Deep mediatization in education: school teachers’ voices using a critical realist ontology
type: CreativeWork
description: This thesis delves into the multifaceted aspects of media and technology adoption by teachers in schools from Chile and England, exploring their lives, concerns, conditions and characteristics that shape the use, adoption, or rejection of media, platforms, and software. I draw on a ‘deep mediatization’ approach in education to make visible processes by which media (traditional and digital) increasingly permeate various aspects of society, shaping the way people interact and experience the world. However, I argue that the mediatization approach tends to undertheorize causality claims, which can be attributed to a lack of reflection on the ontological underpinnings that sustain such claims. The described ontology neglects the shaping force of reflexivity and people's own concerns as a mediatory element between agency and structure in the relationship between technology and people and institutions. Considering those shortcomings, I adopt critical realism as a complementary metatheory to develop a combined approach in which mediatization can dialogue with critical realist ontology, giving cultural contextual elements and agential power more weight and influence. Likewise, I also consider that critical realism, in its development of reflexivity, has not engaged productively with issues around media and communication, especially in terms of how media contents, infrastructure, and interactive elements participate in the elaboration and stimulus of concerns and internal dialogues. To do this work, teachers' concerns and voices were placed at the centre of the analysis using an approach from within. First as a normative issue, considering that teachers are the core of the educational process and deserve to be heard and included in the analysis of their field. Second in practical terms I follow the idea that concerns are not only a subjective element with no sociological effects. Instead, concerns might also have a direct impact on the material world shaping practices, decisi…
abstract: This thesis delves into the multifaceted aspects of media and technology adoption by teachers in schools from Chile and England, exploring their lives, concerns, conditions and characteristics that shape the use, adoption, or rejection of media, platforms, and software. I draw on a ‘deep mediatization’ approach in education to make visible processes by which media (traditional and digital) increasingly permeate various aspects of society, shaping the way people interact and experience the world. However, I argue that the mediatization approach tends to undertheorize causality claims, which can be attributed to a lack of reflection on the ontological underpinnings that sustain such claims. The described ontology neglects the shaping force of reflexivity and people's own concerns as a mediatory element between agency and structure in the relationship between technology and people and institutions. Considering those shortcomings, I adopt critical realism as a complementary metatheory to develop a combined approach in which mediatization can dialogue with critical realist ontology, giving cultural contextual elements and agential power more weight and influence. Likewise, I also consider that critical realism, in its development of reflexivity, has not engaged productively with issues around media and communication, especially in terms of how media contents, infrastructure, and interactive elements participate in the elaboration and stimulus of concerns and internal dialogues. To do this work, teachers' concerns and voices were placed at the centre of the analysis using an approach from within. First as a normative issue, considering that teachers are the core of the educational process and deserve to be heard and included in the analysis of their field. Second in practical terms I follow the idea that concerns are not only a subjective element with no sociological effects. Instead, concerns might also have a direct impact on the material world shaping practices, decisi…
author: Ansaldo, Sebastian
language: eng
keywords: Critical Realism, Digital Platforms, Education, Mediatization, Teachers
license: https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/22a2444d-4efe-407a-b7c6-e6429a86b0ee/download
license: https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/
date published: 2023-07-28
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:16Z
provider: Cambridge University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Cambridge

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.17863/CAM.106347