Critical Consciousness – Spirit of Paulo Friere

Ben Williamson

The globally popular classroom behaviour management app ClassDojo is being extended into a tool to support children’s ‘character development’ and ‘growth mindsets.’ ClassDojo illustrates how new educational technologies are simultaneously the product of venture capital investment and new psychological and neuroscientific conceptualizations of learning.

Here I want to open up some possible lines for further critical inquiry into ClassDojo, focusing in particular on gamification, behavioural surveillance, its links to new psychological and neuroscientific concepts of ‘character development,’ ‘growth mindsets’ and ‘neuroplasticity,’ and its support from venture capital sources in Silicon Valley. ClassDojo represents a nexus of technical innovation, scientific categorization, and entrepreneurial culture.

Behavioural gamification
ClassDojo is a free mobile app that allows teachers to award ‘positive behaviour’ points for individual children’s behaviour and participation in the classroom. Launched in 2011, by 2015 its founders reported over 3 million subscribing teachers, serving 30 million students across 180 countries…

Ben Williamson

Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are linking public education into their growing networks of activity and influence. Image by Steve Jurvetson

In the same week that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos announced a major move into education provision, the FBI issued a stark warning about the risks posed to children by education technologies. These two events illustrate clearly how ed-tech has become a significant site of controversy, a power struggle between hugely wealthy tech entrepreneurs and those concerned by their attempts to colonize the education sector with their imaginaries and technologies. Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and other super-wealthy Silicon Valley actors, are forming alternative visions and approaches to education from pre-school through primary and high schooling to university. They’re the new power-elite of education and their influence is spreading.

I’ve previously written about the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and venture capitalists making a power-grab for the education sector. Benjamin Doxtdator