EdTech at the crossroads of pedagogy vs profit

Education technology (EdTech) is transforming education at a fast pace – but at what cost?

Following its surge during the pandemic, schools now rely on EdTech for everything from admin tasks to student learning and safety. Yet this rapid growth raises urgent questions: Whose interests does EdTech serve? And what are the consequences when it infringes children’s rights to privacy, education, and protection from commercial exploitation, as our research shows? This lecture draws on research from the Digital Futures for Children centre and the 5Rights Foundation’s Better EdTech Futures for Children project. It explores tensions between pedagogical aims and commercial drivers in EdTech’s design and use. We examine how business models, data practices, and market forces shape learning environments, often at the expense of children’s rights, wellbeing, and inclusion. By placing EdTech in wider debates on governance, equity, and accountability, the session invites educators, policymakers, and researchers to reflect on what a child-rights-respecting, pedagogically sound vision for technology in education looks like – and how we can get there.

Meet our speakers and chair

Sandra El Gemayel is a research officer at the Digital Futures for Children centre, leading the Better EdTech Futures for Children project. Her work explores children’s rights, education, and play across digital and non-digital contexts, focusing on amplifying marginalised children’s voices. Her PhD examined how conflict and displacement shape the play of forcibly displaced children in Lebanon. She also led UNICEF’s Play & Heal project on crises, play, and trauma recovery.

Beeban Kidron is a leading authority on children’s rights in the digital environment and global regulation. A crossbench peer in the UK House of Lords, she has shaped international standards for online safety and privacy. She is Founder of the 5Rights Foundation, Chair of the Digital Futures for Children centre at LSE, Visiting Professor of Practice, Fellow at Oxford’s Computer Science Dept, AI ethics advisor, UN Broadband Commissioner, and former award-winning film director.

Julian Sefton-Green is Professor of New Media Education at Deakin University, with a career spanning research, teaching, and policy on media, technology, and learning. He has held roles at LSE, Oslo, and South Australia, and honorary posts in Nottingham, Hong Kong, and Helsinki. Author or editor of 20 books, his recent work includes Learning to Live with Datafication (2022) and Youthsites (2023). He is lead researcher at Australia’s Centre of Excellence for Digital Childhoods.

Rhys Spence is Head of Platform and Research at Brighteye Ventures. Previously Director of Comms and Engagement at the Education Policy Institute (UK). He was EPI's Edtech lead, forming policy and research papers with partners (e.g. Apple, OECD).

Sonia Livingstone (@Livingstone_S) is a full professor in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE. She has published 20 books and advised the UK government, European Commission, European Parliament, UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, Council of Europe and UNICEF on media audiences, children and young people’s risks and opportunities, media literacy and rights in the digital environment. She directs the Digital Futures for Children centre.

More about this event

The Digital Futures for Children centre facilitates research for a rights-respecting digital world for children. This joint LSE and 5Rights research centre supports an evidence base for advocacy, facilitates dialogue between academics and policymakers, and amplifies children’s voices, following the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child’s General comment No. 25.

The Department of Media and Communications (@MediaLSE) is a world-leading centre for education and research in communication and media studies at the heart of LSE’s academic community in central London.

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