You are here:

Seduction or Productivity: Repurposing the Promise of Technology
ARTICLE

,

Across the Disciplines Volume 6, Number 1,

Abstract

In tight financial climates, emerging technologies loom as enticing options to administrators: efficient and cost-effective solutions to both operational and pedagogical problems. Disciplinary knowledge, frequently hailed as the pinnacle of cultural capital in the academy, does not hold absolute power in rhetorical situations in which the material conditions, competing research paradigms, conflicting needs, institutional history, and the promise of technology come into play. This article illustrates just such a conflicted rhetorical situation and shows how writing faculty used the promise of research, faculty development, and teacher education, all important currencies in academe, to cooperate with administrators' goals, and to derive benefits for the writing program and writing faculty. The project described tested two highly-promoted commercially-available writing technologies in local classroom settings via a small, manageable research project to give us systematically collected and interpreted evidence with which we could counterbalance anecdotal evidence about student performance, recitations from product literature about the promise of technology, and national distress about the most recent incarnation of a literacy crisis.

Citation

Klein, W. & Duffey, S. (2009). Seduction or Productivity: Repurposing the Promise of Technology. Across the Disciplines, 6(1),. Retrieved March 28, 2024 from .

This record was imported from ERIC on January 10, 2019. [Original Record]

ERIC is sponsored by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) of the U.S. Department of Education.

Copyright for this record is held by the content creator. For more details see ERIC's copyright policy.

Keywords