EdTech myths: towards a critical digital educational agenda

ABSTRACTMyths are universal narratives linked to objects, shaping social and personal identities. Technologies generate modern myths, influencing choices and impacting our lives. The present study focuses on EdTech myths. From a qualitative methodological approach based on codesign, five relevant EdTech myths are identified. Subsequently, the analysis was carried out from (1) a hermeneutic approach, based on the authors’ experience in the field of EdTech, and (2) a review and contrast of relevant scientific literature. The results explain, firstly, why these myths arise and persist in EdTech; secondly, the study can help to demystify them. In general, EdTech myths impoverish digital technology-mediated education because they consider it from an extensively reductionist perspective, especially from EdTech capitalism. This is why we need to pay more attention to EdTech myths, to set up an educational agenda leading to action categories and the critical transformation of the education–technology relationship.KEYWORDS: EdTechmythsdigital societycritical perspectivedigital education AcknowledgmentsWe thank Sofía Morandini, for her advice on language usage during the many ‘lost in translation’ moments from Spanish into English which we encountered in the original version of this article.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.Glossary CREARI=– Grupo de investigación en Pedagogías Culturales (CREARI) (GIUV2013–103)ESBRINA=– Contemporary Subjectivities, Visualities and Educational Environments (2021SGR–00686). http://esbrina.euEdul@b=Grupo de investigación en educación y TIC (2017SGR–1471). http://edulab.uoc.edu/Notes1. Educause is a nonprofit organisation that leads a network of 1800 higher education institutions including 450 members from the US industrial field. https://www.educause.edu/about2. Own analysis based on annual visits to the Google Scholar database. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=Horizon+Report&btnG = (visit made on 11 December 2020).Additional informationNotes on contributorsCristóbal Suárez-GuerreroCristóbal Suárez-Guerrero is an Associate Professor at the Department of Teaching and School Organisation at the University of Valencia and a member of the research group on cultural pedagogies (CREARI) at the same university. He holds a PhD focused on cooperative learning in virtual environments from the University of Salamanca (Spain) and a degree in Education, specialising in Philosophy and Social Sciences, from the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (Peru). His research focuses on digital pedagogy, pedagogical innovation and cooperative learning, digital competence and culture in education, and digital humanities.Pablo Rivera-VargasPablo Rivera-Vargas is an Associate Professor at the Department of Teaching and Educational Organisation at the University of Barcelona. He has a PhD in Education and Society (University of Barcelona) and a PhD in Sociology (University of Zaragoza). He is a member of the ESBRINA research group – Subjectivities, visualities and contemporary educational environments (2017SGR 1248). His research focuses on three main areas: analysing public policies for digital inclusion in formal and non-formal educational contexts, investigating the utilisation of digital platforms in schools, and studying the effects of platformisation and algorithmisation on education.Juliana RaffaghelliJuliana Raffaghelli is an Assistant Professor in Research Methods and Assessment in Education at Padua University. She is also an Associated Researcher of the consolidated Research Group Edul@b on Education and ICT at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya and at the University of the Autonomous University of Entre Ríos (Argentina). She coordinated and currently leads research activities on critical data literacies connected to educators’ professionalism and agency. A recent publication is Data Cultures in Higher Education: Emerging Practices and the Challenge Ahead (Springer).