Kanwal Singh reviews Justin Reich’s latest book for Science Magazine:

As the pandemic forces so many school systems and learning institutions to move online, the desire to educate students well using online tools and platforms is more pressing than ever. But as Justin Reich illustrates in his new book, Failure to Disrupt, there are no easy solutions or one-size-fits-all tools that can aid in this transition, and many recent technologies that were expected to radically change schooling have instead been used in ways that perpetuate existing systems and their attendant inequalities.

The first half of the book discusses the brief histories, limited successes, and challenges of three types of large-scale technology-driven learning environments: instructor-guided, such as lectures taught through massive open online courses (MOOCs); algorithm-guided (e.g., Khan Academy); and peer-guided (e.g., the online coding community known as Scratch). Reich gives a solid accounting of the conditions needed for success with these models, the difficulties and limitations involved in adopting them in K–12 schooling, and the challenges that arise when we attempt to compare different approaches to one another. He argues that although we might think that the availability of a technology is its biggest limiter, the truth is that educational systems are simply not constructed to allow for experimentation and new ways of learning.

Keep reading on ScienceMag.org: https://blogs.sciencemag.org/books/2020/09/08/failure-to-disrupt/