Digital Maturity as a response to Disruptive Technology
I'm sure that anyone who works in EdTech has, at some point in their career been confronted with the idea that technology has in some way disrupted education. In some senses that's been a good thing in situations where learning and teaching practice have been found to stagnate, providing the proverbial kick-in-the-pants that we all need from time to time. But the idea of educational disruption has come to take on a new meaning in the past few years. My ongoing reading in the work of Tinto (1993) and a recent conversation with Dr. Azumah Dennis and @DrJaneCullen of the Open University have given me thought to consider, what is it that's actually been disrupted? And, if there has been disruption, how long will the disruption last?
So I was intrigued when I read Myers (2021) take on "Digital Maturity".
("Preventing disruptive technologies from disrupting education" by opensourceway is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.)
By definition, disruption refers to problems which interrupt an activity event or process and can refer to radical change. From my point of view, I'm not going to deny how irritating the constant interruptions of notifications popping up on my mobile devices via email or other messaging and conferencing platforms. But that's been happening since long before the pandemic. I quickly got into a routine of switching off notifications when I didn't want to be disturbed. So what's new about the disruptions we're facing now?
Tinto's work on learner attrition (1993) provides in his work an interesting definition. It was simply a definiton to answer the question of, "What is a classroom?"
"Classrooms... can be understood as smaller educational communities that serve as both gateways to and intersections for the broader academic and social communities of the college."
Wow - that's a lot going on in a small room! I think I always realised that my classroom was an intersectional space. But to see it in black and white like that really hammers the point home. But what got me thinking here was how this doesn't preclude the digital space. We're used to interacting and socialising with our learner face-to-face in classrooms. But it's not so easy, or comfortable, in the digital space. In embracing hybrid learning, our classrooms have evolved and in doing so, education professionals are having to reframe their professional identities as documented by Cronin (2017). I can see how that could be disruptive!
So then I started to extend the idea to encompass staff working areas, offices etc. How do you define an office? To paraphrase Tinto, could our office spaces be considered gateways to and intersections for academic and social communities of the college? Do we socialise with our colleagues? Or has our new found appreciation of hybrid working conditions led to deserted office buildings and a weakened sense of togetherness? Perhaps our new found level of work-life balance is shifting our priorities away from the office? Arguably more disruption to normal working practices. (Though I have to acknowledge one important fact. I don't have a large circle of friends but I'm at my best when I share time with them. I much prefer a human handshake or hug to a thumbs up or smiley face emoji any day. Funny that I never used to consider myself a hugger! Things change I suppose.)
Then I got to thinking about leadership. How does anyone go about presenting themselves as an authentic leader (Myers, 2021) in a hybrid working environment where it is arguably easier to become more distant and dehumanised than ever before?
Connelly and Morris (2017) documented the, "continual technology disruption affecting individual industries and organisations", and the, "new workforce dynamics", that emerge from developments in technology. They also record how those with power, "tend to have a reduced tendency to adopt others points of view, maintain greater interpersonal distance... and increase the mechanisms of deindividualisation which is closely linked with dehumanisation." The same phenomenon of "dehumanisation of education in many environments" is also documented by Alhumaid (2019). For those who already maintain greater interpersonal distance as a necessary part of their professional identity in order to enact balances procesing and decision making, having to interact with others by means of technology, further increasing that interpersonal distance, must be awful. Tinto (1993) goes to some effort to document how detrimental interpersonal distance and social isolation can be to communities of learning. This is yet more disruption for, what is a community of learning without effective leadership? Indeed Galley et al. (2014) highlights the importance of leadership heirarchy in supporting social cohesion their community indicators framework.
I'd hate to be dehumanised in any way. I'm not in any way in a position of hierarchical leadership but I would like to think that, if I was ever granted that privilege, I would never dehumanised my team or my colleagues intentionally. Similarly, I'd hate to imagine what it would feel like if my team saw me as some kind of corporate robot firing off emails void of any sense of feeling or conscience. Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating for a National Hug Your Boss day. But they are human and that's easily forgotten amidst the pressures and stresses of work.
But the big thing that hit me was the challenge of duality - how leaders physical and digital identities need to marry up. Every like, comment or share is taken as a representation of their core values and a reflection on them as a person. So while relational transparency, a componenet of authentic leadership (Chaudhary & Panda, 2018 as cited by Myers (2021) requires presentation of your emotions and thoughts through an undistorted image of one's self, that can sometimes be very hard to do when you've had a really tough day at the office and all you want to do is vent your frustrations.
It's tough at the top - that's no secret! And as technology continues to change the way we work it's only going to get tougher. But this article by Myers (2021) makes two obervations that I want to leave you with:
(1) Virtual presence and support provided by leaders can lead to physical real-life actions and results in the workplace.
(2) Real-life actions take by leaders in the workplace can result in virtual influence.
Perhaps, though the idea of technology disrupting education isn't new, perhaps the disruption itself is manifesting in new and much more personal ways. Are we digitally mature enough to handle it?
I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. You can respond by leaving a comment or by following me on twitter @McintoshMclean.
References
Alhumaid, Khadija. (2019). Four Ways Technology Has Negatively Changed Education. Journal of Educational and Social Research. 9. 10-20. 10.2478/jesr-2019-0049.
Myers, D. (2021). Authentic Leadership in a Digital World. In: Winston, B.E. (eds) Transparent and Authentic Leadership. Christian Faith Perspectives in Leadership and Business. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61996-1_2
Connally, Patrick & Morris, Lonnie. (2019). The Impact of Emerging Technology on Leadership Development. DOI: 10.4018/978-1-5225-8356-1.ch092.
Cronin, C. (2017), Openness and Praxis: Exploring the Use of Open Educational Practices in Higher Education [Online]. Available at: https://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/3096/4263 (Accessed 18th May 2022).
Galley, R., Conole, G. and Alevizou, P. (2014) ‘Community
indicators: a framework for observing and supporting community activity on
Cloudworks’, Interactive learning environments, 22(3), pp. 373–395. doi:10.1080/10494820.2012.680965.
Tinto, V. (1993) Leaving College: Rethinking the Causes and Cures of Student Attrition [ebook reader], London, University of Chicago Press.
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