RESEARCHING THE EDTECH INDUSTRY FOR CHILDREN: METHODOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS ON A DESIGN-BASED APPROACH

Resumen

Digital platforms and services are making inroads into the everyday lives of even very young children. As with many other domains of life, children’s learning and education are increasingly digitised through ‘educational technology’ software, or more commonly EdTech. The rise of the EdTech industry provokes new questions about children’s education in the digital age. Methodologically, studying the EdTech industry for children largely falls in the field of the political economy of digital childhood, an interdisciplinary research agenda underpinned by an overall interest in understanding the critical roles of institutions, especially companies and governments, in producing and distributing digital services that shape children’s and families’ everyday consumption of digital technologies. This paper focuses on the methodological offerings of a design-based method for researching the political economy of digital childhood. We explore how a design-based approach is compatible with the research interests of a political economy perspective by drawing on the processes and findings of a collaborative design intervention study which aimed to conceptualise and build a database of EdTech companies and products for young children living in Australia. Based on the findings of the Database, this paper illustrates how the design-based approach employed in this study enabled the researchers to identify the key EdTech industry trends and characteristics, surfaces the power asymmetry between EdTech corporations and individual users, and provoke new ideas and imaginaries among parents and educators to address these challenges.