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This paper provides a theoretical and conceptual analysis of educational technology (Ed-Tech) including its role in the administration and organization of schools, colleges, and universities; teachers’ pedagogical practices; and students’ learning. During and since the pandemic period, education has relied more heavily than ever on technological tools, products, and services—pedagogical innovations that require novel conceptual, theoretical, and critical perspectives for researchers to engage with. Thus, we employ the term Ed-Tech as a heuristic language to critically interrogate the ways by which the economic logic that underpins commercialized and commodified Ed-Tech continues to shape the sphere of education. This paper focuses on three interrelated concerns surrounding Ed-Tech: sales/privatization; solutions/pedagogy; and surveillance/privacy. A critical examination and discussion of each of these interconnected concepts and concerns reveal overt directions for where Ed-Tech is headed through the conceptualization of inertia, automation, and data. The paper concludes by drawing attention to the need for further empirical research and reflection that address current and future pedagogical practices in relation to the ethical dimensions of educational technologies.

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The earliest School Resource Officer Programs in Canada date back to the 1970s. This study examines how police officers, teachers, school administrators, students, and journalists use a discourse of relationship-building between police and youth to frame School Resource Officers (SROs): who they are, the work they do, their roles in students’ lives, and their value to the school community. Analyzing this discourse during the emergence of SRO Programs in Edmonton and Calgary, the study illustrates how relationship-building positions SROs positively within the school community, helping normalize police presence in schools. The findings help inform critical understanding of the contemporary persistence of the relationship-building discourse as justification for SRO programs, which often eclipses consideration of program ineffectiveness and harmful effects. Overall, the relationship-building discourse remains an institutional ruse that elides the key question: what do police in schools actually do to support the education of youth and to create equitable schools?

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We explore a site of unplanned, informal critical pedagogy and how raising critical conscious occurs. During the Covid-19 pandemic, some students in England were required to pay rent for accommodation they could not occupy, or which offered reduced amenities. These largely first-year undergraduates had yet to meet each other. Nonetheless, these students – many of whom are not the traditionally ‘oppressed’ - joined together to resist collectively, refusing to pay rent. Their action resulted in some partial victories. Through the lens of Freire’s critical pedagogy, we examine students’ lived experiences of participating in rent-strikes – using semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis. Ideas of dialogue, praxis and learning with others through collective resistance, pervade the data. The research fleshes-out these stages which interweave to raise critical consciousness. This offers a site of critical hope, providing insights into possibilities for realising critical pedagogy across a wider demographic in spite of a relentless neoliberal agenda.

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This paper explores the impacts of using Indigenous young adult literature with teacher candidates at a liberal arts university to develop their competence in Indigenous topics and issues. Research on the use of young adult literature for examining race, culture, and equity has shown the efficacy of the genre in supporting student learning in teacher education programs. The present study expands on this work and explores the use of Indigenous young adult literature texts to support student learning and understanding of the issues, identities, and experiences particular to Indigenous Peoples with attention to both historical and contemporary forms of settler colonialism. Through the analysis of 26 student interviews and an array of classroom artifacts, including student writing, class discussion notes, visual art projects, and reflective memos, students provided crucial insights into the need for deeper engagement with Indigenous topics.

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This article offers a retrospective analysis of discussions on citizenship, exploring the role of (in)visible difference, affect, and resistance. In group discussions with Norwegian youth, we found that positionality played a central role in framing understandings of citizenship, belonging, and discrimination. As white researchers who also experience (in)visible differences, we reflect on the students’ explicit discussions of difference, as well as their reactions to our implicit and explicitly acknowledged difference. Additional reflections are put forth on leveraging invisible difference to create space for an inclusive understanding of citizenship, resisting ideas of ethno-nationalism. This discussion demonstrates the potential which experiences with (in)visible difference have for contributing to more inclusive understandings of citizenship. Further potential implications are that acknowledgement of invisible difference by white majority educators may help to open space for an understanding of difference as a citizenship resource.