Student or educator? Sign up with your school email and get 6 months of Pro free.
CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 243

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 6 of the 6 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Technological determinism in educational technology research: some alternative ways of thinking about the relationship between learning and technology: Educational technology and determinism

Oliver, M.·2011·Journal of Computer Assisted Learning
DOI 10.1111/j.1365-2729.2011.00406.x
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

This paper argues that research on the educational uses of technology frequently overemphasizes the influence of technology. Research in the field is considered a form of critical perspective, and assumptions about technology are questioned. Technological determinism is introduced, and different positions on this concept are identified. These are used to discuss the ways in which work within the field might be described as technologically deterministic. Four theoretical perspectives (activity theory, communities of practice, actor–network theory, and the social construction of technology) are then briefly characterized, demonstrating that alternative positions are viable, and positioning each in relation to the earlier discussion of technological determinism. The paper concludes by arguing that research, building on such alternative conceptions of technology, is important in developing our understanding of the relationship between technology and learning, as well as identifying potential methodological implications.

Overview

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1111/j.1365-2729.2011.00406.x

Cites

6 of 6 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Verification

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Citations

Cites

Show all 6 references

Research works printed but not linked: 44

  1. Barab, 2004, Handbook of Research on Educational Communications and Technology, 199
  2. Bijker, 1987, The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology
  3. Bimber, 1994, Does Technology Drive History? The Dilemma of Technological Determinism, 79
  4. Callon, 1987, The Social Construction of Technological Systems, 83
  5. Callon, 1981, Advances in Social Theory and Methodology: Towards An Integration of Micro and Macro-Sociology, 277
  6. Conole, 2003, Learning Technology in Transition: From Individual Enthusiasm to Institutional Implementation, 129, 10.1201/b16987-11 · doi:10.1201/b16987-11
  7. Conole, 2004, What are the affordances of information and communication technologies?, ALT-J: Research in Learning Technology, 12, 113, 10.1080/0968776042000216183 · doi:10.1080/0968776042000216183 · Paper page
  8. Cornford, 2000, The virtual university is the university made concrete, Information, Communication and Society, 3, 508, 10.1080/13691180010002314 · DOI
  9. Cox, 2005, What are communities of practice? A comparative review of four seminal works, Journal of Information Science, 31, 527, 10.1177/0165551505057016 · DOI · Paper page
  10. Cuban, 2002, Oversold and Underused: Computers in the Classroom
  11. Czerniewicz, 2008, Distinguishing the field of educational technology, Electronic Journal of e-Learning, 6, 171
  12. Derry, 2007, Epistemology and conceptual resources for the development of learning technologies, Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 23, 503, 10.1111/j.1365-2729.2007.00246.x · DOI
  13. Enriquez, 2009, From Bush Pump to Blackboard: the fluid workings of a virtual environment, E-Learning and Digital Media, 6, 385, 10.2304/elea.2009.6.4.385 · DOI
  14. Feenburg, 2001, Democratizing technology: interests, codes, rights, The Journal of Ethics, 5, 177, 10.1023/A:1011908323811 · doi:10.1023/a:1011908323811
  15. Friesen, 2009, Re-Thinking e-Learning Research: Foundations, Methods and Practices
  16. Friesen, 2008, Critical theory: ideology critique and the myths of e-learning, Ubiquity, 9
  17. Goodyear, 2006, Using pattern languages to mediate theory-praxis conversations in design for networked learning, ALT-J: Research in Learning Technology, 14, 211, 10.1080/09687760600836977 · DOI
  18. Grint, 1997, The Machine at Work: Technology, Work and Organization
  19. Issroff, 2002, Using technology in higher education: an activity theory perspective, Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 18, 77, 10.1046/j.0266-4909.2001.00213.x · DOI · Paper page
  20. Krange, 2009, The historical and situated nature of design experiments, Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 25, 268, 10.1111/j.1365-2729.2008.00307.x · DOI
  21. Kuutti, 1996, Context and Consciousness: Activity Theory and Human-Computer Interaction, 17
  22. Langemeier, 2006, Is cultural-historical activity theory threatened to fall short of its own principles and possibilities as a dialectical social science?, Critical Social Studies, 3, 20
  23. Law, 1997, Centre for Science Studies, Lancaster University, Lancaster
  24. Law, 2008, The New Blackwell Companion to Social Theory, 141, 10.1002/9781444304992.ch7 · DOI · Paper page
  25. Lektorsky, 2009, Learning and Expanding with Activity Theory, 75, 10.1017/CBO9780511809989.006 · DOI
  26. Matusov, 2007, In search of the appropriate unit of analysis for sociocultural research, Culture & Psychology, 13, 307, 10.1177/1354067X07079887 · DOI
  27. Mitchell, 2000, The Changing Face of Learning Technology, 51
  28. Nardi, 1996, Context and Consciousness: Activity Theory and Human-Computer Interaction
  29. Norman, 1988, The Psychology of Everyday Things
  30. Oliver, 2005, The problem with affordance, The E-Learning Journal, 2, 402, 10.2304/elea.2005.2.4.402 · DOI · Paper page
  31. Oliver, 2006, Contemporary Perspectives in e-Learning Research, 21
  32. Pinch, 2010, On making infrastructure visible: putting the non-humans to rights, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 34, 77, 10.1093/cje/bep044 · DOI
  33. Pinch, 1987, The Social Construction of Technological Systems, 17
  34. Rappert, 2003, Technologies, texts and possibilities, a reply to Hutchby, Sociology, 37, 565, 10.1177/00380385030373010 · DOI
  35. Rückriem, 2009, Learning and Expanding with Activity Theory, 88, 10.1017/CBO9780511809989.007 · DOI
  36. Selwyn, 2007, The use of computer technology in university teaching and learning: a critical perspective, Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 23, 83, 10.1111/j.1365-2729.2006.00204.x · DOI · Paper page
  37. Selwyn, 2010, Looking beyond learning: notes towards the critical study of educational technology, Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 26, 65, 10.1111/j.1365-2729.2009.00338.x · DOI · Paper page
  38. Selwyn N. 2012 Making sense of young people, education and digital technology: the role of sociological theory Oxford Review of Education · DOI · Paper page
  39. Thorpe, 2002, Distributed Learning: Social and Cultural Approaches to Practice, 131
  40. Waltz, 2006, Nonhumans unbound: actor-network theory and the reconsideration of ‘things’ in educational foundations, Educational Foundations, 20, 51
  41. Wenger, 1998, Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity, 10.1017/CBO9780511803932 · DOI · Paper page
  42. Winner, 1985, The Social Shaping of Technology, 26
  43. Winner, 1993, Upon opening the black box and finding it empty: social constructivism and the philosophy of technology, Science, Technology & Human Values, 18, 362, 10.1177/016224399301800306 · DOI · Paper page
  44. Woolgar, 1987, The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology, 311

Cited by

See all 243

Metadata

Authors
Oliver, M.
Venue
Journal of Computer Assisted Learning
Publisher
Wiley
Published
2011-04-05
Volume
27
Issue
5
Pages
373-384
ISSN
0266-4909 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1111/j.1365-2729.2011.00406.x
OpenAlex
W2109005014
Cited by
243
References
6
FWCI
36.07
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
doi.wiley.com/10.1002/tdm_license_1.1 (tdm, 1610 d)

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review

How to cite

Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.

This page
CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Technological determinism in educational technology research: some alternative ways of thinking about the relationship between learning and technology: Educational technology and determinism. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1111/j.1365-2729.2011.00406.x
The paper
Oliver, M. (2011). Technological determinism in educational technology research: some alternative ways of thinking about the relationship between learning and technology: Educational technology and determinism. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2729.2011.00406.x

Data sources

Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.

Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.