Spencer P. Greenhalgh

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to argue that Jacques Ellul, a 20th-century French technology critic, provides important theoretical perspectives for educational researchers as they critically examine artificial intelligence (AI). Design/methodology/approach: In this conceptual paper, the author introduces two key concepts from Ellulian thought, his definition of technique and his skepticism of facts, and illustrates their relevance through examples of how they might guide consideration of AI technologies in education. Each of these concepts is accompanied by multiple brief examples as well as an extended (if necessarily incomplete) consideration of one specific issue. Findings: The author demonstrates how Ellul’s writing on technique invites us to consider broader and more interconnected phenomena than just a single AI tool; likewise, he shows how Ellul’s skepticism of facts can be used to evaluate epistemological assumptions and be more critical about media. Originality/value: While Ellul is not unknown in the literatures on education, AI or the convergence of the two, many references to his work only engage with him and his ideas in passing. By contrast, the author provides an extended demonstration of how sustained engagement with Ellul’s thinking can inspire and shape researchers’ critical consideration of AI technologies in education.

The affinity space framework has proven useful for explaining and understanding teacher activity on social media platforms. In this study, we explore the ‘dark side’ of teacher affinity spaces by documenting a partisan teachers' group on an alternative social media platform. We used a mix of a priori and emergent coding to analyse screenshots of posts and comments from a public teachers' group and group administrators' activity on the broader platform. Findings indicate that although the group administrators began with a focus on teachers, most participants were non‐teachers with political (rather than professional) concerns about US education. Furthermore, administrators both freely engaged with political talking points in their activity outside the teachers' group and allowed the broader platform culture—including conspiratorial thinking, explicit racism and out‐group villainization—to seep in. We conclude by describing how these findings correspond with the key characteristics of an affinity space, including an overlapping of affinities, a lack of concern for professional qualifications, and influence from the broader platform. These findings provide an illustrative example of how teacher affinity spaces can drift from their stated intention within the larger platform context. Practitioner notes: What is already known about this topic Social media spaces have been conceptualized as affinity spaces for educators. Most studies provide optimistic accounts of teacher professional learning on social media. Most research has analysed teachers' use of mainstream platforms. What this paper adds We offer a detailed analysis of a partisan US teacher group on an alternative platform. Initial efforts to focus on teaching devolved into in‐group identification and out‐group villainization. This study highlights how the characteristics of affinity spaces can be detrimental to teacher professional learning. Implications for practice and/or policy Administrators of online groups should recognize their important role in ensuring group purposes are enacted. Educators should assess whether the larger platform is conducive to cultivating affinity around the group's aims. Scholars and educators should consider that the characteristics of affinity spaces can be either positive or negative for teacher professional learning.

This article presents a critical discourse analysis of groups on the free speech social media platform Gab that were intended to be LGBTQ+-friendly but became spaces of queerphobia. Results indicate that Gab users deployed discourses of difference to situate the platform as heteronormative and to denigrate the LGBTQ+ community. In particular, discourses utilized in the name of free speech were used to establish LGBTQ+ individuals as abominations, undergird hegemonic masculinity, and marginalize queer folk by reducing them to sex acts and sex organs. This study provides a better understanding of the (in)efficacy of "free speech" as a content moderation policy and unpacks how anti-LGBTQ+ hate speech spreads in digital spaces.

Of all the changes made in response to the 2018 decision to emphasize the full name of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, those made to the official Latter-day Saint web and digital presence stand out in particular. If the depth of the Latter-day Saint leadership's commitment to this emphasis is evident in changes to names of well-known institutions such as the Mormon Tabernacle Choir (now The Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square), the scope of Latter-day Saint presence on the internet and in other digital spheres required a breadth of commitment after the 2018 decision that is worthy of attention. For example, by February 2020,¹ Latter-day Saint officials had reported renaming hundreds of web and mobile apps, making iterative changes to its social media presence, changing the name of the wireless network in Latter-day Saint church buildings, and rolling out new versions of long-existing websites.

Deeper assumptions frequently shape the ways educational technology stakeholders collect and use data. This influence of assumptions on data decisions makes it critical that educational technology stakeholders engage with deeper assumptions as part of ethical considerations; indeed, they are key to ensuring that stakeholders engage with structural issues in education and educational technology rather than use ethical compliance as a superficial nod to questions of justice, harm, and power. In this chapter, I illustrate the relationship between deep assumptions and data ethics by considering assumptions related to four broad questions about the purpose of education, the purpose of educational technology, the determination of quality in educational (technology) research, and who has what say in these domains. Debates about data ethics are often better understood as debates about these deeper assumptions, which must be surfaced to consider data ethics in our field thoroughly.

This autoethnography is about paradigm shift in my professional and personal lives. My experiences with Cultures and Languages Across the Curriculum (CLAC) happened as I was transitioning from a brief career as a French teacher to my current, data science–adjacent academic career—a time that also invited me to re-evaluate many of my personal commitments. If teaching French is an engaged, cultural endeavor that prizes meaning, data science is often held up as an objective, technical endeavor that prizes truth. Yet, throughout my career, I have taken a somewhat backward approach. In this chapter, I tell the story of how teaching in a CLAC program helped me realize that I was bringing a “data science paradigm” to French, which later inspired me to bring a “French teacher's paradigm” to data science. I also describe how these changes accompanied and informed the ongoing shift from objectivity and truth to engagement and meaning in my personal life.

There is an abundance of scholarship documenting educators’ uses of for-profit social media platforms for professional learning, but little is known about how inauthentic accounts affect those experiences. We studied 83 state-sponsored accounts’ interactions with the teacher-focused #Edchat hashtag by analyzing their profiles, profiles of accounts they retweeted, and tweets they shared. We found no patterns of overt state interference in #Edchat; however, state-sponsored accounts amplified other inauthentic accounts, such as those focused on commercial, spam, and self-promoting #Edchat messages. Most state accounts used formulaic methods to create relatable account profiles that may go unnoticed by educators using the hashtag. These findings raise questions for educators and researchers about disinformation, anonymity, attention-seeking, and information glut in social media environments polluted by inauthentic amplification.