TY - JOUR

T1 - The platform classroom

T2 - Troubling student configurations in a Danish primary school

AU - Cone, Lucas

PY - 2023

Y1 - 2023

N2 - Spanning parent-communication and administration to content delivery and student monitoring, platforms have become an integral part of contemporary schooling. Building on two ethnographic episodes occurring in a Danish primary school in January 2020, this article engages in an analysis and discussion of how the ongoing platformization of schools affects the day-to-day relations of teachers and students in a 2nd and 9th grade class. The article draws on a posthuman theoretical framework to give an account of how two common education platforms used in the Danish primary school system – the MathFessor platform for mathematics, and the Gyldendal portal for Danish language lessons – become problematically constitutive of what and who matters in classroom interactions. By emphasizing and theorizing the relational embeddedness of education platforms, the episodes serve as invitations for a greater attentiveness to what bodies in schools can and cannot do in classroom-based platform practices. An attentiveness which, it is argued, extends well beyond the instrumental discourses of personalization, innovation, and efficiency surrounding the implementation and use of platforms in schools.

AB - Spanning parent-communication and administration to content delivery and student monitoring, platforms have become an integral part of contemporary schooling. Building on two ethnographic episodes occurring in a Danish primary school in January 2020, this article engages in an analysis and discussion of how the ongoing platformization of schools affects the day-to-day relations of teachers and students in a 2nd and 9th grade class. The article draws on a posthuman theoretical framework to give an account of how two common education platforms used in the Danish primary school system – the MathFessor platform for mathematics, and the Gyldendal portal for Danish language lessons – become problematically constitutive of what and who matters in classroom interactions. By emphasizing and theorizing the relational embeddedness of education platforms, the episodes serve as invitations for a greater attentiveness to what bodies in schools can and cannot do in classroom-based platform practices. An attentiveness which, it is argued, extends well beyond the instrumental discourses of personalization, innovation, and efficiency surrounding the implementation and use of platforms in schools.

U2 - 10.1080/17439884.2021.2010093

DO - 10.1080/17439884.2021.2010093

M3 - Journal article

VL - 48

SP - 52

EP - 64

JO - Learning, Media and Technology

JF - Learning, Media and Technology

SN - 1743-9884

IS - 1

ER -