ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 made the case for understanding the policies of schools technology as doing political work. These issues already extend any analysis of schools technology far beyond the usual concerns of the academic study of educational technology. In particular, the last chapter highlighted the importance of the politics of the state in influencing how and why digital technologies are used (and not used) in the ways that they are in schools. Of course the arguments covered in Chapter 4 provide a powerful but not complete picture of schools and technology – especially given the often weakened power of the state to affect change in the public sector. Indeed, the past twenty years or so has shown the need to move beyond a state-driven ‘institutional’ perspective in order to understand schools and schooling in contemporary society. As Meyer and Rowan (2006, p.3) argue, schools can no longer be seen as being ‘fully controlled by government and the profession and thus beyond the grip of market forces . . . schools are no longer shielded from the pressures of accountability and efficiency; the once airtight government monopoly of schooling has been invaded by private providers; the dominant institutional forms of schooling no longer serve as unrivalled models for emulation’.
