Knowledge infrastructure crisis: digital democratic deficits and alternative designs for education

The production and circulation of knowledge in education increasingly depends on large-scale digital infrastructures. In this article we provide a critical review of the transformation of the contemporary ‘knowledge infrastructures’ underpinning knowledge production and reproduction in education. Contributing to the Special Issue on ‘knowledge crises’ in education, we conceive of recent and ongoing developments in the digitalisation and datafication of education as a ‘knowledge infrastructure crisis’ that is exerting profound effects on education as a field of practice and research. The article examines (1) the knowledge technologies, such as digital platforms and artificial intelligence, being introduced into educational practice, and (2) transformations in knowledge-making systems, including AI research services, that are now shaping educational research. These infrastructural transformations portend the erosion of teachers’ pedagogic autonomy and authority over curricular knowledge by automated technologies, the displacement of research to commercial AI labs and a reconfiguration of educational research as a big data enterprise. As a response to this knowledge infrastructure crisis, we offer (3) a review of alternative infrastructuring projects in the domains of educational practice and research, and their potential to address the growing democratic deficits in educational knowledge production, access and reproduction.