ABSTRACT
The proliferation of digital technologies into schools clearly merits sustained sociological attention. Whereas most research in schools tends to focus on issues relating to learning, learners, teachers and pedagogy, the primary focus of sociology is on the underpinning social and organizational contexts of the individual actions. Taking a sociological perspective shows how any aspect of a school – from its spatial arrangements to digital technology use – is produced and embedded in social relationships, and worked out in the practice of people's everyday lives. School technology is clearly something experienced within distinct human contexts and with distinct human consequences. Marxian analysis would see teachers and students as regularly engaged in diverse forms of technology-based immaterial labour, involving the production of information, knowledge, communication and/or affect. Following on from the Marxian concerns, there is also much to be taken from Michel Foucault's work on power and technology.
