As part of an ongoing project mounted by the Georg Eckert Institute, I have put together some thoughts on the various ways in which WPR might be useful in studying current developments in relation to digitalization in education. In the previous Research Hub entry on “computational thinking” (CT) we touched briefly on the growing proliferation of computer science courses and programs in CT at all levels of K-12 education in many countries. Wing (2010: 4-5) produces a long list of courses and programs in CT in American and UK professional organizations, government, academia, and industry. This growth, as noted previously, is not replicated in the Global South (Belmar 2022).
The topic of digitalization in education extends well beyond the discussions of CT. As will be seen in this entry, we can consider such innovations as facial recognition in educational settings and modes of electronic assessment in international programs, described by Biesta (2019) as the “global education measurement industry” (GEMI), as part of this topic. This entry suggests how WPR can be a useful tool in exploring this increasingly important dimension of education practices. It makes links to recent research articles that provide valuable insights into the sorts of questions that need to be asked and the range of methods that can be marshalled to assist in this task.
To guide this discussion I identify five ways, involving WPR, to produce useful analysis of developments in digitalized education practices:
- Consider the general proposition that the “problem” is represented to be lack of digitalization in education.
- Focus on particular policy statements that clarify this proposition – working backwards to identify implicit problem representations.
- Among the statements taken as starting points (proposals) for this analysis, include “visionary” statements (sociotechnical imaginaries).
- Focus on specific governmental mechanisms and how they operate.
- Focus on academic debates.
Let us take each of these in turn. For all five suggested modes of intervention, I provide brief comments on the theoretical precepts at work.
Consider the general proposition that the “problem” is represented to be lack of digitalization in education.
Elsewhere ( KEYNOTE ADDRESS – CAROL BACCHI – 18 August 2022) I have described how the WPR analytic strategy can be used to identify the ways in which policy “problems”, and other “problems”, are produced as particular sorts of problems. I have suggested starting from what I call “proposals” (or proposed solutions) and “working backwards” to see how the “problem” is represented within them. The argument here is that what is proposed as an intervention reveals a target for change and hence what is produced/represented as problematic, as “the problem”. For example, a policy that introduces an activity regime for children as a response to so-called “childhood obesity” produces the “problem” as children’s lack of activity. That is, children’s “obesity” is problematized in terms of children’s lack of activity. This problematization becomes what I call a “problem representation”. It provides the starting point for the remaining WPR questions that target underlying presuppositions, genealogy and effects (see Alexander & Coveney 2013; Alexander et al. 2014).
Applied to the topic of digitalization and education, one could start with the proposition that, if digitalization (in its many guises) is put forward as the proposal/proposed solution, it follows that lack of digitalization is produced as the “problem”. Does this reframing advance the analysis in any way? It assists subsequent stages of critical analysis by providing a focal point for further interrogation. This further interrogation takes us to the WPR list of questions (Bacchi and Goodwin 2016: 20).
Question 2 is pivotal. It reads: “What deep-seated presuppositions or assumptions underlie this representation of the “problem” (problem representation)”. Basically, the point of this question is to probe how the concept “digitalization” is conceptualized since this will affect what is “done” in its name. Another way to put this point is to ask what meanings need to be in place for this concept to be intelligible. Identifying such meanings opens the concept to critical reflection on its operation in policy and other programs. Digitalization does not have a clear and obvious meaning. It depends for its meaning on a specific conception of knowledge, on notions of technological “progress”, on conceptions of human capacities (link to CT in previous blog).
Clearly proposals in favour of digitalization in education are tied to certain problematizations of education – an example of what I call “nesting”. “Nesting” refers to the ways in which problem representations “nest” or reside within one another, requiring the use of the WPR questions several times in the one analysis. In the case in hand, approaches to digitalization in education will be linked to conceptions of education as either an instrumental tool for career advancement or, by contrast, as an emancipatory practice. Question 2 provides the space to consider how these competing perspectives on education get played out in the field of digitalization (see Hanell 2018).
As part of a WPR analysis, there would also be a need to take a “long view” of the digitalization debate (Question 3). That is, it is necessary to consider contesting positions on the role of technology in general, and over time.
Subsequent questions would prompt reflections on alternative problematizations (Q4), the effects of focusing on digitalization as a key to educational development (Q5), the specific practices involved in supporting this position (Q6) and how one’s own proposals problematize the issue (Step 7).
- Use specific policy proposals to elaborate the kind of “problem” lack of digitalization is represented to be.
To proceed with our analysis, it is necessary to identify proposals or proposed solutions in the selected texts or other forms of site (e.g. buildings, maps, etc.). This analytic strategy is linked to Foucault’s recommendation that critical analysis start from “practical texts” or “prescriptive texts” that provide guides to conduct (Bacchi 2009: 34). Building on this recommendation, WPR postulates that any proposal for change signals what needs to change and hence what is represented and produced as problematic (as “the problem”). Proposals for change therefore allow us to identify problematizations or problem representations.
What do “proposals” look like? They could appear as “aims” or “objectives” in the selected texts/material. They could, as we shall see shortly, appear as visionary statements about the future – proposals about all the “good things” that will follow digitalization. They are sometimes more oblique and difficult to recognize. For example, a general statement about digitalization increasing employability (i.e. lacking any specific directions for change) is still a form of proposal in which people’s lack of employability is represented to be a “problem”.
I offer Etienne Woo’s paper on China’s World Class University (WCU) policy to illustrate this thinking at work. Woo uses extracts from the WCU Plan 2015 as proposals that prompt a WPR analysis. The WCU Plan is put forward as a “practical” or “prescriptive” text. The “prescriptions” read:
The most prominent problem appears to be that an insufficient number of WCUs and world-class disciplines within universities is holding back on “China’s core national competitiveness” and the “foundation of long-term development” and impeding the “historical leap from a big country of higher education to a country of powerful higher education” (WCU Plan 2015, Introduction).
Woo proceeds to apply the WPR questions to these proposals, producing an insightful analysis (see also Hoydal et al. 2021).
Another article by Zhou et al. (2022), on the internationalization of China’s higher education policy, adopts a mode of WPR analysis described as an “integrated analysis”. It follows the form of application adopted in the last five chapters of Analysing Policy (Bacchi 2009) where the WPR questions are not explicitly stated but operate in the background of the analysis. To signal their relevance at certain points, I use the notation Q1, Q2 etc. Zhou et al. adopt this convention, which is actually unnecessary. I introduced the notation system to illustrate an analytic point. I apologize if readers thought I meant for them to apply the notations. In a Research Hub entry on 31 July 2021, I offer Larsson’s (2021) article as a useful example of how to use WPR in an integrated analysis without adopting the notation. Larsson illustrates how it is possible to perform a WPR analysis without listing the WPR questions (i.e. they operate in the background).
Regardless of whether one adopts a style of analysis that applies the WPR questions sequentially or an “integrated analysis”, starting one’s analysis for explicitly stated proposals works best to identify problem representations.
- Starting from visionary statements/proposals.
I have decided to include visionary statements, sometimes referred to as “sociotechnical imaginaries”, as a form of proposal, with the proviso that “ideas” are not seen as drivers of change. Lina Rahm (2021) makes a strong case for the usefulness of “imaginaries” as focal points for WPR-style analyses. A special Research Hub entry (29 Nov 2022), entitled, “Sociotechnical imaginaries and WPR: Exploring connections”, canvases some of the theoretical points that deserve attention should a researcher decide to proceed down this path. This extract from the WCU Plan 2015 signals this potentially fruitful analytical target: “historical leap from a big country of higher education to a country of powerful higher education” (WCU Plan 2015, Introduction in Woo 2022).
- Focus on specific governmental mechanisms and how they operate
To study governing practices in the broad sense associated with governmentality (Bacchi and Goodwin 2016: 42) attention is directed to “rationalities” and “technologies” in both conventional political institutions and in the multiple agencies and groups (academics, professionals, experts) which contribute to societal administration. Governmental rationalities are the rationales produced to justify particular modes of rule, to make “some form of that activity thinkable and practicable both to its practitioners and to those upon whom it was practiced” (Gordon 1991: 3). “Technologies” encompass the mechanisms through which governing takes place, including specific instruments such as censuses, league tables, performance data, and case management, and the vast array of programs and policies produced to shape the conduct of individuals and groups.
I have selected three mechanisms relevant to the topic of digitalization in education, indicating how each can be analysed using WPR. The three mechanisms include: “learning to code”, facial recognition and international forms of assessment/evaluation.
Williamson (2016) targets the idea of “learning to code” as part of a major reform agenda in education policy in England. His analysis draws upon a governmentality perspective to highlight the influence of “networks between governmental, civil society and commercial actors”. A particular focus is the subjectification effects of proposals to include “learning to code” in K-12 curricula (Question 5 in WPR). According to Williamson, through such programs, CT shapes students’ digital subjectivities, preparing them as:
“the ideal participants for the ‘digital governance’ of the reluctant state, as citizens with the technical skills, computational thinking and solutionist mindsets to ‘hack’ solutions to problems of contemporary governance on behalf of the government.” (Williamson 2016: 54)
Andrejevic and Selwyn (2019) produce a useful analysis of the introduction of facial recognition of students as a governing mechanism. They raise the sorts of questions that a WPR analysis would encourage. For example, they elaborate the model of learning that accompanies facial recognition technologies, a model of learning that marginalises issues of social context. They argue that “learning is reduced to a set of psychological traits and characteristics that are discernible through the face, and are open to manipulation” (Andrejevic and Selwyn 2019: 7). Emphasizing the importance of resistance practices, they draw on de Certeau (1984) to consider the deployment of improvised and opportunistic “tactics”. On the topic of resistance (Question 6 in WPR), Magilchrist draws attention to “marginal subject figures” who “create diffraction patterns, illustrating how the world can look otherwise” (2018: 8; see also 2019).
As a third mechanism I have chosen forms of assessment of students and how these modes of assessment produce “problems” as particular sorts of problems. My target is the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), introduced by the OECD (see Bacchi 2020). The kinds of questions WPR brings to the topic include: What sorts of things are tested for? What assumptions about “knowledge” and “skills” underpin the testing regimes? What implications follow for students and education more generally? Grek (2014) points out that what can be measured becomes what is tested for, shaping educational outcomes. Thoutenhoofd (2018) notes that learning becomes what the data are making visible, that is, specific tasks that become measurable outcomes, dubbed “learnification” by Biesta (2015).
- Focus on academic debates
WPR can be used to analyse the theoretical literature on digitalization and education. In Analysing Policy (2009: 249) I explain that all theories are forms of proposal and therefore contain problem representations. Hence, they can be subjected, productively, to the questions in the “What’s the Problem Represented to be?” approach. I follow up this suggestion in my analyses of health policy (pp. 128-136), criminal justice policy (pp. 103-105) and gambling policy (pp. 249-251).
Other authors have pursued the suggestion that WPR can be applied to forms of academic text and argument. See for example Månsson, J., & Ekendahl, M. (2015). In an article on contrasting approaches to the notion of critique or criticality, Primdahl et al. (2018) undertake an analysis of the “content of the argumentation” in terms of problematizations, in effect applying WPR to the selected articles. In an example relevant to the topic of digitalization and education, Puukko (2024) uses WPR to study problem representations in the academic accounts of mobilizations. As Backman and Lofstrand (2022: 273) argue, “every piece of published research is in a sense a ‘prescriptive text’”. This insight means that every piece of published research is a form of proposal, with implicit problem representations. It therefore becomes possible to use WPR to produce interesting literature reviews.
My goal in this entry has been to provide some guidance on how to identify projects in the field of digitalization and education that invite a WPR analysis. I have no doubt that there are many others and would welcome you sharing them with me or with the WPR list. My hope is that some of you may feel inspired to pursue one of these options. It is a topic that demands attention.
References
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Carol Bacchi 