New Keynesianism or smart austerity? Digital technologies and educational privatization post COVID-19

Abstract

The neoliberal hegemony has found its last expression in a technoeducational agenda that, organized in policy networks with concrete ramifications in each country (technological corporations, philanthropic foundations, lobbies and think tanks), governs the subjects as in no other historical epoch. Among its most significant trends is the expansion of markets towards even more spheres of education through digital platforms, teacher’s and student’s data valorization processes, as well as dynamics of privatization or deregulation that had not been present during the last more than a decade of austerity. Therefore, the objective of the article is to analyze the displacement of public power towards the private sector and the blocking of alternative pedagogical solutions different to the market as a result of the introduction of digital technologies in Spanish educational policy. In addition to a detailed analysis of public tenders (web scraping), the methodology is based on the analytical approaches of “Network Ethnography” and “Critical Discourse Analysis”. The results verify that the European mechanisms to eradicate inequalities or digital gaps in education, or NextGenerationEU, materialize in important programmatic agendas to digitize education that end up reinforcing Spanish national capitalists.

Uso de la realidad aumentada, la realidad virtual y la inteligencia artificial en educación secundaria: una revisión sistemática

“…Es posible que a causa de la pandemia de COVID-19 y la necesidad de implementar estrategias acordes para el aprendizaje en línea de los estudiantes, se halla generado un incremento significativo en la investigación relacionada con las TD (Saura et al, 2022). Aunque la revisión sistemática se realiza en el primer semestre del 2023, se observa que el número de artículos publicados en lo que va del año supera a los publicados en el año 2019 e iguala a los del año 2020.…”

Digital leap in the New Mexican school since the pandemic lockdown: Challenges for governance and pedagogical processes

“…The emergence of corporate actors in the governance processes of the educational system has given rise to new forms of political networks for digital governance (Saura et al, 2022). These networks have largely developed due to the formation of public-private partnerships (PPPs) and to the intervention of heterogeneous political actors, including corporations, foundations, think tanks, etc., and have become widespread as an effect of the COVID-19 pandemic and of the alliance-making between governments and various actors interested in education (Saura, 2020).…”

“…These decisions were favorable for big technology companies and startups that offered their products to schools and governments in need of solutions. The educational digitalization caused by the pandemic lockdown has been linked to a structural tendency of capitalism: accumulation through technologies (Saura et al, 2022).…”

Plataformas y digitalización de la educación pública: Explorando su adopción en Cataluña

“…Por otro lado, en el contexto de los países del sur de Europa, aunque existe una amplia literatura sobre la economía política de las reformas de privatización exógena y endógena (Antunes y Viseu, 2019;Peruzzo et al, 2022;Saura, 2015;Saura et al, 2022;Verger et al, 2019;Verger et al, 2016), aún hay pocos estudios que analicen los procesos de privatización ligados a la plataformización de la educación en esta región (Grimaldi et al, 2022). En este contexto, Cataluña resulta un caso especialmente relevante debido a su larga trayectoria de políticas de digitalización en el ámbito de la educación pública (Gros et al, 2020), y por el terreno que han ido ganando las grandes corporaciones tecnológicas en el campo educativo.…”