Distinguishing the Field of Educational Technology

Abstract

Drawing on what researchers and professionals in the field internationally report, this paper reviews educational technology as an emergent field. The review reveals the continuum of perspectives on what the field is, and how it is bounded or fragmented. The paper describes the field from two perspectives: the professional and scholarly and considers how the forms of knowledge differ and overlap in each domain. It posits some dichotomies which may frame the field such as science social science and positivist post‑modernist. Finally the paper provides conceptual frameworks for distinguishing fields from each other and suggests what the categorisation of the field might mean, especially considering its emergent status in a rapidly changing context.