The Recursive shaping of Multimedia Teachers, their Figured Worlds and Technology use in Rural Bangladesh

Student thesis: Phd

Abstract

The government of Bangladesh aimed to transform the educational culture by establishing multimedia classrooms, training teachers to use ICT and establishing a teachers' portal for collaboration from 2010. However, a substantial body of empirical research has shown technology use mostly to be resisted by contextual forces and to reproduce existing sociocultural structures rather than initiating substantial change. To understand how such technology-mediated change, resistances, and reproductions emerge, this study moves beyond unidirectional explanations and aims to examine the recursive interactions between technology use, teachers and context. I followed the trajectory of technology use of three motivated multimedia teachers in a rural island in Bangladesh for 9 months. I collected data about their experiences and emerging understandings through participant-produced multimodal artefacts, golpo (an informal Bengali way of discussion), and classroom observations. I draw on the literature of sociology of educational technology and Holland et al.’s (1998) conceptualisation of co-development of identities, artefacts and figured worlds to make sense of recursive shaping in context. My analysis suggests that the technology-mediated changes, and reproductions as well as resistances to technology use emerged in context through three recursive shaping processes: technology-mediated positioning, technology-related learning, and technology-mediated worldmaking. It was through these processes that teachers were developing new meanings and uses of technology, while at the same time teachers themselves were developing new identities, agencies, practices and social relations. However, these emergent changes, in turn, were contested by other resistant structures, groups and identities. As a result of these contestations, technology use neither completely changed teachers’ figured worlds, nor were teachers’ worlds completely the same as before, but contradictory outcomes and feelings co-existed. There were similarities but also variations in the ways these processes were developing for each participant, influenced by their emerging identities and ongoing experiences of technology use. The research provides a nuanced understanding of how educational technology can shape identities and agencies as well as how technology develops context specific meanings and uses. Insights from the research could help policymakers in Bangladesh develop a context-based approach to educational technology implementation.
Date of Award31 Aug 2021
Original languageEnglish
Awarding Institution
  • The University of Manchester
SupervisorDiane Slaouti (Supervisor) & Susan Brown (Supervisor)

Keywords

  • Educational Technology
  • Recursive shaping
  • Teachers use of technology in Bangladesh
  • Figured Worlds
  • Context sensitive educational research

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