The tipping point in the platformisation of Dutch public education? How to approach platformisation from a values-based perspective

Abstract

How to sustain platformisation of education from a value-based perspective is nothing but self-evident, given that in many cases its historical formation is based on an instrumental rationale. Critical interventions and policies that aim to steer against such rationales can profit from a thorough examination of how they underpin the integration of digital platforms in education, and how these were received and contested. In this chapter, this argument is made by first examining how educational platformisation in the Netherlands is part of at least two decades of educational reforms grafted on instrumental rationality. Thereafter, we map how a counter-discourse emerges from public stakeholders and interventions in the educational field, which rally against an instrumental rationale for digitalisation of educational practice. This budding counter-discourse, we argue, presents a tipping point which can be further sustained through interaction with earlier fundamental critiques by educational scientists that have been voiced against an instrumentalist and technocratic uptake of technology. We conclude by reflecting on what our analyses means for how to conceive of platformisation of education more broadly, and what such a perspective might mean in terms of advice and guidelines for policy makers and practitioners.