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Abstract
This article is about how technology and pedagogy is co‐produced in correspondence education. Theoretically the article departs from post‐Foucauldian studies of materiality, and uses the concept of dispositif to construct a framework that is inspired by Foucault, Deleuze, and Actor–Network Theory. Empirically, the article treats how the tension between educational thought on progressive individualism, scientific thinking, and automation was co‐produced with technical artifacts in correspondence education during the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. The author shows how this co‐production led to a specific mode of organizing correspondence education that tried to accomplish individualization on an industrial basis, and that this mass‐individualization built on a pedagogy of testing, recording, classification, and differentiation. In conclusion the article discusses how mass‐individualization can be seen as an epitome of educational modernity’s aspiration for equality of educational opportunity and progressive thoughts on individually tailored education. Furthermore the author shows that the dispositif of mass‐individualization is closely associated to today’s educational technology, and how today’s educational technology embodies the tension in mass‐individualization.
Notes
1. Foucault, Discipline and Punish.
2. According to A Dictionary of the Internet, mass‐individualization refers to ‘large scale development of products which are customized to buyers. … network technology has provided the infrastructure for a major expansion in companies offering mass individualization.’ Thus, mass‐individualization is a concept that is closely tied to technology, mass production, and customization, and, as I show below, is a useful and accurate way of depicting correspondence education. See ‘mass‐individualization’ in Ince, Dictionary of the Internet.
3. Cf. Noble, Digital Diploma Mills, Chap. 1, for a discussion of the industrialized characteristics of correspondence education, and Lee, ‘Learning in Nowhere’, for a discussion of individualization in correspondence education.
4. Cf. Jasanoff, ‘Idiom of Co‐production.’
5. Law, ‘After ANT’; Law, ‘Technology and Heterogeneous Engineering.’
6. For classroom technology see Walkerdine, ‘Developmental Psychology.’ For child development psychology, see Rose, ‘The Gaze of the Psychologist.’
7. Lab studies, see Latour, Science in Action; Law, Organizing Modernity. Subjectivities, see Gomart and Hennion, ‘Sociology of Attachment.’ Health care, see Mol, The Body Multiple. Standards, see Bowker and Star, Sorting Things Out.
8. The French word dispositif means device, mechanism, measure, apparatus or arrangement and has been employed by Michel Foucault to discuss biopower, and is translated into English in different ways. It has been translated as apparatus or social apparatus, assemblage or regime of practice, and has also inspired theories based on networks or heterogeneous collectifs. In this article I wish to avoid these different translations, and therefore use the original French concept. See Dean, Governmentality; Deleuze, ‘What is a Dispositif;’ Gomart and Hennion, ‘Sociology of Attachment;’ Rabinow, Anthropos Today.
9. Foucault, Power/Knowledge, 194.
10. Dean, Governmentality, 21; Rabinow, Anthropos Taday, 50.
11. Rabinow, Anthropos Today, 53.
12. Law, ‘After ANT.’
13. Dean, Governmentality, 18.
14. Ibid.; Deleuze, ‘What is a Dispositif.’
15. Dean, Governmentality, 22, 31.
16. Ibid.; Deleuze, ‘What is a Dispositif.’
17. Latour, ‘The Sociology of a Few,’ 229.
18. Inscription, delegation, and prescription, see Akrich and Latour, ‘A Summary of a Convenient.’ Folding of time and space, see Latour, ‘A Collective of Humans.’ Cf. also Latour, Science in Action, Chap. 6.
19. Bunker, ‘An Historical Analysis,’ 36–39, 41.
20. Ibid., 377.
21. Ibid., 33.
22. I have been unable to attain a copy of the conference proceedings for the second conference, but I have been able to obtain a copy of the pre‐conference bulletin.
23. Brevskoleutredningen, ‘YK 1808,’ vols. 14–33.
24. Fass, ‘The IQ;’ Walkerdine, ‘Developmental Psychology.’
25. Fass, ‘The IQ,’ 434.
26. Ibid., 436.
27. Ibid., 435.
28. See for example Broadfoot, Education Assessment, 32–37; Wooldridge, Measuring the Mind.
29. Fass, ‘The IQ,’ 437. See also Porter, Trust in Numbers, for a discussion of the expanding use of statistics in society.
30. Eriksson, Psykoteknik; Kamin, The Science and Politics; Rose, ‘Gaze of the Psychologist,’ 137–42; Wooldridge, Measuring the Mind.
31. Fass, ‘The IQ,’ 435.
32. ‘ICCE 1,’ 191–92, 175.
33. Noble, Digital Diploma Mills, Chap. 1.
34. The organization of correspondence work was generally similar in different schools, but with some variations. See the various examples of how correspondence work was organized in ‘ICCE 2,’ ‘ICCE 3,’ ‘ICCE 1.’
35. See the Brevskoleutredningen, ‘YK 1808,’ vols. 14–32, for a large selection of correspondence courses that use required responses as a means for communicating with the students.
36. Cf. Noble, Digital Diploma Mills.
37. ‘ICCE 1,’ 60, 68, 69, 111, 112, 153, 156, 157, 169.
38. ‘ICCE 3,’ 13; ‘ICCE 1,’ 155, 175, 177–78, 209.
39. ‘ICCE 1,’ 131, 132, 150, 151, 152, 183, 189.
40. Ibid., 189. My emphasis.
41. Lee, ‘Learning in Nowhere.’
42. C.f. immutable mobiles and centers of calculation in Latour, Science in Action.
43. ‘ICCE 1,’ 188.
44. ‘ICCE 2,’ 44; ‘ICCE 1,’ 194, 197, 198.
45. ‘ICCE 3,’ 95.
46. To know the students performance, abilities, and characteristics through examinations and records did not differ considerably from regular school practices where records played an important role in the collection of data on student’s progress as well as the communication of the student’s strengths and weaknesses to parties outside of school. Broadfoot, Profiles and Records, 3.
47. ‘Course B, Form 3, Girls;’ Simpson, ‘A Course in Plane Geometry.’ See the also large number of Bulletins from different US universities in the Brevskoleutredningen, ‘YK 1808,’ vol. 29.
48. See Brevskoleutredningen, ‘YK1808.’
49. Cf. immutable mobiles in Latour, Science in Action.
50. ‘ICCE 1,’ 172, 197, 203–04.
51. Ibid., 171.
52. Cf. Noble, Digital Diploma Mills, Chap. 1.
53. ‘ICCE 3,’ 46–47.
54. ‘ICCE 1,’ 94, 95, 108, 175, 194, 197.
55. The Benton Harbour Plan was a instructional system where correspondence education techniques were used in regular high schools, so called supervised correspondence study, which gained widespread use in the US for a period. See Moore, ‘Editorial,’ 201.
56. ‘ICCE 1,’ 101.
57. Ibid., 20.
58. Ibid., 33, 36, 104.
59. Ibid., 200.
60. Ibid., 191. See also ‘ICCE 2,’ 175.
61. ‘ICCE 3,’ 39.
62. Brevskoleutredningen, ‘YK 1808,’ vol. 27.
63. ‘ICCE 1’, 191.
64. ‘ICCE 3,’ 48, 68; ‘ICCE 1,’ 173, 176, 178.
65. Brevskoleutredningen, ‘YK 1808,’ vols. 14–32.
66. This was pioneered in Benton Harbour in 1923 through the work of Sydney C. Mitchell. ‘ICCE 1,’ 99–101. In Sweden this method of teaching was used by both the largest correspondence schools, NKI‐skolan and Hermods. See Brevskoleutredningen, ‘Korrespondensundervisningen,’ 15, 19, 22, 34–36.
67. Supervised Correspondence Study, 1.
68. European Commission, ‘ICT – Information,’ 36.
69. See European Association of Distance Teaching Universities, ‘Conference 2004;’ IT Strategic Advisory Council Miami University, ‘IT Strategic Advisory Council Minutes;’ Mulder, ‘Mass Individualization;’ Sewart, ‘SCOP Meeting.’
70. Kirp, Shakespeare.
71. I want to thank the anonymous reviewer for History and Technology for this comment.