Doing a PhD can feel like wandering through a forest with no map. You’re constantly questioning whether you’re smart enough, working hard enough or heading in the right direction. If you’re feeling this way, you’re not alone. More importantly, you’re not broken. patthomson.net/2025/10/25/b...

New paper alert! In this article I look at the rise of the 'single platform solution' in schools driven by big tech. Very difficult to keep corporate logics at bay! bera-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Cool parcel in the post of an "Ed-tech Agitprop Pack" unexpectedly sent by @neilselwyn.bsky.social "The ed-tech that we're currently dealing with is not a done deal!" as the accompanying note says.

They've lost the 9yos

New open access article critically examining ClassDojo, published in @lmt-journal.bsky.social. In it we collate data from across 3 studies to scrutinise ClassDojo & argue it promotes a relationship of obedience between student & teacher @digitalchildau.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

A parent at our kids' preschool asked if I knew of any studies about ClassDojo because it's used in her older kid's classroom and I said yes, yes I do, and then I emailed her all of @jamiemanolev.bsky.social and co-authors' excellent work analyzing the platform, including two open articles. First:

(1/7) HOT off the furnace and pressed into print!!! 🔥 Costello, E., & Gow, S. (2025). Authoritarian EdTech. Dialogues on Digital Society. doi.org/10.1177/2976...

A position paper urging academia to be critical of AI technologies is an excellent wake-up call. @irisvanrooij.bsky.social @olivia.science www.the-geyser.com/are-we-losin...

Academic authors, here's a peek into the black box of journal publishing from an journal editor if you can bear it:

New on our blog: A preview of @benpatrickwill.bsky.socialECER 2025 Keynote: Educational genomics is a fast-growing area of research, but should policy or practice be based on an individual's DNA? #ECER2025 #EduSci https://blog.eera-ecer.de/should-genetics-play-a-role-in-education/

I appreciated the chance to talk with Kathryn Jezer-Morton for this article. It's unfortunate that we have to deal with Big Tech's messes everywhere, including in our own families, but given that, I'm glad for a chance to help people think this through. www.thecut.com/article/broo... >>

Do you have a project (research, curriculum, advocacy) or want to distribute a call for proposals/chapters/etc? On our contact page is a Blog Post Proposal form - we welcome contributions from our community! www.civicsoftechnology.org/contact

To claim that one skill is clever and another mundane, is to engage in the silencing of the intelligences that GenAI companies extract in the first place. GenAI is, in essence intelligence extraction, not intelligence learning.

OpenAI is now in your LMS and Trump's mandating "non-ideological" AI literacy. Here's an updated list of critical research on AI in education to make sense of it all.

Delighted to share our (open access) pub examining 'How policies of school exclusion frame practice'. We analyse legislation guiding exclusions in 4 Aus states, & argue their use prioritises school over student needs. @australianare.bsky.social #schoolexclusions link.springer.com/article/10.1...

And now consider the implications of using this tool in/for education

Big congrats to Mathias Decuypere, Sigrid Hartong, Jeremy Knox & @benpatrickwill.bsky.social for putting on the inaugural ECCES which brought together many in the critical edtech research community. Capped off with an inspiring keynote from @discoursology.social.coop.ap.brid.gy

Critical studies of ed-tech are becoming increasingly popular ... but how can they be a useful force for change? New report outlines 8 main areas that the CSET community needs to get discussing! 🧵 bridges.monash.edu/articles/rep...

"No easy answers ... what (social) science says about digitisation and schools" ... short chapter written for teachers in response to the Swedish government's demands to 'follow the science' regarding digital technologies in the classroom! Download link for PDF: bridges.monash.edu/ndownloader/...

I have recently been one of the editors led by @drnomyn.bsky.social with Keith Heggart of a special collection for Critical Studies in Education titled "The political life of education online". Naomi has written a great post here about the project and the other papers 1/7

Taming Affect: On the Construction of Objectivity in Data Annotation Practices by @benedetta.bsky.social in Digital Society link.springer.com/article/10.1...

On an intellectual diet of weaponry, and on resisting the computational machinery of war. *For Isaiah* 2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/swords-into-...

“[John] Warner said we should actually think differently about whether teachers are grading writing effectively. ‘I’m a skeptic about ‘real time feedback,’ he said, noting that teachers can help students on occasion by waiting until they ask for help. ‘Sometimes the struggle is the point.’”

Schools are flooded with edtech. But it's not only sold to them. Emerging "edtech brokers" do intermediary work to build teachers' trust in edtech, synchronize their practices to platforms, and shape teachers' professional identities as pedagogic "innovators". New paper doi.org/10.1080/0962...

Pleased to provide a critical (& perhaps unpopular) take on edtech in schools & key concerns to media outlet Education HQ - educationhq.com/news/are-we-... #edtech #surveillance #datafication

New chapter with @alliethrall.bsky.social on "platformed privatization" — i.e., how platform technologies smooth the way for private interests to secure footholds in, and control over, public education. www.elgaronline.com/edcollchap/b... Paywalled, but as always, reach out if you'd like a PDF!

What do policymakers & decision makers want from academic ed-tech research? I had a great chat with Cristóbal Cobo about the types of evidence that get most attention in policy circles, and some approaches that can help critical researchers get the message through! www.buzzsprout.com/1301377/epis...

On the history of individualization and intelligence testing in education 2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/technologies...

"My root worry about AI has always been that while it was making machine learning better, it was also making human learning worse. I am not alone in this. ... AI doesn’t improve thinking but blocks essential stages of it." isrf.org/blog/the-fig...

The literal point is students doing the essay, thinking on the page and with it, deploying evidence and interrogating its complexities, staking out a position and backing it up! The point is the student doing it, the point is the doing.

"Deep down, my hope is that this book makes it easier for education, as a field, not to get swept up in whatever the latest innovation-of-the-day is (eg MOOCs, makerspaces, the metaverse, generative AI) and, instead, to respond with questions: ... www.civicsoftechnology.org/blog/buildin...

How can anyone cultivate a moral relationship to creative and intellectual work – their own and others' – if we're building it atop (or rather, pushing a button to autogenerate from) a technology of deception and theft? 2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/the-plagiari...

Must read for all educators www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

A guest post by the authors of the Nov 2022 EERJ Special Issue. The framework of social topology allows for empirically investigating how space and time are socially constructed. #EERAblog #EduSci https://blog.eera-ecer.de/eerj-special-issue-researching-space-and-time-making-in-education/

Terrific special issue editorial on time, temporality and datafied governance of education "we need to know more about how futures (and pasts) are enacted in data and how the resulting anticipated or forecasted futures (and pasts) govern the present" doi.org/10.1080/1750...

On the century-long fantasy of replacing teachers with machines, and the utter contempt for people it demonstrates to be touting this vision right now 2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/automated-co...

A social sciences and humanities reading list on AI in education 🧵

🟨 #LMT News 🟪 #LMT Editor Felicitas Macgilchrist (@discoursology.bsky.social) joins Neil Selwyn (@neilselwyn.bsky.social) to talk about what is 'critical' in critical studies of #EdTech. Listen here: www.buzzsprout.com/1301377/epis...

Big thanks to Dan Krutka for the invite to contribute to the Civics of Tech blog. A great space to engage with an audience interested in critical edtech studies. See our post below for an overview of our latest research on ClassDojo & its impact on school discipline practices in schools.

"The digital backlash in education – critical & postdigital perspectives" - looking forward to being part of this symposium with @discoursology.bsky.social, Petar Jandric & Sarah Hayes ... if you are in the Stockholm area on Feb 6th then do join us! www.sh.se/english/sode...

Does counting change what counts? Quantification fixation biases decision-making. Chang et al www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

My prediction in @wired.com: 2025 is the year of AI agents. The coming psychopolitical regime "directs the environments where our ideas are born, developed, and expressed. Its power lies in its intimacy—it infiltrates our subjectivity. We will be playing an imitation game that ultimately plays us."

In 2010, anti-copyright activist Aaron Swartz hanged himself after being prosecuted to the full extent of the law for making copyrighted academic publications freely available. Today, academic publishers are insisting those copyrights be lifted to feed the corporate AI slop machine.

Kudos to @henriksaetre.bsky.social & @evanselinger.bsky.social for a brilliant paper on techno-solutionism. Read this if only for zingers: "Like everyone else, people in the tech industry can have complex inner lives and act for mixed reasons." [::giggle:: to "can"] link.springer.com/article/10.1...

NEW 📚“Handbook of Children and Screens” is out! I co-authored a chapter titled "The state of educational technology research and practice." The handbook includes imminent scholars such as Jean Twenge, Safiya Noble, Sonia Livingstone. Download ➡️bit.ly/handbook-of-children-and-screens @childrenscreens

Wonderful teaching resource with further reading suggestions by @robkitchin.bsky.social, Critical Data Studies: An A to Z Guide to Concepts and Methods! This is so useful for building a fundamental understanding of everything data-related before getting into more complex discussions.

Special issue call on "Post-Platform Education" If "Big Tech is asserting control over the material infrastructures, discursive framings, & economic logics undergirding educational digitalization," then how can we "reimagine digital education ecosystems"? think.taylorandfrancis.com/special_issu...