‘Online all the time’ Teachers’ work in the digital age

Professor Neil Selwyn, Professor in the Faculty of Education, Monash University, gives a talk for the Department of Education Public Seminars series. This seminar explores the ways in which digital technologies are now implicated in teachers’ work and labour. Drawing upon in-depth ethnographic studies of three Australian high schools, Neil will detail the ways in which teachers’ work is now enacted along digital lines – often in notably intensified, standardized and evidenced ways. However, these research findings also raise questions regarding the extent to which these digitisations can be said to constitute wholly ‘new’ labour conditions – pointing to continuities and disjunctures between teachers’ work with and without digital technology. As such, Neil will also consider the differentiated experiences of these conditions across teaching workforces. We conclude by considering how more equitable and/or empowering working conditions might be achievable through alternate uses of digital technology.