Toward
a Sociology of Educational Technology
Stephen
T. Kerr
Chapter
for the
Handbook
of Research on Educational Technology
[Revised Edition]
Preface
to the Revised Edition
By its nature, technology changes
constantly. Technology in education is
no different. At the time the original
version of this chapter was prepared, the Internet was still the exclusive
province of academic and a few educational enthusiasts; distance education was
a clumsy congeries of TV broadcasts, correspondence, and the occasional e-mail
discussion group; discussions of inequalities in how educational technology was
used focused mostly on the mechanics of distribution of and access to hardware;
perhaps most saliently, the developing wave of constructivist notions about
education had not yet extended far into the examination of technology
itself.
Internet connectivity and use in
schools became a major issue in 1996 during the US presidential campaign that
year, and later became a central political initiative for the US Government,
with considerable success (PCAST, ;ISET, ). At about the same time, distance learning, as
delivered via on-line environments, suddenly came to be seen as the wave of the
future for higher education and corporate training, and was also the source for
some of the inflated stock market hopes for "dot-com" companies in
the late 1990s. As access to computers
and networks became more affordable, those interested in the "digital
divide" began to switch their attention from simple access to less
tractable issues such as how technology might be involved in generating "cultural
capital" among the disadvantaged.
The intervening years have also witnessed emerging concerns about how
technology seems to be calling into questions long-standing basic assumptions
about educational technology: for
example, might on-line learning in fact turn out to be less dehumanizing than
sitting in a large lecture class? All
the issues noted here are addressed in this revision.
Introduction
Common images of technology,
including educational technology, highlight its rational, ordered, controlled
aspects. These are the qualities that many observers see as its advantages, the
qualities that encouraged the
Education is one of those arenas in
which Americans have long assumed that technological solutions might bring
increased efficiency, order, and productivity.
Our current interest in computers and multi-media was preceded by a
century of experimentation with precisely articulated techniques for organizing
school practice, carefully specific approaches to the design of school
buildings (down to the furniture they would contain), and an abiding enthusiasm
for systematic methods of presenting textual and visual materials (Saettler,
1968; Godfrey, 1965).
There was a kind of mechanistic
enthusiasm about many of these efforts.
If we could just find the right approach, the thinking seemed to go, we
could address the problems of schooling and improve education immensely. The
world of the student, the classroom, the school was, in this interpretation, a
machine (perhaps a computer), needing only the right program to run smoothly.
But technology frequently has
effects in areas other than those intended by its creators. Railroads were not
merely a better way to move goods across the country; they also brought
standard time and a leveling of regional and cultural differences. Telephones allowed workers in different
locations to speak with each other, but also changed the ways workplaces were
organized and the image of what office work was. Television altered the political culture of
the country in ways we still struggle to comprehend. Those who predicted the social effects that
might flow from these new technologies typically either missed entirely, or
foresaw inaccurately, what their impact might be.
Similarly with schools and
education, the focus of researchers interested in educational technology has
usually been on what is perceived to be the outcome of these approaches on what
is thought of as their principal target -- learning by pupils. Occasionally, other topics related to the way
technology is perceived and used have been studied. Attitudes and opinions by teachers and
principals about the use of computers are an example. Generally, however, there have been few
attempts to limn a "sociology of educational technology" (exceptions: Kerr & Taylor, 1985;
Hlynka & Belland, 1991. In their 1992
review, Scott, Cole, and Engel also went beyond traditional images to focus on
what they called a "cultural constructivist perspective.") The task here, then, has these parts: to say
what ought to be included under such a rubric, to review the relatively small
number of works from within the field that touch upon these issues, and the
larger number of works from related fields or on related topics that may be
productive in helping us to think about a sociology of educational technology;
and finally, to consider future directions for work in this field.
What
to Include?
To decide what we should consider
under the suggested heading of a "sociology of educational
technology" we need to think about two sets of issues: those that are
important to sociologists, and those that are important to educators and to
educational technologists. Sociology is
concerned with many things, but if there is a primary assertion, it is that we
cannot adequately explain social phenomena if we look only at individuals. Rather, we must examine how people interact
in group settings, and how those settings create, shape, and constrain
individual action.
Defining what is central to
educators (including educational technologists) is also difficult, but central
is probably (to borrow a sociological term) cultural reproduction -- the
passing on to the next generation of values, skills, knowledge that are judged
to be critical, and the improvement of the general condition of society. Three aspects of this vision of education are
important here: first, interactions and relationships among educators,
students, administrators, parents, community members, and others who define
what education is to be ("what happens in schools and classrooms?");
second, attempts to deal with perceived social problems and inequities, and
thus provide a better life for the next generation ("what happens after
they finish school?"); and third, efforts to reshape the educational
system itself, so that it carries out its work in new ways and thus contributes
to social improvement ("how should we arrange the system to do its
work?").
The questions about educational
technology's social effects that will be considered here, then, are principally
those relating (or potentially relating) to what sociologists call
collectivities -- groups of individuals (teachers, students, administrators,
parents), organizations, and social movements.
Sociology of organizations. If our primary interest is in how educational
technology affects the ways that people work together in schools, then what key
topics ought we to consider? Certainly a
prime focus must be organizations, the ways that schools and other educating
institutions are structured so as to carry out their work. It is important to note that we can use the
term "organization" to refer to more than the administration of
schools or universities. It can also
refer to the organization of classrooms, of interactions among students or
among teachers, of the ways individuals seek to shape their work environment to
accomplish particular ends, and so forth.
Organizational sociology is a
well-established field, and there have been some studies on educational
organizations. Sub-parts of this field
include the functioning of schools as bureaucracies; the ways in which new
organizational forms are born, live, and die; the expectations of actors within
the school setting of themselves and of each other (in sociological terms, the
roles they play); and the sources of power and control that support various
organizational forms.
Sociology of groups and classes. A second focus of our review here will regard
the sociology of groups, including principally groups of ascription (that one
is either born into or to which one is assumed to belong by virtue of one's
position), but also those of affiliation (groups which one voluntarily joins,
or comes to be connected with via one's efforts or work). Important here are the ways that education
deals with such groups as those based on gender, class, and race, and how
educational technology interacts with those groupings. While this topic has not been central in
studies of educational technology, the review here will seek to suggest its
importance and the value of further efforts to study it.
Sociology of social movements. Finally, we will need to consider the
sociology of social movements and social change. Social institutions change under certain
circumstances, and education is currently in a period where large changes are
being suggested from a variety of quarters.
Educational technology is often perceived as a harbinger or facilitator
of educational change, and so it makes sense for us to examine the sociological
literature on these questions and thus try to determine where and how such
changes take place, what their relationships are to other shifts in the
society, economy, or polity, etc.
Another aspect of education as a
social movement, and of educational technology's place there, is what we might
call the role of ideology. By ideology
here is meant not an explicit, comprehensive and enforced code of beliefs and
practices to which all members of a group are held, but rather a set of
implicit, often vague, but widely shared set of expectations and assumptions
about the social order. Essential here
are such issues as the values that technology carries with it, its presumed
contribution to the common good, and how it is perceived to interact with
individuals' plans and goals.
Questions of sociological method. As a part of considering these questions, we
will also examine briefly some questions of sociological method. Many sociological studies in education are
conducted via surveys or questionnaires, instruments that were originally
designed as sociological research tools.
Inasmuch as sociologists have accumulated considerable experience in
working with these methods, we need to note both the advantages and the
problems of using such methods. Given
especially the popularity of opinion surveys in education, it will be
especially important to review the problem of attitudes vs. actions ("what
people say vs. what they do").
A further question of interest for
educational technologists has to do with the "stance" or position of
the researcher. Most of the studies of
attitudes and opinions that have been done in educational technology assume
that the researcher stands in a neutral position, "outside the
fray." Some examples from
sociological research using the ethnomethodological paradigm are introduced,
and their possible significance for further work on educational technology are
considered.
The conclusion seeks to bring the
discussion back specifically to the field of educational technology by asking
how the effects surveyed in the preceding sections might play out in real
school situations. How might educational
technology affect the organization of classes, schools, education as a social
institution? How might the fates of
particular groups (women, minorities) intersect with they ways educational
technology is or is not used within schools?
And finally, how might the prospects for long-term change in education
as a social institution be altered by educational technology?
Sociology
and Its Concerns
A Concern for Collective Action
In the
Sociology as a discipline appeared
during the nineteenth century in response to serious tensions within the
existing social structure. The industrial revolution had wrought large shifts
in relationships among individuals, and especially in the relationships among
different social groups. Marx's interest
in class antagonisms, Weber's focus on social and political structure under
conditions of change, Durkheim's investigations of the sense of
"anomie" (alienation; something seen as prevalent in the new social
order) -- all these concerns were born of the shifts that were felt especially
strongly as Western social life changed under the impact of the industrial
revolution.
The questions of how individuals define their lives together,
and how those definitions, once set in place and commonly accepted, constrain
individuals' actions and life courses, formed the basis of early sociological
inquiry. In many ways, these are the
same questions that continue to interest sociologists today. What determines how and why humans organize
themselves and their actions in particular ways? what
effects do those organizations have on thought and action? and
what limitations might those organizations impose on human action?
if
psychology focuses on the individual, the internal processes of cognition and motives for action that individuals
experience, then sociology focuses most of all on the ways people interact as
members of organizations or groups, how they form new groups, and how their
status as members of one or another group affects how they live and work. The "strong claim" of sociologists
might be put simply as "settings have plans for us." That is, the social and organizational
contexts of actions may be more important to explaining what people do than
their individual motivations and internal states. How this general concern for collective
action plays out is explored below in relation to each of three topics of
general concern here: organizations, groups, and social change.
Sociology
of Organizations
Schools and other educational
enterprises are easily thought of as organizations, groups of people
intentionally brought together to accomplish some specific purpose. Education as a social institution has existed
in various forms over historical time, but only in the last 150 years or so has
it come to have a distinctive and nearly universal organizational form. Earlier societies had ways to ensure that young people were provided with
appropriate cultural values (enculturation), with specific forms of behavior
and outlooks that would allow them to function successfully in a given society
(socialization), and with training needed to earn a living (observation and
participation, formal apprenticeship, or formal
schooling). But only recently
have we come to think of education as necessarily a social institution
characterized by specific organizational forms (schools, teachers, curricula,
standards, laws, procedures for moving from one part of the system to another,
etc.)
The emphasis here on education as a
social organization leads us to three related sub-questions that we will
consider in more detail later. These
include: first, how does the fact that the specific organizational structure of
schools is usually bureaucratic in form affect what goes on (and can go on)
there, and how does educational technology enter into these relationships? Second, how are social roles defined for
individuals and members of groups in schools, and how does educational
technology affect the definition of those roles? And third, how does the organizational
structure of schools change, and how does educational technology interact with
those processes of organizational change?
Each of these questions will be introduced briefly here, and treated in
more depth in following sections.
Organizations and bureaucracy. The particulars of school organizational
structure are a matter of interest, for schools and universities have most
frequently been organized as bureaucracies.
That is, they develop well-defined sets of procedures for processing
students, for dealing with teachers and other staff, and for addressing the
public. These procedures deal with who
is to be allowed to participate (rules for qualification, admission,
assignment, and so forth), what will happen to them while they are part of the
system (curricular standards, textbook selection policies, rules for teacher
certification, student conduct, etc.), how the system will define that its work
has been completed (requirements for receiving credit, graduation requirements,
tests, etc.), as well as with how the system itself is to be run (administrator
credentialing, governance structures, rules for financial transactions, relations
among various parts of the system -- accreditation, state vs. local vs. federal
responsibility, etc.) Additional
procedures may deal with such issues as how the public may participate in the
life of the institution, how disputes are to be resolved, and how rewards and
punishments are to be decided upon and distributed (Bidwell, 1965). Educational
organizations are thus participating in the continuing transition from what
German sociologists called "gemeinschaft" to "gesellschaft,"
from an earlier economic and social milieu defined by close familial bonds,
personal relationships, and a small and caring community, to a milieu defined
by ties to impersonal groups, centrally mandated standards and requirements,
and large, bureaucratic organizations.
While bureaucratic forms of
organization are not necessarily bad (and indeed were seen in the past century
as a desirable antidote to personalized, arbitrary, corrupt, social forms), the
current popular image of bureaucracy is exceedingly negative. The disciplined and impersonal qualities of
the bureaucrat, admired in the last century, are now frequently seen as
ossified, irrelevant, a barrier to needed change.
A significant question may therefore
be, "What are the conditions that encourage bureaucratic systems,
especially in education, to become more flexible, more responsive?" And since educational technology is often
portrayed as a solution to the problems of bureaucracy, we need to ask about
the evidence regarding technology and its impact on bureaucracies.
Organizations and social roles. To understand how organizations work, we need
to understand not only the formal structure of the organization, the
"organization chart." We also
need to see the independent "life" of the organization as expressed
and felt through such mechanisms as social and organizational roles. Roles have long been a staple of sociological
study, but they are often misunderstood.
A role is not merely a set of responsibilities that one person (say, a
manager or administrator) in a social setting defines for another person (e.g.,
a worker, perhaps a teacher). Rather, it
is better thought of as a set of interconnected expectations that participants
in a given social setting have for their own and others' behaviors. Teachers expect students to act in certain
ways, and students do the same for teachers, principals expect teachers to do
thus and so, and teachers have similar expectations of principals. Roles, then, are best conceived of as
"emergent properties" of social systems -- they appear not in
isolation, but rather when people interact and try to accomplish something
together. Entire systems of social
analysis (such as that proposed by George Herbert Mead (1934)
under the rubric "symbolic interactionism") have been built on this
basic set of ideas.
Educational institutions are the
site for an extensive set of social roles, including those of teacher,
student/pupil, administrator, staff professional, parent, future or present
employer, and community member. Each of
these roles is further ramified by the perceived positions and values held by
the group with respect to which a member of a subject group is acting (for
example, teachers' roles include not only expectations for their own activities,
but also their perceptions of the values and positions of students, how they
expect students to act, etc.) Especially
significant are the ways in which the role of the teacher may be affected by
the introduction of educational technology into a school, or the formal or
informal redefinition of job responsibilities following such introduction. How educational roles emerge and are modified
through interaction, how new roles come into existence, and how educational
technology may affect those processes, then, are all legitimate subjects for
our attention here.
Organizations and organizational
change. A further question of
interest to sociologists is how organizations change. New organizations are constantly coming into
being, old ones disappear, and existing ones change their form and
functions. How this happens, what models
or metaphors best describe these processes, and how organizations seek to
assure their success through time have all been studied extensively in
sociology. There have been numerous
investigations of innovation in organizations, as well as of innovation
strategies, barriers to change, and so forth.
In education, these issues have been
of special concern, for the persistent image of educational institutions has
been one of unresponsive bureaucracies.
Specific studies of educational innovation are therefore of interest to
us here, with particular reference to how educational technology may interact
with these processes.
Sociology
of Groups
Our second major rubric involves
groups, group membership, and the significance of group membership for an
individual's life chances. Sociologists
study all manner of groups -- formal and informal, groups of affiliation (which
one joins voluntarily) and ascription (which one is a member of by virtue of
birth, position, class), and so on. The
latter kinds of groups, in which one's membership is not a matter of one's own
choosing, have been of special interest to sociologists in this century. This
interest has been especially strong since social barriers of race, gender, and
class are no longer seen as immutable but rather as legitimate topics for state
concern. As the focus of sociologists on
mechanisms of social change has grown over the past decades, so has their
interest in defining how group membership affects the life chances of
individuals, and in prescribing actions official institutions (government,
schools, etc.) might take to lessen the negative impact of ascriptive
membership on individuals' futures.
Current discussion of education has
often focused on the success of the system in enabling individuals to transcend
the boundaries imposed by race, gender, and class. The pioneering work by James Coleman in the
1960s (Coleman, 1966) on race and educational outcomes was critical to changing
how Americans thought about integration of schools. Work by Carol Gilligan (Gilligan, Lyons,
& Hanmer, 1990)
and others starting in the 1980s on the fate of women in education has led to a
new awareness of the gender non-neutrality of many schooling practices. The continuing importance of class is a topic
of interest for a number of sociologists and social critics who frequently view
the schooling system more as a mechanism for social reproduction than for
social change (Apple, 1988;
Giroux, 1981; Spring, 1989). These issues are
of major importance for how we think about education in a changing democracy,
and so we need to ask how educational technology may either contribute to the
problems themselves, or to their solution.
Sociology
of Social Change and Social Movements
A third large concern of
sociologists has been the issue of social stability and social change. The question has been addressed variously
since the days of Karl Marx, whose vision posited the inevitability of a
radical reconstruction of society based on scientific "laws" of
historical and economic development, class identification, and class conflict
via newly mobilized social movements. Social change is of no less importance to
those who seek not to change, but to preserve the social order. Talcott Parsons, an American sociologist of
the middle of this century, is perhaps unjustly criticized of being a conservative,
but he discussed in detail how particular social forms and institutions could
be viewed as performing a function of "pattern maintenance" (Parsons,
1949, 1951).
Current concerns about social change
are perhaps less apocalyptic today than they were for Marx, but in some
quarters are viewed as no less critical.
In particular, educational institutions are increasingly seen as one of
the few places where society can exert leverage to bring about desired changes
in the social and economic order.
Present fears about "global economic competitiveness" are a
good case in point; it is clear that for many policy makers, the primary task
of schools in the current economic environment ought to be to produce an
educated citizenry capable of competing with other nations. But other voices in education stress the
importance of the educational system in conserving social values, passing on
traditions. A variety of social
movements have emerged in support of both these positions. Both positions contain a kernel that is
essentially ideological -- a set of assumptions, values, positions as regards
the individual and society. These
ideologies are typically implicit, and thus rarely are articulated openly. Nonetheless, identifying them is especially
important to a deeper understanding of the questions involved.
It is reasonable for us to ask how
sociologists have viewed social change, what indicators are seen as being most
reliable in predicting how social change may take place, and what role social
movements (organized groups in support of particular changes) may have in
bringing change about. If education is to be viewed as a primary engine for
such change, and if educational technology is seen by some as a principal part
of that engine, then we need to understand how and why such changes may take
place, and what role technology may rightly be expected to play. This raises in turn the issue of educational
technology as a social and political movement itself, and of its place vis
á vis other organizations in the general sphere of education. The ideological underpinnings of technology
in education are also important to consider.
The values and assumptions of both supporters and critics of
technology's use in education bear careful inspection if we are to see clearly
the possible place for educational technology.
The following section offers a
detailed look at the sociology of organizations, the sociology of school
organization and of organizational roles and the influences of educational
technology on that organization.
Historical studies of the impact of technology on organizational
structures are also considered to provide a different perspective on how
organizations change.
Sociological Studies of Education and Technology
The Sociology of Organizations
Schools are many things, but (at
least since the end of the nineteenth century) they have been organizations --
intentionally created groups of people pursuing common purposes, and standing
in particular relation to other groups and social institutions; within the
organization, there are consistent understandings of what the organization's
purposes are, and participants stand in relatively well-defined positions vis a
vis each other (e.g., the roles of teachers, student, parent, etc.) Additionally, the organization possesses a
technical structure for carrying out its work (classes, textbooks, teacher
certification), seeks to define job responsibilities so that tasks are
accomplished, and has mechanisms for dealing with the outside world (PTSA
meetings, committees on textbook adoption, legislative lobbyists, school board
meetings).
Sociology has approached the study
of organizations in a number of ways.
Earlier studies stressed the formal features of organizations, and
described their internal functioning and the relationships among participants
within the bounds of the organization itself.
Over the past twenty years or so, however, a new perspective has
emerged, one that sees the organization in the context of its surrounding environment
(Aldrich & Marsden, 1988). Major issues in
the study of organizations using the environmental or organic approach include
the factors that give rise of organizational diversity, and those connected
with change in the organization.
Perhaps it is obvious that questions
of organizational change and organizational diversity are pertinent to the
study of how educational technology has come to be used, or may be used, in
educational environments, but let us use the sociological lens to examine why
this is so. Schools as organizations are
increasingly under pressure from outside social groups and from political and
economic structures. Among the
criticisms constantly leveled at the schools are that they are too hierarchical,
too bureaucratized, and that current organizational patterns make changing the
system almost impossible. (Whether these
perceptions are in fact warranted is entirely another issue, one that we will
not address here; see Carson, Huelskamp, Woodall, 1991).
We might reasonably ask whether we should be focusing attention on the
organizational structure of schools as they are, rather than discuss desirable
alternatives. Suffice it to say that
massive change in an existing social institution, such as the schools, is
difficult to undertake in a controlled, conscious way.
Those who suggest (e.g., Perelman,
1992) that schools as institutions will soon "wither away" are
unaware of the historical flexibility of schools as organizations (Cuban, 1984;
Tyack, 1974), and of the strong social pressures that militate for preservation
of the existing institutional structure. The perspective here, then, is much
more on how the existing structure of the social organizations we call schools
can be affected in desirable ways, and so the issue of organizational change
(rather than that of organizational generation) will be a major focus in what
follows.
To make this review cohere, we will
start by surveying what sociologists know about organizations generally,
including specifically bureaucratic forms of organization. We will then consider the evidence regarding
technology's impact on organizational structure in general, and on bureaucratic
organization in particular. We will then
proceed to a consideration of schools as a specific type of organization, and
concentrate on recent attempts to redefine patterns of school
organization. Finally, we will consider
how educational technology relates to school organization, and to attempts to
change that organization and the roles of those who work in schools.
Organizations:
Two Sociological Perspectives
Much recent sociological work on the
nature of organizations starts from the assumption that organizations are best
studied and understood as parts of an environment. If organizations exist within a distinctive
environment, then what aspects of that environment should be most closely
examined? Sociologists have answered
this question in two different ways: for
some, the key features are the resources and information that may be used
rationally within the organization or exchanged with other organizations within
the environment; for others, the essential focus is on the cultural surround
that determines and moderates the organization's possible courses of action in
ways that are more subtle, less deterministic than the resources-information
perspective suggests. While there are
many exceptions, it is probably fair to say that the resources-information
approach has been more often used in analyses of commercial organizations, and
the latter, cultural approach used in studies of public and non-profit
organizations.
The environmental view of
organizations has been especially fruitful in studies of organizational
change. The roles of outside normative
groups such as professional associations or state legislatures, for example,
were stressed by DiMaggio and Powell (1983; see also Meyer & Scott, 1983),
who noted that the actions of such groups tend to reduce organizational
heterogeneity in the environment and thus inhibit change. While visible
alternative organizational patterns may provide models for organizational
change, other organizations in the same general field exert a counter-influence
by supporting commonly accepted practices and demanding that alternative
organizations adhere to those models, even when the alternative organization
might not be required to do so. For
example, an innovative school may be forced to modify its record-keeping
practices so as to match more closely "how others do it"
(Rothschild-Whitt, 1979).
How organizations react to outside
pressure for change has also been studied.
There is considerable disagreement as to whether such pressures result
in dynamic transformation via the work of attentive leaders, or whether
organizational inertia is more generally characteristic of organizations'
reaction to outside pressures (Astley & Van de Ven, 1983; Hrebiniak &
Joyce, 1985; Romanelli, 1991). Mintzberg (1979)
suggested that there might be a trade-off here: large organizations have the
potential to change rapidly to meet new pressures (but only is they use
appropriately their large and differentiated staffs, better forecasting
abilities, etc.; small organizations can respond to outside pressures if they
capitalize on their more flexible structure and relative lack of established
routines.
Organizations face a number of
common problems, including how to assess their effectiveness. Traditional evaluation studies have assumed
that organizational goals can be relatively precisely defined, outcomes can be
measured, and standards for success agreed upon by the parties involved
(McLaughlin, 1987). More recent approaches suggest that examination of the
"street-level" evaluation methods used by those who work within an
organization may provide an additional, useful perspective on organizational
effectiveness (Anspach, 1991). For example,
"dramatic incidents," even though they are singularities, may define
effectiveness or its lack for some participants.
Bureaucracy
as a Condition of Organizations
We need to pay special attention to
the particular form of organization we call bureaucracy, since this is a
central feature of school environments where educational technology is often
used. The
emergence of this pattern as a primary way for assuring that policies are
implemented and that some degree of accountability is guaranteed lies in the
nineteenth century (Peabody & Rourke, 1965; Waldo, 1952). Max
Weber described the conditions under which social organizations would move away
from direct, personalized, or "charismatic" control, and toward
bureaucratic and administrative control (Weber, 1978).
The problem with
bureaucracy, as anyone who has ever stood in line at a state office can attest,
is that the organization's workers soon seem to focus exclusively on the rules
and procedures established to provide accountability and control, rather than
on the people or problems the bureaucratic system ostensibly exists to address
(Herzfeld, 1992). The
tension for the organization and those who work therein is between commitment
to a particular leader, who may want to focus on people or problems, and
commitment to a self-sustaining system with established mechanisms for assuring
how decisions are made and how individuals work within the organization, and
which will likely continue to exist after a particular leader is gone. In this sense, one might view many of the
current problems in schools and concerns with organizational reform (especially
from the viewpoint of teachers) as attempts to move toward a more collegial
mode of control and governance (Waters, 1993). We
will return to this theme of reform and change in the context of school
bureaucratic structures below when we deal more explicitly with the concepts of
social change and social movements.
Technology and Organizations
Our intent here
is not merely to review what current thinking is regarding schools as
organizations, but also to say something about how the use of educational
technology within schools might affect or be affected by those patterns of
organization. Before we can address
those issues, however, we must first consider how technology has been seen as
affecting organizational structure generally.
In other words, schools aside, is there any consensus on how technology
affects the life of organizations, or the course of their development? While the issue would appear to be a
significant one, and while there have been a good many general discussions of
the potential impact of technology on organizations and the individuals who
work there (e.g., McKinlay & Starkey, 1998; Naisbitt & Aburdene, 1990; Toffler, 1990), there is remarkably little consensus about
what precisely the nature of such impacts may be. Indeed, Americans
seem to have a deep ambivalence about technology: some see it as villain and scapegoat, others
stress its role in social progress (Florman, 1981; Pagels, 1988; Segal, 1985;
Winner, 1986).
Some of these concerns stem from the
difficulty of keeping technology under social control once it has been
introduced (Glendenning, 1990; Steffen, 1993, especially chapters 3, 5).
Perrow (1984) suggests that current technological systems are so complex
and "interactive" (showing tight relationship among parts) that
accidents and problems cannot be avoided--they are, in effect, no longer
accidents but an inevitable consequence of our limited ability to predict what
can go wrong. Even the systems approach,
popularized after World War II as a generic approach to ferreting out
interconnections in complex environments (including in education and
educational technology), lost favor as complexity proved extraordinarily
difficult to model effectively (Hughes & Hughes, 2000).
Historical studies of technology. As a framework for considering how technology
affects or may affect organizational life, it may be useful to consider
specific examples of earlier technological advances now seen to have altered
social and organizational life in particular ways. A problem here is that initial prognoses for
a technology's effects -- indeed, the very reason a technology is developed in
the first place -- are often radically different from the ways in which a technology
actually comes to be used. Few of those
who witnessed the development of assembly-line manufacture, for example, had
any idea of the import of the changes they were witnessing; although these
shifts were perceived as miraculous and sometimes frightening, they were rarely
seen as threatening the social status quo (Jennings, 1985; Marvin, 1988).
Several specific technologies
illustrate the ways initial intentions for a technology often translate over
time into unexpected organizational and social consequences. The development of printing, for example, not
only lowered the cost, increased the accuracy, and improved the efficiency of
producing individual copies of written materials; it also had profound
organizational impact on how governments were structured and did their
work. Governments began to demand more
types of information from local administrators, and to circulate and use that
information in pursuit of national goals (Boorstin, 1983; Darnton, 1984; Eisenstein, 1979; Febvre & Martin, 1958; Kilgour, 1998; and Luke, 1989).
The telephone offers another example
of a technology that significantly changed the organization of work in
offices.