Paradoxes of Participation in the Digitalization of Education: A Narrative Account

The language used around the digitalization of education tends to be inherently political, value-laden, and deterministic. This position paper scrutinizes this so-called 'Ed-Tech speak' via narrative methodology. The analytical focus is the paradoxes that exist between the normalizing master narratives of Ed-Tech speak and the complexity and polyphony of everyday praxis in terms of participation. By using an educational tablet project conducted in Finnish primary and secondary schools as an empirical example this paper will problematize the promise of participation in the context of the digitalization of education through three different viewpoints: paradoxes of societal participation, paradoxes of participatory pedagogics, and paradoxical politics of participation.