The Machine Stops

Essentialism refers to a tendency to perceive people, groups of people or things as having innate or inherent properties (or essences) that are independent of their social contexts. It is a common bias, for example when people talk about German efficiency or female intuition, they are attributing the origin of a property to a complex and dynamic object (a national culture or a human being), which doesn't account for emergence, difference or change.

Essentialism has ancient roots, being found in the works of Plato and Aristotle, who held that all things have a form or a substance that makes them what they are. These ideas, while often criticised, have endured into late modernity.

Techno-essentialism refers to the tendency to attribute powers or properties to a technology. Essentialist thinking is very common in learning technology. For example, a tech company might offer a product which promises to be “personalised, practical, and adaptable” when it is not the technology itself, but the way it is used that gives rise to these properties. Essentialism in this form is pernicious and potentially dangerous, and we have to be critical about the claims made by Ed Tech companies about the effectiveness of their products.

Techno-essentialist thinking has an impact on the way teachers and students think of and apply technology and also the institutional processes behind the procurement and administration of technology. However, in its most extreme form, it is irrational and deterministic, where simply the presence of technology implies some kind of force for learning. For example an interactive whiteboard in a classroom promises opportunities for learning, though it may be used in non-optimal ways, or not used at all, and requires teachers to use it even when its effectiveness is not well-established. It also shapes the structure of the classroom, moving attention away from each other and towards the screen at the front.

Similarly, online platforms such as ClassDojo offer ways of managing and distributing learning tasks and observing student performance by way of data analytics. But, it also operates in a way that is difficult to avoid and practices that may not be conducive to learning, such as competition and ranking of students, may be introduced to the classroom even if they are not valued.