Melbourne, AU (AEDT), 2025

Virtual
Values

A monthly reading group at Deakin University on value(s) and education technologies.

While concepts of value and values are always contested in a broad philosophical sense, there is a particular crisis in debates about value in contemporary education systems at the same time as digital platforms seem to be creating new economies, new markets and new financial value alongside and possibly interrelated to a decline of older forms of social value.We want to use the lens of virtual value-that is to say value as it is created in the virtual and platformed world to investigate the new and changing constructions of value especially focused on the field of education but in a context of shifting values as societies move into a new sphere of digital governance.Valuation refers to how something becomes valued, and how, upon being recognised as valuable within social practices, it influences and reshapes these practices (Decuypere et. al 2024). Scholars have grappled with the inherent ambiguity of value, as notably articulated by Graeber’s (2001) book, Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value, argues for a departure from the workplace and Marx’s labour theory of value, asserting two predominant ‘streams of thought’ in the discussion of value(s): the economic sense, which pertains to the desirability of an object measured by what others are willing to exchange for it, and the sociological perspective, which considers values as conceptions of what is good, proper, and desirable in human life. These values are expressed, contested, and disseminated through various digital media platforms today (Hallinan et al. 2022). Thus, the reading group examines both the sociological definition of 'values' and the economic definition of 'value.'In our context, we seek to understand how these conceptualisations of value and values exist in the EdTech ecosystem. A startup founder’s perspective of value may underscore their relationship to a much larger business ecosystem and their orientation towards the future (Decuypere et. al 2024). For the firms ‘producers’ such as software engineers and educators, their creative activity is the source of the platform’s value (Graeber 2001). Students, on the other hand, will view the value of a platform based on the value of learning on the platform (Vermiere et. al 2024).Browse our readings + contact us.

References:Decuypere, Mathias, Sigrid Hartong, Nina Brandau, Lucas Joecks, Anja Loft-Akhoondi, Carlos Ortegón, Toon Tierens, and Lanze Vanermen. 2024. “Maneuvering Constellations of Valuation: A Critical Investigation of the Edtech Startup Sector.” Critical Studies in Education, June, 1–20.Graeber, David. 2001. Toward An Anthropological Theory of Value. New York: Palgrave Macmillan US.Hallinan, Blake, Rebecca Scharlach, and Limor Shifman. 2022. “Beyond Neutrality: Conceptualizing Platform Values” Communication Theory 32 (2): 201–22.Vermeire, Z., M.J. De Haan, J. Sefton-Green, and S.F. Akkerman. 2024. “The Desire to Learn: The Alienation and Reimagining of Pedagogy on YouTube, Twitch and TikTok.” Critical Studies in Education, June, 1–19.

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This site is maintained by Melissa De la Cruz.

About us

We are a group of researchers mainly connected via the Deakin Node of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child (Digital Child). We do endeavour to include colleagues across Australia and beyond.

Professor Julian Sefton-Green researches young people’s and families’ use of digital technology, focusing on socially marginalised communities and social inequality. He explores how data impacts family life and aims to promote equality and diversity through digital environments.Dr Luci Pangrazio is an expert in datafication, young people’s digital and data literacies, and digital cultures. Luci's research focusses on the datafication of young children’s technology use – what data are being collected, how it’s being used, and the implications.Dr. Andy Zhao is a sociologist who is interested in studying and researching digital media, transnational mobility, young people, and the intersections of them. Andy is a Research Fellow at the Digital Child and hopes to bring to the Centre his experience and expertise in researching culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities in the digital age.Dr. Kate Mannell is a media studies researcher whose work analyses the design, governance, and use of digital platforms, with particular focus on understanding the role of technologies in everyday life and the practices people use to regulate or resist their use.Dr. Robbie Fordyce is a critical researcher of digital systems and spend his time studying the impacts that technologies can have on our social bonds. Robbie is a DECRA Fellow and his research investigates the impacts of AI for creative and intellectual workers.Dr. Chris Zomer is an Associate Research Fellow at the Digital Child. His research interests include gamified learning applications, student engagement and the datafication of education. At the Centre, Chris will be looking at how families with young children understand and manage digital data in the home.Melissa De la Cruz's research explores the work practices, skills, and values in creating and maintaining EdTech platforms, focusing specifically on the roles of teachers, product designers, and software developers. Her outlook is shaped by over a decade of experience in public sector innovation in the US and in her hometown of Cebu City, Philippines.

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What we're reading.

Narrowing down nearly 40 years of studies of value.
Since you made it this far, why not have look at our Dot points?

Aug 16, 2024 - Graeber, David. 2001. Toward An Anthropological Theory of Value. New York: Palgrave Macmillan US.Sept 13, 2024 Oct 18, 2024 - Appadurai, Arjun. 1986. The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. New York City, NY: Cambridge University Press.Nov 22, 2024 - Decuypere, Mathias, Sigrid Hartong, Nina Brandau, Lucas Joecks, Anja Loft-Akhoondi, Carlos Ortegón, Toon Tierens, and Lanze Vanermen. 2024. “Maneuvering Constellations of Valuation: A Critical Investigation of the Edtech Startup Sector.” Critical Studies in Education, June, 1–20.Q1 2025 - Fourcade, Marion, and Daniel N Kluttz. 2020. “A Maussian Bargain: Accumulation by Gift in the Digital Economy.” Big Data & Society 7 (1).Nachtwey, Oliver, and Simon Schaupp. 2024. “The Valorization of Interactions. Gift Exchange, Power and Value Creation on Digital Platforms.” Big Data & Society 11 (2).

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Dot points.

A kerfuffle of ideas. Otherwise known as thoughts over 300 characters. || Under construction ||

2024-11Virtual Value(s) No. 3

This month we welcomed Sigrid Hartong and Mathias Decuypere to the Deakin Node and Virtual Value(s) group. Timing indeed that the authors were in town to discuss our first contemporary piece of work around value. We enjoyed reading this at the start of July and were stoked later on to learn that Sigrid and Mathias would be visiting scholars at University of Melbourne later in the year. Their work (note that there are 6 other co-authors) formed a crucial part of the original brief of the reading group because of the way they described how different forms of valuation co-exist in a single edtech startup summit.It's always a challenge to describe the genesis story of the reading group to visitors. So I made a call to use the number 3 as a framework for organising ideas because why not? So as an introductory slide, I thought this encounter was up to the task. One can't help feel the tension of the Google Gemini prompt. It appears to be asking the digital tool to come up with a strategy for Australian educators. Two things that come to mind: first, the 'potential' time-savings for educators or subject head, and the 'value' placed on the expertise of the digital tool. Different forms of valuation but all in the same space.

Google Gemini x Australian Curriculum, Aug 2024 (c) MRD

What is the Virtual Value(s) Reading Group?

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• Understand the changing constructions of value in contemporary systems of education

• Think about how other forms of social values are transformed or shift with new forms of digital governance.

• Investigate how these conceptualisation of value and values exist in the EdTech ecosystem.

Sigrid and Mathias were quite candid about their approach in conducting their research, including how they worked with the organisers of the summit to conduct the hybrid (team) ethnography. And oh the joy and logistics of working through all the voice memos from the summit. My personal takeaway was how crucial it is as researchers or generally curious people to work within the bounds of the space/sector you are working in (i.e. edtech ecosystem etc.). Apart from stories, we also discussed the constructions of value through the sociomaterial artefacts or the stuff in the summit; whether it was the empty pavilion hall filled with big edtech players, the speakers lounge behind the main stage, or outside in the mechanical bull-turned-unicorn ring.

2024-10Virtual Value(s) No. 2

Reading this piece made me feel like I was 21 again because I read this nearly a decade ago in a Global Flows class at The New School's Graduate Program in International Affairs. Yes, 10 years later, it is still very difficult to read! On the brightside, I learned how to keep reading along and on to the very next chapter was Kopytoff's Cultural Biography of Things which gave Appadurai's chapter a little more context.To be fair, Appadurai's 60-page opening chapter was truly a relic of its time -- yes, you read that right 1986, and the anthropological approach during this time was completely new. It countered the popular (Western) narrative of exchange value with the idea of value making and that it could be accumulated over time.This, we think, is his main contribution. Keda were the stories that described the journey of valuables from island to island. Moreover, the process of exchange or the acquisition of economic value is something that happens further down the line. This is where politics and jostling between people happen.Knowing this, how does Appadurai's theory of value transfer into the digital age? Does it work today? We talked about Meta and the commodification of social relationships and how seemingly easy it was to seize non-digital things?Another bright side of revisiting this work is that I am not doing it alone or in a classroom setting *phew. The reading groups are a chance for us to unpack some of these 'classic texts' and see how it stacks up to our current research projects on edtech: digital labour, datafication, digital parenting, etc.Two conceptual concepts that could potentially be useful framing : first, the regimes of value which contends that value of objects or products depends on the particular social context or social sphere it is placed. For example, engagement data on digital platforms are more important for intermediaries than it is for the users of the apps. This creates detachment, ignorance, and indifference among participants as they are further outside the production chain. The second framework, tournaments of value, suggests that the contest is more important than the value and there are time windows when this take place. Think about the Post-COVID era with schools, companies, and regulators decipher the educational value of a product. Market value being just one of the many factors to consider; others include: cultural capital or prestige.

2024-08Virtual Value(s) No. 1

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Interested in learning more or have suggestions for the reading group? Connect with us.

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