ABSTRACT

The last seven chapters have seen this book develop a wide-ranging analysis of schools, schooling and digital technology. In short, it has been argued that the use of digital technology in schools can be best understood in terms of a number of linkages – i.e. to the needs of the state and to the needs of commercial and quasi-commercial interests; to the global flows of information and capital that constitute the economy; and to the local flows of power and authority that constitute the actions of individuals within the structures of the school. In other words, schools technology is a knot that is ‘tangled up’ in a web of practices that stretch into complex systems beginning and ending outside of the school (Nespor 1997). Any understanding of how digital technologies are used – and not used – within a school must therefore take account of local school district politics, (inter)national economic policies, popular cultures, corporate agendas and all of the other ‘webs of social relations’ that embed schools in neighbourhoods, cities, regions and nation-states (see Nespor 1997). As such, this book has produced a joined-up account of schools and schooling in the digital age that can serve as a ready basis for suggesting possible areas of change, adjustment and improvement. The final two chapters, therefore, conclude the book by confronting as well as analysing the dominant patterning of power and politics within the school – refocusing attention, in Michael Apple’s (1986) words, towards the possibility of thinking ‘otherwise’ about schools and digital technology.