Despite the relentless hype, digitization is a key part of contemporary education politics, and something that cannot be taken lightly. In particular, the ever-expanding presence of digital technologies in education needs to be treated as a labour issue – a major influence on the nature of teachers’ work, classroom working conditions, and what it means to an expert professional educator.

In short, the digitisation of schools is something that all education unions now have to keep a close eye on. Indeed, many unions are beginning to do just this – following a growing readiness across all sectors of trade unionism to actively speak-up and push-back on digital issues. However, digital education can be a complex and convoluted topic. This article briefly considers a few ways in which digital technologies are becoming particularly problematic for teachers’ work … highlighting some priorities for education unions over the next few years:

#1.  The digital extension of teachers’ work

EdTech products are often marketed as labour-saving and time-reducing – ‘freeing up’ teachers from routine administration and other boring tasks, and creating more opportunities to teach. In contrast, for many classroom teachers the growing use of digital technologies has been a key driver of worsening working conditions over the past twenty years.

Such impacts of digital technology are many and varied. Everyday technologies such as email, smartphones and learning management systems have normalized the idea that teachers should be ‘always-on’ and able to engage ‘24/7’ with schoolwork regardless of time or place. Many of these technologies are also the source of additional onerous work  – amplifying cultures of busy-work and unnecessary duplication, as well as the behind-the-scenes efforts required to ensure that classroom technologies keep working.

#2.  The digital standardization of teachers’ work

Digital technologies are also implicated in the increased standardization of teachers’ work. For example, school platforms are deliberately designed to ‘unbundle’ pedagogical work into sets of scripted and templated tasks. These platforms are also programmed to make decisions that would previously have been left to the teacher’s discretion – such as assigning grades or judging whether classes are ‘on-task’. All these features diminish teacher expertise and professionalism, with teachers left accountable for automated decisions that they have little or no knowledge of.

In addition, teachers are now finding themselves having to work in ways that are ‘machine-readable’. A teacher might be required to limit student feedback to 5000 characters or less, or speak in standard accents and dialects that can be picked up by voice recognition software. Small constraints and adjustments such as these reduce opportunities for pedagogical spontaneity, improvisation and experimentation. Instead, teachers now increasingly find themselves having to ‘teach-to-the-tech’.

#3.  The digital surveillance of teachers’ work

Digital technology is now a key driver of workplace surveillance in schools. For example, schools are increasingly opting to install performance monitoring and other forms of ‘bossware’ onto school-issued laptops – screen recording, keystroke logging and other forms of activity monitoring software. Even when this software is restricted to student devices, aggregated class data can still be used to infer how well a teacher is performing.

Some schools are also routinely running software to analyse emails and social media messages, while learning management systems are set up generate all manner of engagement data which managers can retrospectively review. Indeed, perhaps the most pervasive shift in employee monitoring over the past ten years is ‘dataveillance’ – with every keystroke, swipe and click creating a continuous data-trail which can be collated and analysed at any time to gain insights into individual or whole-school behaviours.

#4.  The growing prominence of online gig-work

Alongside their regular school work, some teachers also choose to engage in online extra-curricular employment. The past decade has seen a boom in online ‘gig-work’ that teachers can pick up in their spare time – such as remote private tutoring, exam marking and online exam proctoring. In addition, is the continued popularity of online educator ‘side hustles’ – from the entrepreneurial activities of ‘teacher influencers’ on Instagram. YouTube and TikTok through to teachers selling classroom and lesson resources on platforms such as TeachersPayTeachers. Teachers engaging in these forms of work clearly face new risks and vulnerabilities which are not immediately obvious. These include complexities around intellectual property, conflicts of interest, and increased risks of over-work and exploitation.

#5.  The growing influence of ‘Big Tech’ corporations

Close attention also needs to be paid to the growing influence of IT industry and ‘Big Tech’ corporations in education. This takes a variety of forms. Most obviously, commercially-produced systems and products now play an important (and unregulated) role in structuring teachers’ work and dictating the ways in which teaching can take place – what has been dubbed ‘platform pedagogies’.

In addition, Big Tech corporations have long co-opted teachers into being brand ambassadors and product evangelists. More recently, these corporations have also become large direct employers of educators – hiring swathes of ex-teachers into marketing and product development roles. This includes new education-adjacent professions such as ‘instructional designers’ and ‘learning engineers’. While not working directly in schools, corporate employees in these roles constitute a growing element of the contemporary education workforce.

#6.  Digital strike-breaking and union-busting

One final concern relates to emerging uses of digital technologies by employers to combat organized labour – so-called ‘digital union-busting’. These logics are most aggressively deployed in the tech sector, with companies such as Amazon and Google deploying ‘union vulnerability’ analytics and dataveillance to deter and disrupt employers from organizing.

While these specific tactics are yet to reach education, digital technologies have certainly begun to be used in other ways to combat teacher industrial action. For example, recent higher education strikes in the UK saw employers attempt to recycle digital recordings of teachers’ previous classes and lessons, and even digitally ‘outsource’ assessment and marking to education consultants in Australia. Similarly, school chains in the UK have turned to pre-recorded online lessons and mass ‘COVID-style’ online remote tutoring to mitigate the impact of teacher strikes.These anti-union uses of digital technology clearly merit ongoing scrutiny. 

CONCLUSIONS

Such concerns are rarely raised in mainstream discussions of digital education and EdTech. Of course, there are many instances where digital technology can be a genuine support and relief for teachers. There are also many ways that education unions can deploy digital technologies to their advantage. Nevertheless, there are many other situations where digital technologies clearly are not working in teachers’ favour. The welfare of education workers is increasingly entwined with the ongoing digitization of education.

So, what might unions and local branches practically do in response to the issues and concerns just outlined? At ground-level, we need to push school leaders and authorities to take seriously issues of digital over-work and online vulnerabilities. Schools can adopt ‘calm email’ policies, lay out acceptable digital working guidelines, and designate senior managers as responsible ‘owners’ of any automated decision-making. Teachers and unions should also lobby to be involved in any significant acts of school technology procurement – ensuring a degree of democratic oversight and due diligence to any technological change in their working conditions.

In a broader sense, unions need to push school leaders and authorities to be transparent about workplace digital surveillance activities. Unions need to ensure that members are well-informed on their rights when it comes to taking on additional online gig-work. Education unions might also expand their membership remit to engage directly with education professionals working within Big Tech and EdTech firms.  All told, digitisation is now a major part of changing work and employment conditions across all levels of public education – it is crucial that unions are front-and-centre in fighting for digital developments to be in the best interests of labour.