Is the ed tech R+D space ready to consider liberatory practice?
The 2020 international movement for Black lives has occasioned a deep internal look for many organizations, industry leaders, and individuals. The Plug, a daily tech newsletter on the Black innovation economy, reported the timeline of statements released by tech-based industry leaders from May 28 — May 30 following the murder of George Floyd. Noticeably absent from that list were our leading ed tech companies. In fact, for those that did post their statements of solidarity, that pop-up has now been reduced to a banner, or even worse, is completely missing from their web presence only 8 weeks later.
The dual pandemics of COVID-19 and police brutality have rocked the foundation of the homes of Black, Indigenous, and historically marginalized people of color. Adding to that, come the additional systemic barriers of unemployment and underemployment, housing insecurity, food insecurity, and more — families have been crushed under the weight of 2020 (and the nearly 400 years prior of sustained, persistent racism). The collide of COVID-19 and police brutality resulted in the resurrection of two harmful realities for families, the state of their child’s education and the need for purposeful, culturally-relevant practice in today’s schools.
As we release emancipatory R+D for consideration by educators, developers, philanthropy, policy makers, and others; the question still remains, “Is education, and especially the narrow field of educational technology, ready for liberatory practice?” emancipatory R+D (ERD) is a liberatory model for creating educational technology that advances the intellectual, social, emotional, and political empowerment of students, educators, and the larger community. Liberation, according to Friere (1968) requires a dialogic process and is rooted in interrogating oppression and the roots of white supremacy. Any model that refuses to deeply question systemic oppression AND how to heal and liberate, is incomplete. Get a glimpse of how ERD does this in the excerpt from our guidebook below.
When we say “white” what do we mean?
White does not equal white people. This model uses white supremacy and white-oriented norms as markers of a particular type of epistemology that has dominated teaching and learning. ERD challenges the “dominant ways of doing education” which are inscribed to us through the network of social and cultural relations and practices (Apple, 1995).
People from all racial backgrounds can internalize white supremacy and promote white-dominant/normed practices in education.
The adoption and legitimization of these attitudes, habits, beliefs, and orientations can be transmitted through P-12 education. Anti-racist practices and equity-rooted praxis are the primary defenses against dominant narratives in education spaces.
We are in a critical time. We have to be brave enough to know when it is time to design, develop, and implement something different. We have to be honest enough to ask the tough questions around the complicit nature of our actions when it comes to racism, ableism, and gender oppression. In the decades that have led up to 2020, we have seen negligible change for some communities when it comes to educational outcomes — therefore taking the time to co-develop, co-design, and co-implement something new, with them, must be our next step.
The circular discussion around representation and talent as a way to fix the problems in the ed tech space will lead us to the same place we started. The current structure of R & D will continue to prevent new faces from showing up in traditional places. For as forward leaning as we are in this space, we have to be forward leaning enough to dismantle the very structures that are preventing change.
What if we flipped R+D on its head? What if we were brave enough to realize that R+D, even in its ability to create new things, still operates in oppression? What if we were bold enough to invest in some amazing moonshot projects that look nothing like what we know R+D to be, that were led by people without the requisite R+D pedigree, and were focused on the communities who have long since been forgotten?
“An effective method often deceives us into thinking that it is the only effective one, or the most effective.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Yes, R+D in ed tech has led to some amazing solutions for millions of children in America and abroad. However, at scale, it has never been the most effective method for reaching our most vulnerable populations. Through emancipatory R+D, our hope is to push the field to consider not only the jagged edges, but to deeply question our epistemologies around what is considered average, the edge of average, and why we still cannot consistently meet the needs of the majority of our students. Liberatory praxis will require us to question all that we have learned and gained — in pursuit of new ways of knowing so that we can get to the business of true transformation.
