability goals). In some respects, this techno-global framework is already a rhetorical reference to an unstoppable AI progression. This includes technological advances in areas such as public health and the more efficient implementation of educational practices through technological means (Gawdat, 2021). However, referencing technology as a given fails to reveal its overt rationalisation and residual distortions.
Examining the growing relationship between technology, globalisation and education, Swarts (2020) notes that human engagement with GCE is inextricably linked to IT. He argues that the role of educators developing GCE is changing as they come to terms with technological advancements and the influence of corporatised thinking in delivering and controlling globalised media. Swart’s insight resonates with the views of Marcuse (2013, p. 120), who observes, ‘When technics become the universal form of material production, it circumscribes an entire culture it projects a historical totality—a “world”’. In illustrating the precariousness of a technologically oriented reality, Marcuse pinpoints the asymmetrical relations that humankind has perpetuated in pursuing technical control over nature and global society. Likewise, Gardner-McTaggart and Palmer (2018) identify a form of techno-global rationality in transnational educational contexts, highlighting how technicism exerts significant control over open interpretations of educational potential. They argue that GCE, melded with technology, opens an ontological and epistemological divide. On the one hand, epistemic technicism and on the other, an ontological global ethic constraining emancipatory and reconciliatory promise.
Technology and Transnational Educative Spaces
Transnational educational spaces like International Baccalaureate (IB) international schools have become a vanguard in international educational logic. Although such diverse settings can be interpreted as multifarious and thus enacting multiple cultural perspectives, they are also driven by dominant politics, economics and cultural patterns. On one hand, education in such transnational/diversified settings can be seen as fundamentally transactional. On the other hand, it can be considered pluralistic and variant regarding viewpoints, ideations and values. This overarching perception of educational practice presents several contradictions. In terms of diversity, transactional educative practice asks for asymmetrical approaches to teaching and learning. Take, for example, a simple test delivered to students on content delivered in a transaction. For argument’s sake, consider a test on the biological parts of a flower. Such a test is linear in that the content reflects the substance of the assessment and ‘level’ of knowing. Such a test is transactional as both the teacher and the student perceive it as a pathway where one, ultimately, passes or fails in terms of the number of parts they can recall. Among the many assumptions within such a test is the student’s understanding of the meaning of flower and parts. A more pluralistic approach suggests that assumptions cannot be made about what, collectively, a given group might understand a flower or parts to be. Instead, in a pluralistic approach, a teacher may suggest the idea of a flower and follow up with a range of discursive points. This could encourage students to illustrate their interpretation of the flower and discuss its features with others. The difference between the linear and pluralistic examples is that the linear/transactional approach narrows and streamlines understanding, while the pluralistic example is more open and interpretive.
In the flower test example, the linear/transactional experience reflects a techno-rationality as it quantifies knowing precisely. Plural/social modes of learning, however, pose a much greater challenge to fit into such a ration framework. The expanded scope of techno-global rationality signifies fundamental implications for how global understanding is perceived, with lasting effects on the vocabularies available to the learner to navigate and make sense of their future experience. With such an example as a frame, we can count the cost of the linear/transactional and closed interpretation of education in contrast to the more open-ended and communicative approach to learning.
To further exemplify the difference between qualities of techno-rationality in education and interpretive modes of education, consider the rise of the IB. IB schools’ representation of transnationality and global aspiration are well documented (Hayden, 2011). Such schools reflect flexibility and agility in a growing transnational education marketplace. The IB’s growth since its inception in 1969 (from a handful of schools to over 5,000 globally) reflects several important international patterns, not the least of all neo-liberal framing and the importance of education as a commodity. The IB commodification of schooling can be seen in the steep prices for membership and the expenses relating to its exclusive professional development opportunities. This would be enough, it would seem, to summarise the IB as a fundamentally transactional entity offering access to a premium education of sorts. However, through its age-specific programmes, the Primary Years Programme, the Middle Years Programme, the Diploma Programme and their Career-related Programme, the IB seeks to deliver a teaching and learning model befitting twenty-first-century globalism underscored by Western-humanism and values-based relativity. To achieve this, the IB privileges social modes of teaching and learning reliant on an intercultural dynamic. Such a dynamic, at least at a mission and vision level, encourages interconnectivity between students and promotes opportunities for student interdependence. Thus, there is a pattern of commercialisation and technical rationality in the growth of IB schools conjoined to a plural/social mode of practice.
Both the ‘flower test’ and the IB examples converge under the notion of technological development. As teaching practices shift towards technology as a tool for teaching and learning and edu-business models become more streamlined, the influence of mechanisation of linear processes intensifies. As the concept of technology advances in transnational educative environments (such as IB schools), the broader view of educational practice as a tool or resource gives way to techno-rationalisation. The IB (2018, p. 58) states, for example, ‘technology offers boundless opportunities to seamlessly integrate subjects, extend inquiries beyond the confines of the school, and communicate and share newly constructed knowledge and understandings in innovative ways’. According to the IB (2018, p. 49), IT refers to ‘devices such as a pencil, a laptop, an iPad, a camera, as well as resources such as a book, a website, a game, an interactive story’. As a mode of teaching practice, IT also incorporates coding, communication, information, design and innovation. Furthermore, as a learning extension, IT supports the development of ‘critical, creative and transfer thinking, in addition to systems and computational thinking’. The IB asserts that IT remains a foundational component of teaching and learning within the various frames of international, transnational and global education technological capability. Yet, with ethics derived from cosmopolitan care and interrelatedness, the IB seeks to mesh technical capability with global norms of goodwill, enterprise and rationalism. The IB (2018, p. 57) states:
Technology can transform, enrich or cause harm to cultures and environments. By supporting students in their understanding of the evolution of existing technologies and the rights and responsibilities of being a digital citizen, students are better able to make informed and ethical choices about the technologies they use.
Although this quote is indicative of the IB's ethical standpoint on IT and an acknowledgement of the potentially harmful misuse of technology, it is also reflective of a rhetoric that assumes a natural linkage between social/plural learning and technology application. In its tone, it assumes technology and learning are one and the same.
The practices advocated by the IB are rooted in a simplified sociocultural framework tied to market mobility. According to Gardner-McTaggart and Palmer (2018, p. 273), ‘by using technology this way (for and through GCE), society takes social and personal connections in tow, making the advantaged world comfortable but also relativist’. By drawing attention to how the use of technology in schools can create insulation, distance and a market-oriented effect, Gardner-McTaggart and Palmer identify a troubling dynamic in schools. On the one hand, there is an attempt to embody a twenty-first-century global perspective, incorporating elements of empathy and understanding. Yet, at the same time, there is a drive to maintain an advantageous position in stratified educational market hierarchies. Marcuse (2013, p. 441) refers to this market driven relativism as ‘the technological a priori’. A conception that ‘projects nature as a potential instrumentality, stuff of control and organisation’. Marcuse’s argument, along with the preceding examples, questions educational practice framed in linear/transactional terms. His argument establishes a clear link between educational domains bound by productivity, economic enterprise and individualised neo-liberal teleology. This dominant force displaces imaginative inclusivity with the efficiency and structure of (re)production.
The Emergence of Criticality in Transnational Spaces
Hayden (2011) cites international schools as transnational spaces. Such spaces are modelled on a notion of intercultural interpretive curriculum and pedagogy. Schools that fall into this category typically have a diverse student body in terms of cultural backgrounds. Many international schools are linked to the IB and transnational enterprise, thus heralded as inclusive and supporting diversity. However, the cost associated with such schools often classifies them as private and tuition based, which leads them to being somewhat segregated from fully inclusive educational offerings. This exclusivity within specific transnational contexts tends to fragment the model of IB transnational diversity. In the global south, such schools may exist alongside the local surroundings, potentially leading to a lack of immediate cultural integration. This inconsistency mirrors the practical needs of the market and the endorsement of an integratory humanistic ethos. The contradiction here, as seen in the previous section, is evident. The question remains as to what potential opportunities for reconciliation exist within this divide. Can certain modes of teaching and learning, grounded in effective communication, serve as a means to mediate between the influences of commercialisation and the promise of pluralistic education?
One idea that seeks to reconcile technical rationality and humanistic education is global citizenship. Developed from McLuhan’s (1968) notion of the global village, global citizenship has infused educational discourse with a combination of cosmopolitan and humanitarian interests impetus. It emphasises a pressing need to respond to intensifying global concerns, such as pandemics, the climate crisis and planetary inequality. Global citizenship education (GCE) has emerged as an all-encompassing educational project to achieve an understanding of global issues, transnational relations and international inequity. In its critical form, GCE has revealed the importance of the interrogation of normativity in transnational spaces (such as international schools) and proven to marry critique with cosmo-humanitarianism (Reimers, 2013). Scholars such as Vanessa Andreotti (2006) have placed global education in the context of civic engagements, directing an examination of unregulated market movements of capital and the unequal distribution of global privilege. Expanding on Andreotti’s insights, Bosio and Waghid (2022, p. ix) contend that global citizenship ‘aims to develop students’ knowledge and values in diverse areas including critical cognisance and inclusive self-identity’. They outline a conceptual framework for GCE consisting of four pillars: de-colonialism, caring, eco-critical views and human empowerment. They also emphasise the significance of these pillars as a means of interrogating imbalances in global dynamics, particularly those that lead to the marginalisation of certain groups and the privilege of others, resulting in a ripple effect of inequality. Bosio and Waghid’s (2022) first pillar, the decolonial perspective, emphasises the importance of critical self-reflection and challenges normative interpretations of global matters that have been shaped by an imperialist viewpoint. According to Bosio and Waghid (2022), educators adopting the decolonial view recognise that while students are encouraged as agents of change, they are also susceptible to colonial archetypes (including the expansion of nationalistic agendas from a power base onto others and the appropriation of cultural values). Their second pillar, caring ethics, establishes a connection between empathy and GCE. Its objective is to challenge assumptions rather than rely on normative definitions of values-based education. The third pillar, eco-critical perspectives, relegates GCE methodology within the realm of cultural and language studies. This pillar also signifies the acknowledgement of social injustice and its impact on ecological practices. The fourth pillar relates to ‘humanity empowerment’ and is subdivided into personal, interpersonal and sociopolitical dimensions. A focus on human empowerment, according to Bosio and Waghid (2022), gifts prominence to communication as far as students ‘learn to talk with one another, listen to one another, interact with one another with respect and responsibility towards one another’ (Waghid & Davids, 2017, p. 80). The theoretical significance of the four pillars relies on a thorough critical examination of GCE, as highlighted by McLaren and Bosio (2022, p. 3) when they assert that ‘critical theory can create some sunlight in today’s dark and foreboding world filled with disinformation and rhetorical outlawry, epistemic nihilism and misology’. Although such convictions prioritise human agency, they lend little to the root cause of the discrepancy between techno-rationality as indicative of linear constraints on educational practice and open pluralism. In other words, each pillar is susceptible to techno-global rationality as far as they require pedagogical interpretation to be enacted in classroom settings. In carrying out such an enactment, educators must account for the conditions under which they can tangibly realise GCE. McLaren and Bosio (2022, p. 5) add:
Symbolic formations need to be analysed in their spatiotemporal settings, within certain fields of interaction, and in the context of social institutions and structures so that teachers have a greater sense of how meanings are inscribed, encoded, decoded, transmitted, deployed, circulated and received in the arena of everyday social relations.
The peripheral connections, as posited by McLaren and Bosio (2022) (and also Giroux and Bosio (2021)), serve as a critical reflection of GCE theory. They enhance our perspective of reconciliatory notions, ranging from techno-global rationality on one end and pluralism on the other. An analysis of this kind has the potential to shape the trajectory of these trends and ambivalences as appeals to our growing responsibility to reconcile, emancipate and generate a sustainable future.
Methodology
This research uses a constructivist grounded theory (CGT). As a research method, CGT rests on the assumption that researchers construct the realities in which they are active participants (Charmaz, 2014, 2017; Levitt, 2021). CGT is a contemporary version of grounded theory that adopts methodological strategies such as coding, memo-writing and theoretical sampling. It shifts the epistemological foundations of traditional grounded theory, hinged on symbolic interactionism, towards the production, quality and use of data, research relationships, the research situation and the subjectivity and social locations of the researcher. CGT research is deeply intertwined with conceptions of experience and realities as determined by the field of exploration.
The data collected for this study were derived from two IB schools: one in Western Europe and the other in Central Asia. 1 The research was developed over 12 months with multiple interviews, observations and document analysis supporting the findings. The research in both schools involved school leaders, teachers, parents and students. The initial participants were selected in consultation with the respective school administrations to ensure that individual insights might contribute to perspectives on the topic of interest, namely GCE and technology. The researcher initially sought participants with an interest in GCE. They also wanted to ensure variation in age, life stage, gender, nationality, ethnicity and experience with various GCE initiatives (Charmaz, 2014; Mabry, 2008). The researcher ensured that the names of participating teachers and students were kept confidential in this study. However, there are occasions where the participants’ professional roles are mentioned. Participants were part of one of two groups, either those who were interviewed during the initial sampling phase (in Central Asia, eight participants, including administrators, teachers and students, and in Vienna, three participants, including an administrator and two teachers) or those interviewed during the theoretical sampling phase (in Central Asia, 20 additional participants, and in Vienna, five additional participants).
Practitioner Voices
The use of IT for exploring global issues was apparent across almost all levels of the schools in the study. From the Primary Years Programme to the diploma students, technology played a role in activities geared towards global perspectives. This included individual use of laptops, mobile devices, a range of applications on online platforms, external and internal communication technology within the school, and the presence of technology experts facilitating its integration in classrooms. One primary school principal commented on the value of technology as a foundation for GCE:
We use technology across the school as a tool to communicate ideas and document them. In a way, the tech is just a supporting resource. The ideas still come from the students and the teacher facilitates the questioning supporting the various inquiries.
Several teachers referred to IB literature to substantiate their convictions (particularly regarding how technology supports inquiry-based approaches to teaching and learning).
Others expressed their interest in technology that extended beyond the scope of IB frameworks. One teacher stated:
I think the IB is right in technology can help international mindedness and global citizenship, but I also think that practitioners ought to tread carefully. It comes down to responsibility. We must be careful what we put out there on the web, social media and such, as it can come to reflect the power we have as a community and group. The IB tends to be very influential.
Although teachers had significant autonomy in utilising technology, they also spoke of the importance of gauging its relevance in terms of the experiences they sought to develop. One teacher stated, ‘At times, we have to be cognisant of the need for an embodied experience and this takes imagination, to move away from tech’. The notion of creative imaginaries played a pivotal role in how both schools envisioned and used technology to shape the implementation of GCE and influence the dynamic nature of the usefulness of IT. In determining the participants’ view of technology and GCE, three salient categories emerged from the data to inform the research and resulting conceptualisations, namely communicative outreach and agency in diversity.
Communicative Outreach
One category that emerged from the interview was communicative outreach. This term refers to the implementation of communicative processes that teachers use in supporting the use of IT. Effective communication was an integral part of the context required for participants to develop and engage in the charitable outwardly relational process. As one teacher participant pointed out, ‘I think the more connected you are, the more interaction you have with different types of people, the more open you become’. Another teacher participant stated, ‘We must move away from our difficulties as professionals, be courageous and communicate with each other’. Yet another teacher participant noted, ‘Communication is essential if we are to flesh out our understanding’.
As the participants highlighted the value of communication and expressed their understanding of its importance, they also referred to different ways of using technology.
One teacher noted, ‘We use technology, websites, email and social media to connect to others. Sometimes we work it into our various curriculum projects’. In addition, they remarked, ‘It helps us to share with the parents that we’re able to connect, and we can have dialogue across the world’. The participants used terms such as ‘share’ and ‘connect’ as they spoke about encouraging communication. This is communication that inspires understanding, encourages charitable and kind gestures, and emerges to set the tone for meaningful connections. The following comment by a teacher participant highlighted the need for dialogue to establish a more comprehensive understanding of what the GCE process might entail:
I know GCE is vital for us because we all came from the perspective that we have been in environments where people did not buy into this and that initiative, where it was too directed. People saw themselves as part of a specific group rather than the whole group. So, GCE is all about saying, let us try and get around that, communicate and produce something universal.
Another teacher participant stated, ‘It’s about feeling for people from different circumstances and backgrounds’. As participants worked to ‘connect’ and ‘buy into’ GCE, they started to discover ways to shape their perceptions of others through the use of IT. One teacher participant commented, ‘It starts here. We must be supportive of each other by connecting from the outset’. Initially, the authors associated this interpretation of GCE with how the teachers perceived their professional roles; however, another teacher participant highlighted that difficulties could arise if effective communication did not develop, remarking:
I think some people approach our community and they look like they come from this position of authority on the subject. “I have been here, I have been there, I have coped” or “I can do it”, and you are like, “Okay, but you have never, ever communicated with anybody”.
As the researcher observed participants engaging in communicative outreach, they noted that their behaviours and norms facilitated meaningful connections. These connections, in turn, contributed to the development of an increasingly explanatory foundation for GCE practices. The teachers expressed enthusiasm about the potential for discovering new perspectives through these interactions. GCE communications evolved into modes of behaviour, prompting teachers to explore diverse viewpoints of the world around them.
Agency in Diversity
Another key category highlighted through the interviews was the notion of how the diverse voices available afforded ways for students to enact agency. The secondary Spanish teacher in the Central Asian school commented as follows on the importance of self-development:
The concept of identity and self-awareness, linking to this whole idea of international mindedness [GCE] challenges me. That is until I know who I am and how I perceive the world, the lens through which I look, there is no way that I can consider the other because I must be aware of myself. If I don’t have this goal, I’m less able to recognise others and connect. I have these different lenses through which I see, and I can take those out to be ready to go, “Oh okay, so where are my prejudices and stereotypes?”
The researcher noted this teacher’s reference to ‘lenses’ as a way of perceiving the world. The teacher also referred to a discussion he had with one of his students regarding GCE. When asked to explain GCE, the teacher explained their comments regarding long-term thinking:
Well, number one is the use of technology. Number two, immigration for economic reasons and the sustainability goals and those things came from the students focused on the long term. So, this is how I see global citizens, okay? This interrelation is what I see, kids thinking about the world in years to come.
This teacher commented on the potential change that action can develop, stating:
Why develop a better way to approach GCE and the [sustainability development goals]? We have changes, massive changes: climate change, economic change, technology change, whatever; it’s everywhere. So, it is a chance for us to take these changes and say we are part of this development and we have a responsibility. To the students, we can say, “You are powerful. You are responsible for that moment right now”.
The agency was also evident during the classroom observations. Groups of students aiming to develop provocations and take action, embodied the ideas of GCE. To further their efforts in response to the global sustainability goals project, the students used technology in various ways to give impetus to their ideas. For example, voice assistants were used in language applications to enhance communication in different languages and add an essential dimension to intercultural communication. An app like ELSA Speak, which is AI for language assistance, helped students with pronunciation and provided instant feedback to improve students’ communication skills, which is an essential element of intercultural interaction.
The students, given the space to develop their approach to GCE, took advantage of digital technologies to try and ensure inclusiveness. For example, a real-time PowerPoint presentation translator subtitles everything the presenter says using speech recognition technology and can provide subtitles in the students’ native languages. In addition, they could develop their understanding through socially oriented applications like Brainly, which was designed for students to communicate and share knowledge.
The Neo-colonial Ethic
The participants also highlighted the ethically driven motivations for a technologically oriented GCE. One participant teacher noted, ‘I feel like there are influences in the way we practice that always looks like we’re talking at the other. Like we are always coming from a central position’. Another teacher pointed out, ‘My students really enjoy opportunities to talk about difference, but when we talk about what they want to achieve in the future, I can’t help but think it’s biased towards the West’.
The way that the teachers approached their practice influenced how technology was used. Another teacher remarked, ‘When I develop an [educational] project, I try to mark it with questions about the thoughts behind the questions. It’s not always easy to do but worth it if it gets the students thinking’. These observations highlighted the awareness or recognition of prevailing themes but with less emphasis on critically oriented action. The participants’ emphasis on action seemed to be more for acknowledgement than for deeper understanding. Another teacher noted: ‘I think we build awareness but really it simply masks Western dominance. The projects, designed to prioritise agency, are really there to say here is “the best way”, now let’s seriously look at the alternatives’.
These observations define the third category, termed here the neo-colonial ethic, reflecting a dominant rationality underscoring tech implementation. It signifies the presence of economic, political, cultural or other influences integrated as an ethic of control.
Analysis
Analysing the data and concepts of IT and GCE resulted in three distinct analytical categories: communicative outreach, agency in diversity and the neo-colonial ethic. The common values, beliefs and justifications for past, present and future actions revealed through the research underpin these categorisations. In this context, the convergence of IT and GCE provides an ideological perspective and structural framework that combines technical advancements with education. To analyse the data, the participant perceptions were coded and then grouped into two categories: communicative outreach and agency in diversity. In Table 1, these categories are compared with Bosio and Waghid’s critical GCE typology, which encompasses de-colonialism, caring ethics, eco-critical views and humanity empowerment or human empowerment.
Critical GCE Analysed Against the Three Core Categories.
In developing macro and micro concerns, the school leaders, teachers and students found themselves alternating between the use of technology and GCE as a means of understanding, engaging with and embodying their summaries of the world. This perspective reflects some of the ongoing debates in GCE discourse and situates it within wider arguments regarding the patterns of techno-global rationality and its implications for education.
Discussion
According to both participants and documents supporting implementation, an IT-oriented GCE provides tools and platforms to enhance human capabilities and facilitate action. However, the analysis above reveals a stark contrast in the IB international school context between the softer and more critical approaches to global education practice. Chandir (2020) highlights a significant division, as emphasised in UNESCO’s report Youth and the Internet: Fighting Radicalization and Extremism (2019). An analysis examining the opportunities and challenges arising from the role of technology in the lives of today’s youth provide a critical perspective on GCE practice:
From socialising and entertainment to homework, the Internet has become an essential part of life for young people today, opening vast new opportunities for connecting and learning. At the same time, the Internet provides violent extremists with powerful tools to propagate hatred and violence and to identify and groom potential recruits, creating global online communities that promote radicalisation, that promote hatred, intolerance as well as new forms of racism, including anti-Semitism.
As Chandir (2020) suggests, UNESCO’s emphasis underscores web accessibility and software technology as an emerging basic right. (Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic starkly demonstrated this through the rapid, ‘overnight’ provision of accessible technology to isolated individuals.) Although the accessibility of technology may indicate a relaxing of corporate control over IT for GCE, it also renders technology susceptible to political interpretation and distortion. The direct link to the research can be read into the modes of practice that shun interpretative dynamics for a safer path. The same line of thought, highlighted by Chandir (2020), is found in UNESCO (2021) summarising the state of technology in learning as follows:
The digital transformation of our societies is impacting our lives in unprecedented ways. Computers are quickly changing the ways in which knowledge is created, accessed, disseminated, validated and used. Much of this is making information more accessible and opening new and promising avenues for education. But the risks are many: learning can narrow as well as expand in digital spaces; technology provides new levers of power and control which can repress as well as emancipate; and, with facial recognition and AI, our human right to privacy can contract in ways that were unimaginable just a decade earlier. We need to be vigilant to ensure that ongoing technical transformations help us thrive and do not threaten the future of diverse ways of knowing or of intellectual and creative freedom.
UNESCO contends that the automation enhancing students’ experiences with greater efficiency may also hold the potential to influence freedom of thought, particularly in reducing pressures and communicative confusion in the classroom. While AI and communication technologies has the potential to shape daily classroom functionalities, the shift may well be at a deeper, more resoundingly human level (Andreotti, 2017). The power of technology is clear and can be seen here as an intensified indicator of techno-global rationality influenced by strictures of normative. With such domination in play, where are we left when it comes to practical inclusivity and spaces of equal or even-handed communicative deliberation?
To respond to this question is to recognise that, as Feenberg (1996, p. 67) noted, ‘Technology is a medium in which instrumental action-coordination replaces communicative understanding through interest-based designs’. Feenberg’s point is important for several reasons. The first consideration is that, despite the idealistic aspiration for fair communication, power dynamics remain at the centre of educational practice, ultimately influencing the emergent qualities of the student. Habermas (2018, p. 58) interprets Feenberg’s argument as a ‘theoretical operationalism [that] came to correspond to practical operationalism’. By asserting this, Habermas situates the technical cognitive interest as intertwined with both technical rationality and the use of digital technology. This connection pervades the micro and macro gestures of inquiry and normative vocabulary. Habermas (2018, p. 60) further argues that ‘there is an immanent connection between the technology known to us and the structure of purposive rational action’. Habermas points out that such rationality seeks reproduction and reconstructs the ‘history of technology from the point of view of the step-by-step objectification of the elements of that very system’. By associating digital technologies with rationality, Habermas eliminates the ambiguity surrounding the technical approach. However, this also diminishes the importance of otherness, alternative viewpoints and multiplicities of thought.
Habermas advances his argument by asserting that humans turn to technology to unburden themselves of tasks that might otherwise have political implications. By introducing polemics, Habermas reinforces the value of Bosio and Waghid’s (2022) typology but also warns of an infiltration of a purer form of egalitarian communication that he has previously cited as essential to reconcile unrelenting authority and incoherent post-modernism (Habermas, 1984).
Concerning IB international schools, consider an example whereby a student uses AI to write an argumentative piece for their language class. The student, regardless of their leaning, proclivities or enculturation, surrenders their political self to the technology to present themselves ‘effectively’, ‘normatively’ and in step with ‘assimilatory practice’. In doing so, the student arguably diminishes their political voice in the world, opting for a greater purchase within the neo-colonial frame. They become not only reliant on technology but are also bound to a hegemony that provides a diverse range of viewpoints, rather than a cognitive immersion in diversity.
To counter technological immersion, Habermas (2018, p. 61) further references the importance of the natural world in our comprehension of technological use. He states, ‘We encounter nature as an opposing partner in a possible interaction’. This otherness of nature, as mentioned in the cultural divide earlier, frames human-centred themes and protects creative opportunity. Further, removing the human qualities from relationships, be they human/technology, human/nature or self and society, can only end in an unfiltered techno-global rationality. Habermas contends that instead of technology users remaining politically detached, they are entangled in the technical systemisation of society through technology, leading to a state of ‘becoming the Other to nature and in deliberate conflict with nature’. In this context, technology becomes an object of domination by subjugating others. Habermas highlights the tension between technology, emphasising its dependence on technical rules, its use of context-free language and its reliance on conditional predictions and imperatives. He also discusses how mastering the means-ends relations and learning from failures contribute to achieving desired effects, promoting growth in productive capabilities and expanding technical control. In the context of education, techno-global relationality is a pervasive influence, serving as a practical analytic tool that influences various aspects, including the steering mechanisms of the political economy. Such reductive technical apparatus resists the essential features of communication, deliberation, diversity and contextual innovation.
Figure 1 reflects the analytic categories derived from this research: communicative outreach, diversity in agency and neo-colonial ethic. Each offers an underpinning of techno-global rationality as interpreted through this research.
Analytic Categories Informing Techno-global Education Heuristics.
Recommendations
This research underscores the importance of interpreting GCE and the use of IT but also raises questions about the overarching techno-global ethic rational approach to education. In sum, a GCE derived from a critical attitude towards technology could include the following further inquiries into practical global agency, communicative opportunities and counter neo-colonial queries:
Further research into communicative outreach as a technology informed global initiative transcends mere normativity, embracing a more generative conception of education. This approach involves further exploration of perceptions of global thinking, particularly related to critical thinking and the importance of deliberations that signify transformative change. A recommended question could be: What features of technology driven transnational education enables critical discourse? The second recommendation is focused on the instrumentality of diversity as a counter-rational approach to education. Although streamlining might seem a quantifiable solution to improved upskilling, the logic, as this research suggests, reflects a shaky foundation to premise student aspiration. This research indicates that more work is required to revitalise agency with communication features rather than those of control. Moreover, such communication can only be advanced if multiple perspectives are sought, conceptualised and mutually agreed upon. A recommended question is: How do technologically driven transnational spaces enact communicative reason through educational practice? The final recommendation is that allowing for unsettled thinking and the uninhibited inclusion of questioning presents promising communicative possibilities. This holds an existential significance for learners, not just as agents of change but as human beings oriented towards dimensions of an open future. This future orientation, intersubjectively shared, helps us to locate barriers to reason and mitigate a dilution of educational discourse. A possible question could be: What architectures of promise constitute a post-global projection of humanity?
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Funding
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