A discourse and rhetorical analysis of technological subjectivities of teachers and students within selected educational technology texts

This dissertation analyzes public and academic pedagogical and technological discourses of educational technology to identify constructed subjectivities, of teachers and students and the strategies that support these constructions. These concerns lead to the following research questions: (1) that are the predominant subjectivities of students and teachers that are constructed by selected educational technology texts and how do they relate to the discourses in which these subjectivities make sense? (2) How do a selected set of educational technology texts use discourses and rhetoric to support the identified subjectivities? (3) What are some of the implications of these subjectivities for relations of pedagogy and conceptions of teaching and learning that involve technology?;The results of the analysis of the study documents presented in this dissertation show that descriptions of accomplished technology users are related to Sophia's (1998) notion of the technophile as one having an uncritical love of technology. Teachers are described as technophobes who are passive in the face of or who actively resist technological change. Computer technology is prescribed to bypass teachers, a trend historically related to major educational technology interventions in schooling in the past such as instructional television (De Vaney, 1990). The discourses of reform with technology are a form of boosterism that is linked with historical discourses of technology-as-progress.;It is evident in all these documents that the characteristics of being active, being in control, and having expertise are shifting from the teacher to the student resulting in a deskilling of teachers. In these documents a technological subjectivity is now based on a new vocationalism (Kliebard, 1999) in which the purpose of education is to prepare teachers and students for the roles that they will play in the new digital economy. Schools become job-training sites and student assessment is based on the suitability of student 'products' to the needs of business 'clients'.