Failure to Disrupt: Why Technology Alone Can’t Transform Education by Justin Reich.
Justin holds a PhD from Harvard University’s School of Education. He began his career as a high school history teacher. Today his is an associate professor at MIT and the director of the Teaching Systems Lab and is the host of the TeachLab podcast.
This book is tackling head on the many bold promises that technology can accelerating learning and provide customized education. There are an overwhelming number of technology projects funded by Silicon Valley firms, educational think tanks, and various entrepreneurs bringing emerging educational technology to the most underserved communities.
Recall when MOOCs were claimed to be the educational technology that would revolutionize education? Justin is revealing that MOOCs and even the number of “intelligent tutor” solutions only resulted in confusing educators and bypassing students. Perhaps those funded projects should have determined how benefactors were always students from affluent zip codes. The projects never made the impact as intended.
Schools and Silicon Valley favor programs that scale up. It turns out that technology cannot by itself disrupt education or provide shortcuts past the more difficult challenge of institutional change.
Emerging Technology needs a framework
So why does seemingly all of the breakthrough technology fall short of expectations? His introduction of a much needed practical framework for evaluating educational technology products is based upon four key concerns:
1. How will stakeholders actually use the technology?
2. What kinds of learning can be assessed?
3. Who will have access?
4. How can research and experimentation improve the product?
Perhaps many educators can also reflect to understand that schools struggle to bring all students upon to speed on basic digital literacy, as the new project technologies make too many leaps for students and educators to understand, or perhaps skips the approved educational lessons since teachers or tech educators cannot quickly treat the unproven technology into their approved curriculum. Yet Justin is also revealing four persistent limitations:
1. Technology is typically used in familiar, non-transformative ways;
2. Automated assessments only measure basic, rule-based knowledge
3. Resource gaps only widens inequality
4. Privacy or ethical concerns stifle meaningful experimentation.
Technology will always have a crucial role to play in the future of education. While the formation of tested digital literacy is underway, we see greater failures for underserved school districts in the transformational era of artificial intelligence.
In conclusion, Failure to Disrupt is well-researched. Justin is presenting a thought-provoking book that really challenges readers to move beyond the never-ending ‘hypecycle of technology’ and focus on the incremental work of improving education. It is a must-read for anyone invested in the intersection of technology and learning.