Projectories

My name is Francis Lee. I’m a Ph.D. Student at the Department of Technology and Social Change (Tema-T) at Linköping University, Sweden. I started my Ph.D. in Feb. 2004, which is on the scientific and rethorical history of distance education. My email is francis [at] atlanten.se

Distance Education, Technology & Pedagogy

My research project is an inquiry into the technologies of distance education. The project includes a comparative dimension, and begins with correspondence education in the mid 20th century and ends with digital online education

The focal point of the project is the interaction between the pedagogy, educational technology and education practice. Using insights drawn from science and technology studies (Akrich, Bowker & Star, Latour) as well as post-foucauldian studies of materiality (Deleuze, Dean) I invesigate how educational technology becomes a part of pedagogical scientific inquiry and educational practice.

This approach, firstly, entails a study of pedagogical texts on distance education and how they portray education, knowledge, student, and technology; secondly, it entails a study of distance education course material, The material studied includes proceedings from conferences on distance education as wee as course materials.

The tehoretical departure points of the project is the concept of dispositif as it has been developed by Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and within Actor-Network Theory. This framework is used to emphasize the role of material reality in social analysis, and hence serves to bring out the relationships between materiality and sociality in a distance education context.

Institution webpage (not as updated).

Publications

Learning in Nowhere: Individualism in Correspondence Education in 1938 and 1950, History of Education Review, Forthcoming, 2009.

Technopedagogies of Mass-Individualization: Correspondence Education in the Mid 20th Century, History & Technology, Vol. 24, Issue 3, 2008, p. 239 - 253.

Review of David L Kirp: Shakespeare, Einstein, and the bottomline - the marketing of higher education, Utbidling och demokrati, Vol 15, Issue 2, 2006, p. 132 - 134.

Review of Joe Moran: Interdisciplinarity, Utbildning och demokrati, Vol 15, Issue 3, 2006, p. 123 - 125.