dc.description.abstract | In order for technological innovations to unfold their full potential on institutionalized education services, there is a need to move away from seeing technology as a complementary resource, into developing information and communication technology (ICT) incorporated practices. A practice approach sees technology as an inherently social phenomenon, and as such implies a need to recognize actors' learning and identityformation in their resource integrating practices. Learning and identity-formation enables the enactment of field-specific competences, to perform conventionally accepted actions, in social practice. This issue has not been adequately addressed in conventional innovation literature, which has preferred to see the actor as ready-made. Following a practice theoretical perspective, this thesis explores the role of social practice in affecting changes to the arrangement of actors in a technology-mediated community of practice, and how value that is had from education service is contingent on such practice arrangements.
Findings, from a two-step qualitative data collection, indicate that applying practice theoretical perspectives to the empirical case study in question implies a need to emphasise, not only a localized social dimension, but a networked dimension covering widely dispersed sociomaterial actors. This has theoretical, as well as managerial implications for education service innovation.
Keywords: Social practice, learning, service innovation, education service, education technology, education management | nb_NO |