Digital degrowth: toward radically sustainable education technology

Resource type
Journal Article
Author/contributor
Title
Digital degrowth: toward radically sustainable education technology
Abstract
This paper outlines how ideas of ‘degrowth’ might be used to reimagine sustainable forms of education technology. In essence, degrowth calls for a proactive renewal of technology use around goals of voluntary simplicity and slowing-down, community-based coproduction and sharing, alongside conscious minimalization of resource consumption. The paper considers how core degrowth principles of conviviality, commoning, autonomy and care have been used to develop various forms of ‘radically sustainable computing’. The paper then suggests four ways in which degrowth principles might frame future thinking around education technology in terms of: (i) curtailing current manipulative forms of education technology, (ii) bolstering existing convivial forms of education technology; (iii) stimulating the development of new convivial education technologies; and (iv) developing digital technologies to achieve the eventual de-schooling of society. It is concluded that mobilisation of these ideas might support a much-needed reorientation of digital technology in education along low-impact, equitable lines.
Publication
Learning, Media and Technology
Issue
0
Pages
1-14
Date
2023
ISSN
1743-9884
Short Title
Digital degrowth
Accessed
06/11/2023, 17:33
Library Catalogue
Taylor and Francis+NEJM
Extra
Publisher: Routledge _eprint: https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2022.2159978
Citation
Selwyn, N. (2023). Digital degrowth: toward radically sustainable education technology. Learning, Media and Technology, 0, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2022.2159978