De school in de digitale conditie: Een kritisch onderzoek naar technologie en onderwijs

School education today takes place within what may be described as 'the digital condition', indicating how digital technologies are deeply entangled with the fabric of everyday life, shaping how we coexist and how educational practices unfold. This dissertation's primary interest is to empirically research what this digital condition precisely means for schools by zooming in on how digital technologies enact, and are enacted by, everyday practices in school education. To do so, this dissertation draws on sensitivities derived from the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS). Through ethnographic research, the dissertation explores digital technologies, and the political-economic shifts that surround them, in schools in Flanders (Belgium), while inventively thinking about methods that allow empirical engagement with the multifaceted complexity of technology. Following a general introduction that discusses the school in the digital condition, and reviews relevant strands of critical education research, chapter I articulates the dissertation's overarching conceptual and methodological approach. The empirical research then develops across three parts. Part one, which consists of chapter II, sets the stage and provides an empirical overview of the policy developments in Flanders that were unfolding at the beginning of the fieldwork. At that time, the education policy 'Digisprong' was launched by the Flemish Ministry of Education and Training, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, to enable schools to digitally innovate in an accelerated manner. This chapter discusses how Digisprong has specific temporal characteristics that govern Flemish schools and enabled certain pedagogical-infrastructural innovations whilst foreclosing alternatives. This part provides a crucial backdrop to better understand digital transformations in Flemish school education. Part two provides three empirical chapters that each discuss one specific technological phenomenon characteristic of the digital condition. Chapter III examines platformization, through the case of the open-source platform Moodle, and how digital platforms in schools affect what it means to be a professional teacher. Chapter IV explores automation through Artificial Intelligence and discusses how ChatGPT unfolds in and reconfigures students' writing practices. Chapter V turns to immersion with digital technology through the case of Virtual Reality technology, and how it brings into being new relational modes of engaging with people and things in classrooms. Part three, consisting of chapter VI, shifts attention to contemporary digital infrastructures and discusses how they matter 'atmospherically' for schools. More specifically, this part engages with the way infrastructures produce affects in schools that reconfigure school-wide practices, orientations, and desires, even in the absence of direct engagement. After this final empirical part, the dissertation concludes by discussing the conceptual, methodological, and empirical contributions. Two finals matters are provided that articulate propositions for future inquiry.