Ben Williamson is a lecturer in education at the University of Stirling. His research examines the interweaving of politics, governing, and digital technologies in education. He studies “network governance” in education policy, and is leading a funded project exploring how computer code interacts with educational institutions, pedagogic practices, and governing processes.
Ben Williamson
Articles
July 16, 2012
Programmable Pedagogy: Reconfiguring the Future of Learning
What is "pedagogy" and what does it do? In the digital age, the future of education is being redefined in relation to new technologies and digital media, and we are having to...
Categories: Edtech, Educational PracticeApril 12, 2012
What do research methods do? Research methods are routinely understood as objective techniques for getting to know the world. Yet they may be more influential and socially significant than this, particularly as...
Category: ResearchJanuary 12, 2012
Wikirriculum: The Promises and Politics of an Open Source Curriculum
The idea of an “open source curriculum” has until now seemed entirely at odds with the political standardization and prescription of the curriculum. Are there any signs that curriculum will catch up...
Categories: Digital Learning, Educational PracticeJuly 26, 2011
Digital Media, Learning, and the Future
New research findings from a global study of education systems suggest that the promise of a hi-tech, high-skills, high-wage future for kids is a fantasy. Does digital media and learning offer a...
Category: Digital LearningJune 7, 2011
The globalization of digital media has put pressure on education systems worldwide to be reformed. The emphasis is on schooling that will promote the cosmopolitan identities of globalized digital citizens. But what...
Categories: Digital Citizenship, Educational PracticeApril 1, 2011
School, Work and Play: Decoding Digital Age Shifts
Learning with digital media is often articulated through an affective vocabulary of play, informality, enjoyment, and creativity, as opposed to the formality, standards and routines of conventional schooling. This difference in the...
Category: Digital CitizenshipMarch 22, 2011
Happiness, Learning, and Technology: Why “Affective” Schools are the New “Effective” Schools
What are the connections between emotional education and digital media and learning? Faced with a global economic recession, civic unrest, and major environmental catastrophe, governments around the world are now obsessed with...
Category: Educational PracticeFebruary 14, 2011
On Parenting, Media, Education and Phobias
Modern cinema can teach us how youth and media are widely understood in our cultures. Cinema, like works of literature and visual art, can represent and diagnose our widespread fears and fantasies...
Category: Digital CitizenshipFebruary 7, 2011
Wikirriculum: Curriculum in the Digital Age
Developing a school curriculum is a complex act of creative design. Add networked participatory media to the mix and curriculum design gets even more complicated. So, from the perspective of digital media...
Categories: Digital Learning, Educational PracticeNovember 11, 2010
How Learning Spaces Reflect Our View of Children
Many school buildings are in a terrible state. Even in seemingly advanced western nations many old schools resemble architectural catastrophes that, along with post-war urban tower blocks and the shopping malls of...
Category: Educational Practice