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Changing the game: public education and the discourses and practices of privatisation in educational technology policy and intervention
Privatisation in education is a contentious issue, inseparable from the shift in focus from community-based education initiatives to individualistic and economically driven ones (Ball and Youdell, 2007). This raises ethical issues with initiatives like the Western Cape Government's Game Changer init...
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
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School of Education
2021
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| _version_ | 1867613247565201408 |
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| access_status_str | Open Access |
| author | Staschen, Orrie |
| author2 | Kell, Catherine |
| author_browse | Kell, Catherine Staschen, Orrie |
| author_facet | Kell, Catherine Staschen, Orrie |
| author_sort | Staschen, Orrie |
| collection | Thesis |
| description | Privatisation in education is a contentious issue, inseparable from the shift in focus from community-based education initiatives to individualistic and economically driven ones (Ball and Youdell, 2007). This raises ethical issues with initiatives like the Western Cape Government's Game Changer initiatives, given the range of access issues that learners experience in the pervasive social inequity of South Africa. There is a lack of existing research on privatisation practices in public education in the Western Cape, specifically what linguistic strategies are utilized in the official texts promoting it. The Game Changer initiatives and their associated ‘Roadmaps' promote non-state collaboration in extra- curricular eLearning classes and broader technology rollout in under resourced public schools. Analysis of the Roadmap policy reveals discourses of fast capitalism, skills talk, datafication and digital nativism. These discourses were mirrored in the practices, text and talk generated in an after-school mathematics intervention run by an EdTech company, which I have called ZipEd, in a Cape Flats school between 2017-2018. The company prioritized their funder's mandate and to prove their software's efficacy, spun data to reflect largely positive results. In the rush to provide this data, ZipEd entered several schools without fulfilling ethical clearance requirements. Obtaining access to Game Changer pilot sites ensured ZipEd's product rollout, continued growth, and financial success, revealing the neoliberal approaches which dominate ZipEd's practices. The Game Changer policy texts and the intervention observed, treated languages as silo-ed entities, ignoring family or community approaches to literacy initiatives, curricular reform, trans-languaging strategies and inclusive language learning. While EdTech is a useful teaching tool, this promotion of “exogenous” (Ball and Youdell, 2007) privatisation in the Western Cape, blurs the lines between state and non-state involvement, ultimately resulting in the commodification of public schooling. |
| format | Thesis |
| id | oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/32996 |
| institution | University of Cape Town (South Africa) |
| language | eng |
| last_indexed | 2026-06-10T12:33:07.122Z |
| license_str | Not specified — see source repository |
| provenance_str_mv | Harvested via OAI-PMH from UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository |
| publishDate | 2021 |
| publishDateRange | 2021 |
| publishDateSort | 2021 |
| publisher | School of Education |
| publisherStr | School of Education |
| record_format | dspace |
| source_str | UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository |
| spelling | oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/32996 Changing the game: public education and the discourses and practices of privatisation in educational technology policy and intervention Staschen, Orrie Kell, Catherine education community-based education Western Cape South Africa social inequity Privatisation in education is a contentious issue, inseparable from the shift in focus from community-based education initiatives to individualistic and economically driven ones (Ball and Youdell, 2007). This raises ethical issues with initiatives like the Western Cape Government's Game Changer initiatives, given the range of access issues that learners experience in the pervasive social inequity of South Africa. There is a lack of existing research on privatisation practices in public education in the Western Cape, specifically what linguistic strategies are utilized in the official texts promoting it. The Game Changer initiatives and their associated ‘Roadmaps' promote non-state collaboration in extra- curricular eLearning classes and broader technology rollout in under resourced public schools. Analysis of the Roadmap policy reveals discourses of fast capitalism, skills talk, datafication and digital nativism. These discourses were mirrored in the practices, text and talk generated in an after-school mathematics intervention run by an EdTech company, which I have called ZipEd, in a Cape Flats school between 2017-2018. The company prioritized their funder's mandate and to prove their software's efficacy, spun data to reflect largely positive results. In the rush to provide this data, ZipEd entered several schools without fulfilling ethical clearance requirements. Obtaining access to Game Changer pilot sites ensured ZipEd's product rollout, continued growth, and financial success, revealing the neoliberal approaches which dominate ZipEd's practices. The Game Changer policy texts and the intervention observed, treated languages as silo-ed entities, ignoring family or community approaches to literacy initiatives, curricular reform, trans-languaging strategies and inclusive language learning. While EdTech is a useful teaching tool, this promotion of “exogenous” (Ball and Youdell, 2007) privatisation in the Western Cape, blurs the lines between state and non-state involvement, ultimately resulting in the commodification of public schooling. 2021-02-25T12:58:35Z 2021-02-25T12:58:35Z 2020 2021-02-25T12:49:59Z Master Thesis Masters MEd http://hdl.handle.net/11427/32996 eng application/pdf School of Education Faculty of Humanities |
| spellingShingle | education community-based education Western Cape South Africa social inequity Staschen, Orrie Changing the game: public education and the discourses and practices of privatisation in educational technology policy and intervention |
| thesis_degree_str | Master's |
| title | Changing the game: public education and the discourses and practices of privatisation in educational technology policy and intervention |
| title_full | Changing the game: public education and the discourses and practices of privatisation in educational technology policy and intervention |
| title_fullStr | Changing the game: public education and the discourses and practices of privatisation in educational technology policy and intervention |
| title_full_unstemmed | Changing the game: public education and the discourses and practices of privatisation in educational technology policy and intervention |
| title_short | Changing the game: public education and the discourses and practices of privatisation in educational technology policy and intervention |
| title_sort | changing the game public education and the discourses and practices of privatisation in educational technology policy and intervention |
| topic | education community-based education Western Cape South Africa social inequity |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/11427/32996 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT staschenorrie changingthegamepubliceducationandthediscoursesandpracticesofprivatisationineducationaltechnologypolicyandintervention |