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Metaphors we’re colonised by? The case of data-driven educational technologies in Brazil

2019; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 45; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/17439884.2019.1666872

1743-9892

Giselle Ferreira, Luiz Alexandre da Silva Rosado, Márcio Silveira Lemgruber, Jaciara de Sá Carvalho,

Social Media and Politics

This article discusses issues concerning the spread of data-driven educational technologies in Brazil. Here, as elsewhere, educational technology continues to be promoted optimistically as the bearer of a panacea for historically-rooted social problems. Whilst some of these technologies have indeed contributed to important widening-participation programmes in the last two decades, widespread advocacy of technological 'solutionism', reflected in gradually stronger policy demands for efficiencies to be improved through 'innovation', has supported a relentless marketisation of the country's educational systems. As transnational corporations position themselves to take control of key areas of these systems, threatening to restructure the whole sector, data-driven educational technologies provide the latest example in a series of 'new' ideas offered in an ever-expanding market. Based on the notion of 'conceptual metaphors', which encapsulate specific ways of perceiving, thinking and relating with the world, this article examines key metaphors underpinning discourses surrounding data-driven educational technologies in Brazil. In particular, the article analyses ways in which these specific metaphors may be promoting perspectives that ignore difference and obscure broader questions concerning education, thus contributing to the reproduction of previously existing problems and supporting new forms of colonisation.