Holism, history and power in technology enhanced learning: A comment on Lee

Margaret Westbury

doi:10.82168/a03k7a32

Commentaries

Vol. 1 No. 1 (2020): Debating the status of 'theory' in technology enhanced learning research

Holism, history and power in technology enhanced learning: A comment on Lee

Margaret Westbury^▸^▾

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DOI:: https://doi.org/10.82168/a03k7a32
Submitted: 31 July 2026
Published: 24-08-2020

Abstract

In your life as a researcher, there are times when you read a study whose argument and approach are so clear and obvious that you feel scales fall from your eyes and, simultaneously, enviously wish you had written the piece yourself. This is how I felt after reading Kyungmee Lee’s contribution to the present special issue (Lee, 2020). Her article successfully presents the complexity of Michel Foucault’s ideas without oversimplification, a tricky task. Her approach to review several studies that utilize a similar theoretical background is elegant and persuasive. And in reading her piece, I felt inchoate thoughts and perceptions I have had as a student on, and recent graduate of, the PhD programme in E-Research and Technology Enhanced Learningundefined (hereafter referred to as the ‘TEL programme’) that Lee teaches on and helps direct, crystallise and become more defined.

References

Lee, K. (2020). Michel Foucault in technology-enhanced learning: An analytic review of 10 Foucauldian studies on online education. Studies in Technology Enhanced Learning, 1(1). https://doi.org/10.21428/8c225f6e.6ff53517
Murphy, M. (Ed.). (2013). Social theory and education research: Understanding Foucault, Habermas, Bourdieu and Derrida. Routledge.
Selwyn, N., & Facer, K. (2013). Introduction: The need for a politics of education and technology. In N. Selwyn & K. Facer (Eds.), The politics of education and technology: Conflicts, controversies and connections (pp. 1–17). Palgrave MacMillan.
Westbury, M. (2020a). Academic librarians’ Twitter practices and the production of knowledge infrastructures in higher education. [Unpublished doctoral thesis]. Lancaster University. https://doi.org/10.17635/lancaster/thesis/1039
Westbury, M. (2020b). Infrastructure and technology-enhanced learning: Context, agency, multiplicity. Studies in Technology Enhanced Learning, 1(1). https://doi.org/10.21428/8c225f6e.b49ff9c7

[1] Lee, K. (2020). Michel Foucault in technology-enhanced learning: An analytic review of 10 Foucauldian studies on online education. Studies in Technology Enhanced Learning, 1(1). https://doi.org/10.21428/8c225f6e.6ff53517

[2] Murphy, M. (Ed.). (2013). Social theory and education research: Understanding Foucault, Habermas, Bourdieu and Derrida. Routledge.

[3] Selwyn, N., & Facer, K. (2013). Introduction: The need for a politics of education and technology. In N. Selwyn & K. Facer (Eds.), The politics of education and technology: Conflicts, controversies and connections (pp. 1–17). Palgrave MacMillan.

[4] Westbury, M. (2020a). Academic librarians’ Twitter practices and the production of knowledge infrastructures in higher education. [Unpublished doctoral thesis]. Lancaster University. https://doi.org/10.17635/lancaster/thesis/1039

[5] Westbury, M. (2020b). Infrastructure and technology-enhanced learning: Context, agency, multiplicity. Studies in Technology Enhanced Learning, 1(1). https://doi.org/10.21428/8c225f6e.b49ff9c7