Conference session

How do technology companies make markets in education? This presentation introduces a market-making framework, drawn from Michel Callon's sociology of markets, and demonstrates its value for analyzing how technology companies are entering and reshaping educational settings. The first part of the presentation draws on doctoral research that examined how Google's K-12 educational offerings were promoted and normalized through intermediary work in public online spaces. Using digital trace data from online communities, Twitter hashtag publics, and influencer content on YouTube, the research traced how qualification, attachment, and circulation work in these spaces rendered Google's tools desirable and taken for granted in school life. The framework directs attention away from price mechanisms and purchasing decisions and toward the practical, distributed labor through which educational technology markets are assembled. The second part extends this lens to generative AI in education, where companies such as OpenAI and Google are building partnerships with universities and school districts, developing AI-enabled tools for teaching and assessment, and working with various actors to shape how AI enters both K-12 and post-secondary settings. We argue that the same market-making lens, including investments in forms, qualification contests, and intermediary networks, offer productive tools for analyzing how these emerging markets are being assembled across educational sectors. The session will interest researchers, practitioners, and policymakers concerned with understanding how technology markets in education are made rather than simply adopted. Participants will leave with a transferable analytical vocabulary for examining the infrastructural and relational work behind educational technology adoption.