Critical educational research is important in the field of educational technology because it recommends that teachers need to engage reflectively with ICT, anything less results in superficial integration of these resources. Recommendations arising from this body of research include the provision of tools to assist teachers' engagement with technology. These tools include the ideology, language and arguments that have been constructed on how best to harness technology in ways that will bring about changes in classroom practice that improve students' learning, for example, constructivist practices. These enacted tools have also been positioned as the lens for developing educational technology. However, critical educational research into the implementation of technology continues to show that teachers are not using the tools in the ways planned for them. Consequently, teachers are framed as inadequate.
This paper argues that critical educational research provides little space for understanding and developing educational technology. New ideas about the relationship between educational research and criticality argue that other forms exist beyond those which dominate. Teachers, like all individuals, already have their own capacities for reflecting, debating and justifying their engagement with technology. Their criticality is context-driven, informed by their knowledge and experiences and represented in the decisions they make in their practice. Analyses from practitioners do not necessarily stand in opposition with building scholarly understandings of educational technology. Rather, they are organic to this practice, and importantly have the potential to advance and extend academic arguments concerning teaching and learning with these resources.
This paper develops the concept of educational research for critique and focuses on 'teachers' critiques of technology'. Empirical evidence is used to illustrate the modes of thoughts and understandings teachers are using in their engagement with technology. Such evidence importantly contributes to understanding why technology is being used in the ways it is (and is not) in schools. The analysis is presented as a rationale for redefining a critical understanding of educational technology. As predetermined tools of critique fail to resonate with teachers' in-context practices with technology, the analysis teachers bring and use in their practice provide a useful alternate source of knowledge for understanding educational technology. Also, importantly, this alternate path of understanding raises questions around how we can engage with teachers' criticality in academic theorisation around this practice, and how we support teachers as co-knowledge producers in this area of research.