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The birth of the cyberkid: a genealogy of the educational arena for assistive technology

Savas, Thomas
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1167751435

Abstract Details

2007, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Educational Policy and Leadership.
Within an educational arena of heterogeneous accumulations of power, lodged within the leaky attachment between technology and humanism, technology in special education happens. But how is authority and influence distributed among the actors in this arena, struggling over what is to some appearances a remote, low-incident interest and loss-leader, to some nothing but an unfunded mandate, and to some a life-changer? In this study, a deployment of wearable computers in special education was analyzed using methods of inquiry informed by genealogy and critical discourse analysis. Although not a methodology per se or a systematic theory, a genealogical project is a form of involvement in contemporary debate, dispute, and struggle and intervention in power/knowledge relations. In critical discourse analysis, formal features of discourse are cues to and traces of ideological conflict occurring behind language. For instance, the discursive features surrounding “work,” a concept at once laden with experiential value as a stable source of identity as well as an uncertainty induced by technology, are a cue to and trace of ideological conflict. The analysis suggests that the deployment put in tension teacher relations to technology. The deployment produced tension in the dividing practices of who shall receive assistive technology and who shall not, knowledge about which is configured in the microgaze of the state as an object that shall flow through a network of “targeted individuals.” Moreover, the heterogeneity of literacy was apparent, as the deployment redefined reading as listening – an accommodation that was seen by actors as an ethically lowered standard to ensure success, a source of self-esteem in special education, and a practice bespeaking the moral value of work.
Suzanne Damarin (Advisor)
146 p.
special education; assistive technology; wearable computing; Foucault; genealogy

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Savas, T. (2007). The birth of the cyberkid: a genealogy of the educational arena for assistive technology [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1167751435

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Savas, Thomas. The birth of the cyberkid: a genealogy of the educational arena for assistive technology. 2007. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1167751435.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Savas, Thomas. "The birth of the cyberkid: a genealogy of the educational arena for assistive technology." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2007. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1167751435

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1167751435
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© 2007, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.