ERIC Number: EJ1338898
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2022-May
Pages: 5
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0013-189X
EISSN: N/A
Sorting Machines: Digital Technology and Categorical Inequality in Education
Rafalow, Matthew H.; Puckett, Cassidy
Educational Researcher, v51 n4 p274-278 May 2022
Existing scholarship suggests that schools do the work of social stratification by functioning as "sorting machines," or institutions that determine which populations of students are provided educational resources needed to help them get ahead. We build on this theory of social reproduction by extending it to better understand how digital technology use is implicated in this process of unequal resource allocation in schools. We contend that educational resources, like digital technologies, are "also" sorted by schools. Drawing on scholarship from both education research and science and technology studies, we show how educational institutions have long played a role in constructing the value of technologies to different ends, by constructing hierarchies of technological activity, like "vocational" and "academic" computer use, even when strikingly similar. We then apply this lens to three areas of inquiry in education research: the use of digital technologies for instruction, school use of student data, and college admissions. Each illustrates how education scholars can view technologies as part of school sorting processes and with implications for inequality within and beyond the classroom.
Descriptors: Technology Uses in Education, Social Stratification, Resource Allocation, Data Use, College Admission, Computer Software Selection, Elementary Secondary Education, Outcomes of Education, School Demography, Equal Education, Minority Group Students, Grouping (Instructional Purposes)
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education; Elementary Secondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A