In this study of computer-mediated instruction (CMI) in a U.S. research university that is the site of nationally known innovations in this area, Jan Nespor traces the varying material and organizational entanglements of a constantly reconfiguring network of people, things, categories, and ideas that are sometimes loosely, sometimes tightly entangled in forms of CMI. He unfolds how the different forms and meanings of CMI policy and practice were constructed over time, across departments, and in relation to students' academic trajectories. Tying together a range of issues usually separated in discussions of instructional technology and examining often slighted topics, such as the articulations of local and national practices, this book questions the common vocabulary for making sense of CMI and contributes to educational change theory by showing how CMI has evolved both from the top-down and the bottom-up. Technology and the Politics of Instruction is distinctive in its multi-level approach and in the breadth of its conceptual frame. Departing from the mainstream research on instructional technology to focus on mundane and widespread forms of CMI-PowerPoint slides, CD-ROMs, self-paced labs, and the like-Nespor views these from multiple standpoints, not just what they mean for professors, but also for administrators and students. The effect is to displace the typical emphasis in CMI research from cutting-edge, high resource artifacts and systems (the importance of which is not questioned) to the politics and organizational processes that shape the uses of such things. This book is intended primarily for scholars and students in the fields of educational and more broadly organizational change, the politics and sociology of education, curriculum theory, higher education, and educational administration, and will also interest instructional technologists and technology developers.

In this study of computer-mediated instruction (CMI) in a U.S. research university that is the site of nationally known innovations in this area, Jan Nespor traces the varying material and organizational entanglements of a constantly reconfiguring network of people, things, categories, and ideas that are sometimes loosely, sometimes tightly entangled in forms of CMI. He unfolds how the different forms and meanings of CMI policy and practice were constructed over time, across departments, and in relation to students7; academic trajectories. Tying together a range of issues usually separated in discussions of instructional technology and examining often slighted topics, such as the articulations of local and national practices, this book questions the common vocabulary for making sense of CMI and contributes to educational change theory by showing how CMI has evolved both from the top-down and the bottom-up.
"Technology and the Politics of Instruction "is distinctive in its multi-level approach and in the breadth of its conceptual frame. Departing from the mainstream research on instructional technology to focus on mundane and widespread forms of CMI2;PowerPoint slides, CD-ROMs, self-paced labs, and the like2;Nespor views these from multiple standpoints, not just what they mean for professors, but also for administrators and students. The effect is to displace the typical emphasis in CMI research from cutting-edge, high resource artifacts and systems (the importance of which is not questioned) to the politics and organizational processes that shape the uses of such things.
This book is intended primarily for scholars and students in the fields of educational and more broadlyorganizational change, the politics and sociology of education, curriculum theory, higher education, and educational administration, and will also interest instructional technologists and technology developers.

Based on two years of ethnographic fieldwork in an urban elementary school, this volume is an examination of how school division politics, regional economic policies, parental concerns, urban development efforts, popular cultures, gender ideologies, racial politics, and university and corporate agendas come together to produce educational effects. Unlike conventional school ethnographies, the focus of this work is less on classrooms than on the webs of social relations that embed schools in neighborhoods, cities, states, and regions. Utilizing a variety of narratives and analytical styles, this volume:
* explores how curriculum innovations are simultaneously made possible by and undermined by school district politics, neighborhood histories, and the spatial and temporal organizations of teachers' and parents' lives;
* situates the educational discourse of administrators and teachers in the changing economic and political climates of the city;
* analyzes the motivations behind an effort by school and business proponents to refashion classrooms within the school into business enterprises, and of children's efforts to make sense of the scheme;
* examines the role of the school as a neighborhood institution, situating it at the intersections of city planners' efforts to regulate city space and children's efforts to carve out live spaces through out-of-school routines;
* contemplates the meaning of school as a site for bodily experience, and looks at how patterns of space and control in the school shaped children's bodies, and at how they continued to use body-based languages to construct maturity, gender, and race; and
* investigates the school as a space for the deployment of symbolic resources where children learned and constructed identities through their engagements with television, comic books, movies, and sports.
"Tangled Up In School" raises questions about how we draw the boundaries of the school, about how schools fit into the lives of children and cities, and about what we mean when we talk about "school."

Using an analysis of learning by a case study comparison of two undergraduate courses at a United States University, Nespor examines the way in which education and power merge in physics and management. Through this study of politics and practices of knowledge, he explains how students, once accepted on these courses, are facilitated on a path to power; physics and management being core disciplines in modern society. Taking strands from constructivist psychology, post-modern geography, actor-network theory and feminist sociology, this book develops a theoretical language for analysing the production and use of knowledge. He puts forward the idea that learning, usually viewed as a process of individual minds and groups in face-to-face interaction, is actually a process of activities organised across space and time and how organisations of space and time are produced in social practice.; Within this context educational courses are viewed as networks of a larger whole, and individual courses are points in the network which link a wider relationship by way of texts, tasks and social practices intersecting with them. The book shows how students enrolled on such courses automatically become part of a network of power and knowledge.

Using an analysis of learning by a case study comparison of two undergraduate courses at a United States University, Nespor examines the way in which education and power merge in physics and management. Through this study of politics and practices of knowledge, he explains how students, once accepted on these courses, are facilitated on a path to power; physics and management being core disciplines in modern society. Taking strands from constructivist psychology, post-modern geography, actor-network theory and feminist sociology, this book develops a theoretical language for analysing the production and use of knowledge. He puts forward the idea that learning, usually viewed as a process of individual minds and groups in face-to-face interaction, is actually a process of activities organised across space and time and how organisations of space and time are produced in social practice.; Within this context educational courses are viewed as networks of a larger whole, and individual courses are points in the network which link a wider relationship by way of texts, tasks and social practices intersecting with them. The book shows how students enrolled on such courses automatically become part of a network of power and knowledge.

Based on two years of ethnographic fieldwork in an urban elementary school, this volume is an examination of how school division politics, regional economic policies, parental concerns, urban development efforts, popular cultures, gender ideologies, racial politics, and university and corporate agendas come together to produce educational effects. Unlike conventional school ethnographies, the focus of this work is less on classrooms than on the webs of social relations that embed schools in neighborhoods, cities, states, and regions. Utilizing a variety of narratives and analytical styles, this volume:
* explores how curriculum innovations are simultaneously made possible by and undermined by school district politics, neighborhood histories, and the spatial and temporal organizations of teachers' and parents' lives;
* situates the educational discourse of administrators and teachers in the changing economic and political climates of the city;
* analyzes the motivations behind an effort by school and business proponents to refashion classrooms within the school into business enterprises, and of children's efforts to make sense of the scheme;
* examines the role of the school as a neighborhood institution, situating it at the intersections of city planners' efforts to regulate city space and children's efforts to carve out live spaces through out-of-school routines;
* contemplates the meaning of school as a site for bodily experience, and looks at how patterns of space and control in the school shaped children's bodies, and at how they continued to use body-based languages to construct maturity, gender, and race; and
* investigates the school as a space for the deployment of symbolic resources where children learned and constructed identities through their engagements with television, comic books, movies, and sports.
"Tangled Up In School" raises questions about how we draw the boundaries of the school, about how schools fit into the lives of children and cities, and about what we mean when we talk about "school."