Logics of technology enhanced learning in the context of nurse education

This study offers a critical insight into technology enhanced learning within the context of nurse education in the UK. Despite an apparent lack of substantive evidence, the use of learning technology in higher education has become ubiquitous. This study uses a discourse analysis approach to examine technology enhanced learning as a social and political force constructed as being at the frontier of pedagogic transformation. Data was collected through interviews and observation of teaching practice. A total of 24 semi-structured interviews were carried out with 13 nursing lecturers and 11 pre-registration nursing students who were based within the same School at a UK university. Alongside the interviews, the lecturers were also observed teaching pre-registration nursing students across a range of environments. The study utilises a critical logics approach which relies upon three basic units that explain social change; social logics, political logics and ideological or fantasmatic logics. Social logics characterise the rules that social actors follow, with social logics of novelty, freedom and caveats identified. Political logics provide a means to explore the contestation and defence of instituted social practices. The identified political logics are logics of equivalence (logics of aligning with TECH, low-tech teaching and enslavement) and logics of difference (logics of liberation, hi-tech teaching and isolated resistance). Fantasmatic logics work to conceal the political dimensions of social practices concerned with technology enhanced learning, with the three identified logics being the logic of promise, performance and performativity. This study demonstrates that technology enhanced learning is not a fixed set of practices that have transformed educational practice, but is rather discursive in nature, a contingent project open to critical engagement and contestation. Several competing interests are identified which are working towards the dominance of technology enhanced learning and the resistance of in-depth critique.