ICT and Social Justice: Educational technology, global capital and digital divides.

This paper will present a Marxist analysis of the current function and role of information and communication technology (ICT) in education, with specific reference to schooling in the UK. Over the past five years the UK government has spent in excess of £2.5bn on ICT equipment for schools and in ‘training’ teachers to use the technology. Children and teachers are now clearly expected to function and develop within an online community and network, whilst schools are appraised, judged, measured and regulated through a series of online reports, league tables and data available to those with access to the internet. The paper will consider the implications of this significant increase in spending on technology and the promotion of ICT in schools, the links with global capital and the benefits for capitalism of the trend towards digital and electronic communication. Five enduring myths about the provision and use of ICT for educational ‘benefit’ are explored in order to develop a critical understanding of the ways in which ICT is used to reinforce state apparatus and redefine social and cultural practices within education. The paper will also contend that the apparent systematic exclusion of visible minorities and much of the working class from ICT orientated research is central to the maintenance of status quo and power and ‘conservative whiteness’ in technology education [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]