Recent Educational Foundations, Policy and Practice听graduate and alumnus Matt Hastings (PhDEDU'20) has been selected听for the (AME) Kuhmerker Dissertation Award.听Hastings was honored for the award, along with two other awardees, at the virtual 47th AME annual conference听held Nov. 3-7, where he also led a talk on his scholarship. 听
His dissertation project, 鈥淟eft to Our Own Devices: Education and Attention for a Digital Age,鈥� is a philosophical analysis of the ethical dimensions of attention in our digital age. The term 鈥渁ttention鈥� is frequently invoked in education (i.e., consider calls for students to 鈥減ay attention鈥�), but it is not often taken up as a subject of study. Hastings听argues that the term 鈥渁ttention鈥� deserves to be a central concept in moral and ethical education; in effect, we are shaped, as moral beings, by what we pay attention to, and how we engage with (and attend to) the world around us. Moreover, our attention has been rapidly re-shaped by the pervasive shift to digital learning technologies.
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Hastings' project begins with a critical account of the 鈥渁ttention economy,鈥� or the many forces that seek to capture (and profit from) our attention. While these forces are old ones, the ubiquity of digital devices has increased both the reach and value of the attention economy. As Hastings argues, digital devices are designed to capture and control our attention, and through this, shape our beliefs and behaviors. Education is a central front in the attention economy. The use of digital devices and programs鈥攆rom laptops to 鈥減ersonalized learning鈥� software鈥攈as grown exponentially. His project speaks to the rapid changes coalescing around us, asking: what are we paying attention to? What is the quality of this attention? How is our attention being structured, and what are the implications for self-formation and concerns of justice?
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