https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8498-5390
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ABSTRACT
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.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Giselle Martins dos Santos Ferreira is a Lecturer at the Department of Education of PUC-Rio. Previously, she was a Lecturer at the Post-Graduate Programme in Education of UNESA (2011-July 2018) and a Lecturer at the UK Open University (1998–2013), where she also acted as Visiting Researcher (2013–2016). E-mail: [email protected].
Luiz Alexandre da Silva Rosado is a Lecturer at the Department of Higher Education, INES, where he acts as the Post-Graduate Studies Coordinator. Previously, he was a Lecturer at the Post-Graduate Programme in Education of UNESA.
Márcio Silveira Lemgruber is a Lecturer at the Post-Graduate Programme in Education of UNESA since 2012. Previously, he was an Associate Professor at the Department of Education of the Federal University of Juiz de Fora, UFJF (1991–2011).
Jaciara de Sá Carvalho is a Lecturer at the Post-Graduate Programme in Education of UNESA. Previously, she worked at the Paulo Freire Institute (2009–2012), São Paulo, having also worked as a journalist.
ORCID
Giselle Martins dos Santos Ferreira http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8498-5390
Notes
1 Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon. Kwet (Citation2019) adds Microsoft to this list (GAFAM).
2 c.f. https://www.internetworldstats.com/top20.htm (22 July 2018)
3 c.f. https://www.statista.com/statistics/268136/top-15-countries-based-on-number-of-facebook-users/ (22 July 2018)
4 The same conceptual metaphor is expressed in Portuguese.
5 Also relevant in Portuguese.
6 In Portuguese, a single word is equivalent to data and given, which provides further support to metaphors that conceptualise data as things that exist ‘naturally’.
7 Porvir is a possible Portuguese translation of ‘future’, which means, literally, ‘to come’ and, thus, suggests a stronger measure of fatalism than its more common alternative, futuro. Available at: http://porvir.org
9 All the material extracted from the corpus included in this article is presented in English translation.
11 Arguments from authority use ‘the acts or opinions of a person or group of persons as a means of proof in support of a thesis’ (Perelman and Tyteca-Olbechts [Citation1969] Citation2008, 513)
12 Despite strong centralisation, Brazil is, technically, a republican federation.
13 The ‘data is the new oil’ metaphor, however, does circulate widely in management media outlets based in this country (e.g. Época Citation2018; Loureiro Citation2018).
14 Prior to the election day, evidence was uncovered that pointed to the strategic dissemination of fake news via WhatsApp, the most popular messaging service in Brazil, as well as support from USarian alt-right (also) through the possible involvement of Cambridge Analytica’s Steve Bannon as campaign advisor (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/18/brazil-jair-bolsonaro-whatsapp-fake-news-campaign). For comments in English published soon after the election results were announced, see https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/29/brazil-election-far-right-democracy-social-media.
15 For comments in English by a Brazilian journalist, see https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/10/jair-bolsonaro-brazil-minorities-rainforest.
16 In particular, public rejection has been consistently voiced in respect to: the ultra-conservative (Colombian naturalised Brazilian) Minister of Education (indeed, as this article reaches the press, a new minister has been appointed and futher draconian funding cuts have been announced), the conspiracy-theory believer Minister of Foreign Affairs and, last but not least, the neo-Pentecostal female preacher chosen for the controversial new Ministry of Families, Women and Human Rights, referred to, in some quarters, as ‘Aunt Lydia’, in an allusion to Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale. For an overview of some of the pertaining issues here, see https://medium.com/@lioliveiraz/would-be-brazilian-politics-a-satire-of-house-of-cards-1bdd7d7f6094.
17 The latest proposals include: legalising DE models at all levels (including compulsory education and post-graduate studies, previously excluded), legalising home-schooling (currently unconstitutional), implementing a system of educational vouchers (as replacement to other forms of funding), and promoting grassroots conservative movements such as ‘School without Party’ (an extreme-right initiative based on the absurd notion that ‘ideology’ can and must be ‘eradicated’ from educational contexts – Giorgi et al. Citation2018).
18 Many Brazilians and political commentators consider this apparent ‘comedy of errors’ a smokescreen aimed at obfuscating potentially unpopular economic measures (see, for example, https://www.ft.com/content/1a2ba4f4-de4e-11e8-9f04-38d397e6661c).