| Occupation | Sociologist |
| Expertise | Socio-digital inequalities |
“For many technologists, the allure of digital tools is the possibility of emancipation, a world where we can collaborate to make things without bosses or masters. But for the bosses and masters, automation’s allure is the possibility of getting rid of workers, shattering their power, and replacing them with meeker, cheaper, more easily replaced labor.”
@pluralistic nicely distills the rival visions of how digital technologies can empower or disempower: https://doctorow.medium.com/mass-tech-worker-layoffs-and-the-soft-landing-1ddbb442e608
ICT resources are indispensable in today's digitalized school environment but do students' #ICTresources augment or narrow #EducationalInequality? 💻
Dive right into this with me in the paper out now with #EuropeanSociologicalReview.
With Gerbert Kraaykamp and Margriet van Hek, I found that, while ICT resources are generally beneficial to student educational performance, it benefits well-to-do students more.📈
Full #OpenAccess article:
https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcad008
Abstract. Information and communication technology (ICT) is often heralded to boost student learning. In this paper, we investigate the supposed benefits of ICT
The cat just went over to the HomePod mini on my desk, meowed at it, and Siri said "sure here is some music for you" and the cat perched on the window sill listening to Garbage and Elliott Smith.
I just want to know how long this has been going on.
Everybody criticizes university #rankings. How do they thrive in such a hostile environment? Together with Leopold Ringel I suggest that one explanation for their "discursive resilience" is that critics are co-opted and made involuntary accomplices in a common #discursive endeavor: the development and improvement of #university rankings.
#openaccess in Higher Education
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10734-022-00990-x
If there is one thing all university rankings have in common, it is that they are the target of widespread criticism. This article takes the many challenges university rankings are facing as its point of departure and asks how they navigate their hostile environment. The analysis proceeds in three steps. First, we unveil two modes of ranking critique, one drawing attention to negative effects, the other to methodological shortcomings. Second, we explore how rankers respond to these challenges, showing that they either deflect criticism with a variety of defensive responses or that they respond confidently by drawing attention to the strengths of university rankings. In the last step, we examine mutual engagements between rankers and critics that are based on the entwinement of methodological critique and confident responses. While the way rankers respond to criticism generally explains how rankings continue to flourish, it is precisely the ongoing conversation with critics that facilitates what we coin the discursive resilience of university rankings. The prevalence of university rankings is, in other words, a product of the mutual discursive work of their proponents and opponents.
Daniel Lakens
Clive Thompson
WeedenKim
Ethan J. A. Schoonover
Julian Hamann