Global-local divides and ontological politics: feminist STS perspectives on mobile learning for community health workers in Kenya

This theoretical paper argues that Feminist Science and Technology Studies (FSTS) can help advance the emancipatory project in critical Ed Tech research. To support this claim, we deploy Tsing's concept of 'scale-making projects' (2005. Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. P...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of educational media : the journal of the Educational Television Association 2019-07, Vol.44 (3), p.235-251
Main Authors: Henry, Jade Vu, Oliver, Martin, Winters, Niall
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Community health care
Community Health Services
community health worker
Educational Research
Educational Technology
Feminism
Feminist theory
Foreign Countries
global education
Handheld Devices
Health Personnel
International education
Learning
mobile phone
Ontology
Power Structure
Public Health
Smartphones
STS
Technology Uses in Education
Telecommunications
Training
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This theoretical paper argues that Feminist Science and Technology Studies (FSTS) can help advance the emancipatory project in critical Ed Tech research. To support this claim, we deploy Tsing's concept of 'scale-making projects' (2005. Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press) to connect 'global' narratives to 'local' users in a mobile learning project for Kenyan health workers. Drawing from this exemplar case, we discuss more broadly how FSTS provides useful theory and methods for tracing the trans-national power relations of digital technologies 'on the ground'. The paper concludes by advocating for new forms of emancipatory Ed Tech research - ones framed not only within oppositional pairings such as 'global' versus 'local', but which elucidate how binaries themselves are constituted through far-flung trans-national arrays of sociomaterial practice.
ISSN:1743-9884
1743-9892
DOI:10.1080/17439884.2019.1628047