From Constructivism to Normative Critique: Technology, History, and Politics

Abstract

The evangelical discourse makes a claim for online education’s essence in connecting it with specific directions in university reform. Critics pick up on this and identify technology with economic rationalization in higher education. But even a brief glance at its history suggests that online education is capable of varying realizations corresponding to different values. Failure to note this has proved problematic for critics. In collapsing online education into a single reform agenda, critics reproduce and legitimize the evangelical discourse. That the claims of this discourse could be contingent does not occur to many critics, nor does the notion that online education could develop along different paths, some of which might lie outside the evangelical discourse or even disrupt it. Critics thus obscure technology as a site of struggle over the future of the university, ignoring the possibility that the values, tendencies, and meanings embodied in online education could be exactly what are up for grabs.