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This article was downloaded by: [69.125.173.99]On: 03 April 2014, At: 23:06Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Learning, Media and TechnologyPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjem20
Learning, Media and Technology:looking backwards and moving forwardNeil Selwyn & Martin OliverPublished online: 24 Mar 2011.
To cite this article: Neil Selwyn & Martin Oliver (2011) Learning, Media and Technology:looking backwards and moving forward, Learning, Media and Technology, 36:1, 1-3, DOI:10.1080/17439884.2011.557916
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2011.557916
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Learning, Media and TechnologyVol. 36, No. 1, March 2011, 1–3
ISSN 1743-9884 print/ISSN 1743-9892 online© 2011 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/17439884.2011.557916http://www.informaworld.com
EDITORIAL
Learning, Media and Technology: looking backwards and moving forward
Taylor and FrancisCJEM_A_557916.sgm10.1080/17439884.2011.557916Learning, Media and Technology1743-9884 (print)/1743-9892 (online)Editorial2011Taylor & Francis00000000002011Dr [email protected]
This first issue of volume 36 marks the retirement of Cathy Lewin as editor.Over the last five years Cathy has overseen a number of changes and transfor-mations to the journal. Cathy played a large part in the successful merger ofLearning, Media & Technology and Education, Communication & Informationinto the journal that you are now reading. She was also instrumental in expand-ing the publication schedule to four issues a year, as well as commissioning anumber of cutting-edge ‘special issue’ collections. Most recently Cathy hasworked hard with colleagues at Taylor & Francis to ensure that the journal isincluded in the Social Sciences Citation Index and the Arts & Humanities Cita-tion Index. For all these reasons (and more) Cathy has been a key part of thejournal’s recent success. So on behalf of the editorial board, we would like tothank Cathy for her hard work, and look forward to her continued role as aneditorial board member. To take on some of the responsibilities that Cathy isleaving behind, we would like to welcome Rebecca Eynon from the Universityof Oxford as an incoming member of the editorial team.
These changes present an opportunity to reflect on what the journal hasbecome over the past five years, and the direction that we hope it will take inthe near future. Certainly the fields of educational technology and educationalmedia have changed dramatically during this period. Learning, Media andTechnology has featured a growing number of articles on the educational impli-cations of various ‘social media’ tools and applications – from Facebook toSecondlife, from YouTube to Twitter. Authors are now considering the educa-tional implications of ‘the cloud’, the ‘semantic web’ and the growing conver-gence of different media forms and practices, produced and consumed using avariety of portable platforms and personalised devices. Alongside the continualtechnical (re)development of tools and applications there have been somesubstantial shifts in the nature of technology-based practices and activities.These include the apparent rise of ‘informal’ and ‘hyper-individualised’ educa-tional practices as well as the concurrent ‘mass socialisation’ of technology-based learning. Academic interest in the consequences of technology andmedia use for knowledge, learning and pedagogy have therefore shifted awayfrom linear issues of ‘use’ and ‘outcomes’ to more nuanced concerns with thedesign and evaluation of learning technologies, as well as the social complex-ities of their use in situ.
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With all these changes in mind, it is crucial for a journal like Learning,Media and Technology to approach the topics of educational technology andeducational media in an inquisitive and open-minded manner, while keeping arigorous and critical eye on the more excessive and exaggerated aspects of thefield. These qualities of rigour and criticality are especially important withregards to the nature of the empirical work that is conducted (and published)in the name of educational technology and media. As editors we are concerned– first and foremost – with helping the journal live up to its stated aim ofpublishing ‘critical and comparative analyses including paradigms and meth-odologies that cross disciplinary and cultural boundaries’. Many of the articlesthat are unsuccessfully submitted for publication in the journal fall downprimarily in terms of the quality of their data collection and subsequent anal-yses. While there is a place for descriptive small-scale case studies of individ-ual technologies in specific contexts, the fields of educational technology andeducational media urgently need to expand their methodological horizons.Where are the rich ethnographic studies of educational technology and mediause? Where are the detailed statistical studies, randomised controlled trials ormeta-analyses? Where is the methodological sophistication that our fielddeserves?
Similarly, the theoretical development of the field needs writers andresearchers to challenge some of the cosy assumptions and received wisdomsthat inform work in this area. Far too often, educational technology and mediajournals feature a succession of relatively interchangeable (and relativelyuninspired) socio-constructivist tinged accounts of ‘learning’ and ‘technol-ogy’. Often these accounts – while interesting – offer little critical reflectionon the goodness of fit between the twentieth-century learning theory beingapplied and the twenty-first-century learning practices being discussed. Theresurely must be more to the field of educational technology than the (mis)useof Vygotskian theory, notions of ‘communities of practice’ and so on. Therehave certainly been developments in related fields that could usefully informresearch here. We need more sustained attempts at theory building in order tounderstand the roles that contemporary media and technology play in educa-tional contexts. We also need serious engagement with the wider develop-ments over the last 20 years or so in terms of social theory, psychologicaltheory and so on. Our research should not just draw from these traditions,using them to justify what we are doing, but should be rich and rigorousenough to contribute back to them as well.
On a final note of soul-searching, it would be wonderful to hope that thenext five years of Learning, Media and Technology can contribute to a broad-ening of the disciplinary scope of debate. A journal such as ours should makegreater efforts to include the voices and perspectives of scholars workingoutside of education studies and social psychology. Recent issues have seen agrowing influx of contributions from writers and researchers working in geog-raphy, communications studies, sociology, computer science and beyond. This
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breaking down of disciplinary barriers is surely key to the continued successof the journal. Our hope is that Learning, Media and Technology should beseen as a broad church for critical, rigorous and challenging debate – regardlessof subject discipline or ‘–ism’.
Feel free to remind us in five years’ time of how successful (or not) wehave been in realising all of these ambitions …
Neil Selwyn and Martin OliverEditors
[email protected]@ioe.ac.uk
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