{"title":"Assembling New Toolboxes of Methods and Theories for Innovative Critical Research on Educational Technology","authors":"Linda J. Castañeda, Ben Williamson","doi":"10.7821/NAER.2021.1.703","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7821/NAER.2021.1.703","url":null,"abstract":"Editorial","PeriodicalId":51833,"journal":{"name":"Journal of New Approaches in Educational Research","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2021-01-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46227505","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Mònica Sanromà-Giménez, J. L. Lázaro Cantabrana, Mireia Usart Rodríguez, Mercè Gisbert-Cervera
{"title":"Design and Validation of an Assessment Tool for Educational Mobile Applications Used with Autistic Learners","authors":"Mònica Sanromà-Giménez, J. L. Lázaro Cantabrana, Mireia Usart Rodríguez, Mercè Gisbert-Cervera","doi":"10.7821/NAER.2021.1.574","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7821/NAER.2021.1.574","url":null,"abstract":"This work presents the design and validation process for a tool to evaluate educational mobile applications for autistic learners. The project was developed in several stages. First, we reviewed and analysed the literature. Second, we conducted a Delphi study with experts (n=12) from different backgrounds (educational technology, accessibility, app developers and autism specialist teachers) selected using the calculated expert competence coefficient. And finally, we conducted a pilot test with trainee (n=51) and in-service (n=9) teachers who evaluated a selection of 11 apps. The data collected was used to study the factor structure of the tool, its reliability and usability. In this paper we present the resulting questionnaire consisting of 36 items grouped into six sections: “Information about the evaluator”, “Technical and descriptive characteristics”, “Pedagogical characteristics in relation to autism”, “General pedagogical characteristics”, “Characteristics for educational inclusion and accessibility”, and “Professional satisfaction”. The results condense the questionnaire to two factors and indicate that the tool is valid, reliable and useful for assessing the properties of apps and for facilitating the learning process of people with autism.","PeriodicalId":51833,"journal":{"name":"Journal of New Approaches in Educational Research","volume":"10 1","pages":"101-121"},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2021-01-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43757150","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Digital Rights, Digital Citizenship and Digital Literacy: What’s the Difference?","authors":"Luci Pangrazio, Julian Sefton-Green","doi":"10.7821/NAER.2021.1.616","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7821/NAER.2021.1.616","url":null,"abstract":"Using digital media is complicated. Invasions of privacy, increasing dataveillance, digital-by-default commercial and civic transactions and the erosion of the democratic sphere are just some of the complex issues in modern societies. Existential questions associated with digital life challenge the individual to come to terms with who they are, as well as their social interactions and realities. In this article, we identify three contemporary normative responses to these complex issues –digital citizenship, digital rights and digital literacy. These three terms capture epistemological and ontological frames that theorise and enact (both in policy and everyday social interactions) how individuals learn to live in digitally mediated societies. The article explores the effectiveness of each in addressing the philosophical, ethical and practical issues raised by datafication, and the limitations of human agency as an overarching goal within these responses. We examine how each response addresses challenges in policy, everyday social life and political rhetoric, tracing the fluctuating uses of these terms and their address to different stakeholders. The article concludes with a series of conceptual and practical ‘action points’ that might optimise these responses to the benefit of the individual and society.","PeriodicalId":51833,"journal":{"name":"Journal of New Approaches in Educational Research","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2021-01-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45572210","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Performativity of Materials in Learning: The Learning-Whole in Action","authors":"L. Carvalho, P. Yeoman","doi":"10.7821/NAER.2021.1.627","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7821/NAER.2021.1.627","url":null,"abstract":"Contemporary educational practices have been calling for pedagogical models that foreground flexibility, agency, ubiquity, and connectedness in learning. These models have, in turn, been stimulating redevelopments of educational infrastructure –with physical contours reconfigured into novel complex learning spaces at universities, schools, museums, and libraries. Understanding the complexity of these innovative learning spaces requires an acknowledgement of the material and digital as interconnected. A ‘physical’ learning space is likely to involve a range of technologies and in addition to paying attention to these ‘technologies’ one must understand and account for their physical sites of use as well. This paper discusses the influence of materiality in learning, using an analytical approach that situates learning activity as an emergent process. Drawing on theories that foreground socio-materiality in learning and on the relational perspective offered by networked learning, we call for a deeper understanding of the interplay between the physical (material and digital), conceptual, and social aspects of learning, and their combined influence on emergent activity. The paper argues that in order to successfully design for innovative learning, educators need to develop their capacity to trace the intricate connections between people, ideas, digital and material tools, and tasks –to see the learning-whole in action.","PeriodicalId":51833,"journal":{"name":"Journal of New Approaches in Educational Research","volume":"10 1","pages":"28-42"},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2021-01-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43664100","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Topologies of Data Practices: A Methodological Introduction","authors":"Mathias Decuypere","doi":"10.7821/NAER.2021.1.650","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7821/NAER.2021.1.650","url":null,"abstract":"This paper offers a methodological framework to research data practices in education critically. Data practices are understood in the generic sense of the word here, i.e., as the actions, performances, and the resulting consequences, of introducing data-producing technologies in everyday educational situations. The paper first distinguishes between data infrastructures, datafication and data points as three distinct, yet interrelated, phenomena. In order to investigate their concrete doings and specificities, the paper proposes a topological methodology that allows disentangling the relational nature and interwovenness of data practices. Based on this methodology, the paper proceeds with outlining a methodical toolbox that can be employed in studying data practices. Starting from nascent work on digital education platforms as a worked example, the toolbox allows researchers to investigate data practices as consisting of four unique topological dimensions: the Interface of a data practice, its actual Usage, its concrete Design, and its Ecological embeddedness - IUDE.","PeriodicalId":51833,"journal":{"name":"Journal of New Approaches in Educational Research","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2021-01-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48974376","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Teacher-Student Relationship in the Use of Social Network Sites for Educational Purposes: A Systematic Review","authors":"Laura Camas, Aída Valero, M. Vendrell","doi":"10.7821/NAER.2021.1.591","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7821/NAER.2021.1.591","url":null,"abstract":"This paper aims at exploring the educational scholarly writing on the teacher-student relationship and performance within the use of Social Network Sites (SNSs) for educational purposes. To that end, a systematic review of 111 journal articles focused on young people, and found in ten relevant databases (ERIC, SCOPUS, WOS, JCR (SSCI), DOAJ, EBSCO, ISOC, REDIB, JSTOR, and PsycARTICLES), has been performed. The results show continuity in the roles of educators and students between physical and virtual spaces. This homogeneous conceptualisation is grounded on student-centred theories. Also, the existence of a theoretical confrontation between the figurative dichotomy of vertical (distance) and horizontal (closeness) teacher-student relationship is revealed and discussed. While most of the reviewed studies focused on requirements for technical training, the need for acquiring digital cultural knowledge is stressed. Finally, some of the educational implications of the ethical dimension of the teacher-student relationship in digital spaces are exposed.","PeriodicalId":51833,"journal":{"name":"Journal of New Approaches in Educational Research","volume":"10 1","pages":"137-156"},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2021-01-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46863049","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"There Is No 'Virtual Learning': The Materiality of Digital Education","authors":"L. Gourlay","doi":"10.7821/NAER.2021.1.649","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7821/NAER.2021.1.649","url":null,"abstract":"The distinction between face-to-face and distant digitally-mediated educational engagement is a complex one, and the two modes are often combined in practice, via ‘blended learning’ or the use of a VLE to support campus-based teaching. The current Covid-19 pandemic has thrown this distinction into relief, in a context where educationalists have been forced to move to fully distant engagement in a very short timeframe. This paper explores how this predicament has brought to the fore the nature of our engagement with digital knowledge practices and screen-based communication, arguing that the notion of ‘virtual learning’ is a flawed one. Instead, adopting a sociomaterial perspective, it argues that all aspects of digital engagement are in fact grounded in material and embodied entanglements with devices and other artefacts.","PeriodicalId":51833,"journal":{"name":"Journal of New Approaches in Educational Research","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2021-01-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48929991","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Differential Impact of School Segregation in the Performance of Native and Non-Native Students in Spain","authors":"F. Murillo, Guillermina Belavi","doi":"10.7821/NAER.2021.1.559","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7821/NAER.2021.1.559","url":null,"abstract":"There is evidence of the impact of school segregation on students’ academic achievement, but it is debated whether the extent of this impact is dependent on students’ socioeconomic status, or on their native or non-native condition. This research addresses the problem in Spain, seeking to determine how immigrant and socioeconomic segregation affect the academic achievement of native and non-native students. With this aim, the PISA study database was specially exploited by means of two-tier Multilevel Models, estimating school segregation through the Hutchens Square Root Index. Specifically, the study estimates the influence of school segregation on students’ academic achievement in the subjects of Mathematics, Language and Science. The results confirm that school socioeconomical and immigrant segregation affect students’ academic achievement differently. Whereas socioeconomic segregation negatively affects both groups in all three subjects, immigrant segregation affects non-native students more strongly. Thus, data shows school segregation on socioeconomic grounds is always significant, and always has a considerable impact on achievement, regardless of students’ national origin. School segregation reproduces and accentuates conditions of social injustice. To counter its harmful effects, it is necessary to act first and foremost on socioeconomic segregation, as this causes the most devastating effects in education, particularly for non-native students.","PeriodicalId":51833,"journal":{"name":"Journal of New Approaches in Educational Research","volume":"10 1","pages":"85-100"},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2021-01-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42058418","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Online Learning: From the Curriculum for All to the Curriculum for Each Individual","authors":"Joana Viana, Helena Peralta","doi":"10.7821/NAER.2021.1.579","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7821/NAER.2021.1.579","url":null,"abstract":"This paper seeks to study curriculum as a form of organization of the learning process from the perspective of the learner, in online learning contexts. Departing from a theoretical and conceptual analysis of curriculum, understood as the conception, organization and structuring of the learning process, we analyzed different adults’ representations of online learning and their general conceptions of curriculum. The empirical data came from the application of a questionnaire, distributed online (study I, 833 participants), and semi-structured interviews (study II, seven participants). The results contribute to the reflection on curriculum in a digital context, and to describing the curriculum organization of the learning process adopted by each individual. We found that space and time, in addition to strategies and actors are the most dynamic curriculum components in these circumstances. The formal contexts in which institutionalised learning and the curricula in force therein, occur are central to the development of the personal learning curriculum. This leads us to question the possibilities and ways of reconfiguring curriculum, of conceiving it differently, in digital learning contexts.","PeriodicalId":51833,"journal":{"name":"Journal of New Approaches in Educational Research","volume":"10 1","pages":"122-136"},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2021-01-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42472922","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Underdetermination, Assemblage Studies and Educational Technology: Rethinking Causality and Re-Energising Politics","authors":"Carlo Perrotta","doi":"10.7821/NAER.2021.1.638","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7821/NAER.2021.1.638","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines underdetermination as a key theoretical assumption in an emerging body of educational research. Underdetermination is described as a broad philosophical position that assumes that social, scientific and technological phenomena cannot be reduced to linear relationships between antecedents and consequences, for instance through the canonical progression from scientific hypotheses to experimentation and then empirical truths. Rather, phenomena are underdetermined by constellations of social and material influences that make the choice of univocal explanations problematic. The principle of underdetermination is implicit in a recent strand of educational research that critiques orthodox interpretations of scientific practices, innovation processes and policy dynamics, recasting them as social, material and political “assemblages”. In the article, I analyse the philosophical and epistemological tenets of underdetermination, in order to clarify its nature as a “first principle” in this emerging body of research. By doing so, the article brings into view a broader theoretical debate that has great bearing on future research efforts. The article critically considers the continued theoretical relevance of underdetermination, whilst acknowledging critical arguments mounted against it, namely ontological relativism and political weakness. Some supplementing theoretical ideas are explored in the conclusion.","PeriodicalId":51833,"journal":{"name":"Journal of New Approaches in Educational Research","volume":"10 1","pages":"43-56"},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2021-01-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43244967","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}