Chapter 1: Approaching The Ground Of Our Assumptions About Educational Technologies

To truly transform understandings of technology within education as a discipline, I find it necessary to critically examine the underlying, unspoken, and common-sense assumptions that educators and educational researchers hold in relation to technology. Theories and frameworks are built on presuppositions that form and situate what is real and possible in a given context. Using transformative learning theory (Mezirow & Taylor, 2009) as a springboard, this chapter will attempt to begin the groundwork for a more critical perspective on educational technologies via the philosophy of technology. Before the assumptions of Feenberg’s critical theory of technology are examined, I use phenomenology to uncover commonly held presuppositions about educational technologies. Feenberg situated his approach in three perspectives toward technology: determinist, substantivist, and instrumentalist. This chapter will critique the way these perspectives generate reductive understandings in education. Philosophical perspectives on technology are each grounded in assumptions that must be transformed for actual educational reform, change, and personal empowerment.