Metaphors we’re colonised by? The case of data-driven educational technologies in Brazil |
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| Authors: | Giselle Martins dos Santos Ferreira Luiz Alexandre da Silva Rosado Márcio Silveira Lemgruber Jaciara de Sá Carvalho |
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| Institution: | 1. Department of Education, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, PUC-Rio, Rio de Janeiro, Brazilgiselle-ferreira@puc-rio.br https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8498-5390;3. Department of Higher Education, National Institute for the Education of the Deaf, INES, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil;4. Post-Graduate Programme in Education, University Estácio de Sá, UNESA, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil |
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| Abstract: | ABSTRACTThis article discusses issues concerning the spread of data-driven educational technologies in Brazil. Here, as elsewhere, educational technology continues to be promoted optimistically as the bearer of a panacea for historically-rooted social problems. Whilst some of these technologies have indeed contributed to important widening-participation programmes in the last two decades, widespread advocacy of technological ‘solutionism’, reflected in gradually stronger policy demands for efficiencies to be improved through ‘innovation’, has supported a relentless marketisation of the country’s educational systems. As transnational corporations position themselves to take control of key areas of these systems, threatening to restructure the whole sector, data-driven educational technologies provide the latest example in a series of ‘new’ ideas offered in an ever-expanding market. Based on the notion of ‘conceptual metaphors’, which encapsulate specific ways of perceiving, thinking and relating with the world, this article examines key metaphors underpinning discourses surrounding data-driven educational technologies in Brazil. In particular, the article analyses ways in which these specific metaphors may be promoting perspectives that ignore difference and obscure broader questions concerning education, thus contributing to the reproduction of previously existing problems and supporting new forms of colonisation. |
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| Keywords: | Educational technology data-driven educational technologies Big Data conceptual metaphors critique Brazil |
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![ORCID Icon]({"type":"image","src":"/templates/jsp/images/orcid.png"} "ORCID Icon")
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8498-5390;3. Department of Higher Education, National Institute for the Education of the Deaf, INES, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil;4. Post-Graduate Programme in Education, University Estácio de Sá, UNESA, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil