Thirteenth International Conference on e-Learning & Innovative Pedagogies

Abstract

Online search engines have radically altered the capacity for educators and students to access information anywhere at any time, making education at home more feasible than ever. In Australia, home-schoolers make up the nation’s fastest growing educational demographic (Chapman, 2017). As elsewhere, assumptions about new technologies raise deterministic expectations in home-schools about the seemingly inherent new educational benefits. Home-schoolers use the internet more than other technology and more than ever before. Their most prolific online activity is search engine use (Bullock, 2011; Neil, Bonner, and Bonner, 2014), yet to date, little is known about such use. In this paper, I discuss the results of a critical mixed methods study into how Australian home-schoolers view, and use, search engines like Google. I elaborate on a rhetoric-reality gap revealed between the home-schoolers’ assumptions about the power search engines afford them and that which their current use provides. Despite only occasionally experiencing search success, the participants maintained a steadfast optimism in the educational benefits of the technology. This unwavering faith in search engines is contextualised in the presentation as a reflection of widespread ideologies surrounding technology and education where all things digital are unquestionably applauded. My analysis infers that home-schoolers who reject deterministic rhetoric and who instead critically reflect upon search and their own search success may have greater power to ensure the potential new educational benefits are not just presumed, but realised.