Over the last twenty plus years a vast amount of money and effort has been expended around the world in getting schools to embrace the use of ICT in education.

That effort was based very largely on the use of ICT and education strategies that used some type of personal computer, be it a desktop or a laptop.

Basically the one kind of tool, the personal computer, was perceived as the way forward for every teaching and learning situation, with every subject, at every level.

Today many, particularly in the US, cannot conceive of an ICT and education strategy built on anything other than PCs.

Despite the reams of rhetoric expended by both manufacturers and governments the reality is that ICT and education strategies based solely on the personal computers have not had the promised impact on teaching and learning.

If you look around you, wherever you are in the world, you will invariably find pockets of teachers making very good use of personal computers but still rarely will you find a total school, particularly a large school where every teacher, in every classroom is making wise use of ICT.

The reality is that the vast majority of ICT and education strategies, based solely on the use of personal computers, have not – and are not – enhancing the effectiveness of teaching nor are they significantly improving student learning.

The following excerpt from Steve Higgins (2003) at the University of Newcastle in the UK succinctly encapsulates the global research.

“A study by the British Educational Technology Association (BECTA, 2000) found no link between level of resources for ICT and either reading or mathematics grades at Key Stage 1 in 1999. At Key Stage 2 there was a significant, but very weak, association between ICT resources and pupil attainment. This indicated that ICT curriculum resourcing was at least 99.5% independent of pupil performance at Key Stage 2 (no correlation coefficient exceeded 0.07). In the USA, information about computer use from a longitudinal study was analysed (Weaver, 2000). This study also found a very small link between computer use in the curriculum in school and improvement in pupils’ test scores, though again the link was very weak (no correlation coefficient was higher than 0.035 for mathematics, science and reading) which again indicates that at this general level computer use makes very little difference to pupils’ achievement.

Simply having more computers does not make much difference.

A similar weak link between high computer use and pupil attainment was reported in a preliminary survey for a Teacher Training Agency study in England (Moseley et al. 1999, p 82) though the authors did not interpret this as a causal link, but rather that more effective teachers (and more effective schools) tended to use more innovative approaches, or tended to use the resources that they had more effectively.

If this interpretation is accepted it suggests that it is more important to think about how computers are used in schools. This same study also reported dramatic impact on pupil attainment in its 16 development projects in primary schools. The average gain on standardized tests was 2.8 months progress per month of the project in mathematics and 5.1 months progress per month in literacy. The report states, however, that these gains do not prove that ICT will raise attainment, but rather that “teachers can raise levels of pupils’ attainment when they use ICT to support their teaching in literacy and numeracy” (p 6). In these projects the use of ICT was planned to have an impact on particular areas of pupils’ learning using research evidence from literacy and mathematics as well as the effective use of ICT. The development work involved working closely with the class teachers over an intensive period using a range of different equipment and software.

These projects did not use control groups, but the consistent and significant increase in the attainment of pupils in mathematics and English suggests that where ICT is targeted at specific areas of learning, with a clear rationale for its use from a broad research base (about ICT, about pedagogy and about professional development) it can have a positive effect”.

Higgins’ analysis accords with many others, some of which are mentioned below.

The key variable in any enhancement is the classroom teacher.

Perhaps unwittingly there has been a propensity with personal computers to focus on the technology, to believe the technology would itself bring about improvement and an associated failure to appreciate that technology in any form is still but a tool.

References

• Goldberg, A., Russell, M., & Cook, A. (2003). The effect of computers on student writing: A meta-analysis of studies from 1992 to 2002. Journal of Technology Learning, and Assessment, 2.1 pp 1-52 (available from http://www.jtla.org).
• Mumtaz, S. and Hammond M. (2002). The word processor re-visited: observations on the use of the word processor to develop literacy at key stage 2, British Journal of Educational Technology, 33.3, pp 345-347.
• Somekh, B. and Davis, N. (Eds) (1997). Using Information Technology Effectively in Teaching and Learning, London: Routledge.
• Higgins, S. and Moseley, D. (2001). Teachers’ thinking about ICT and learning: beliefs and outcomes. Teacher Development 5.2, pp 191-210.
• Sandholtz, J.H., 2001. Learning to teach with technology: a comparison of teacher development programs. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 9.3, pp 349-374.
• Torrance, H. (1997) Assessment, Accountability and Standards: using assessment to control the reform schooling in A.H. Halsey, H. Laude, P. Brown and A.S. Wells (Eds) Education: Culture, Economy, Society, Oxford University Press, 1997, pp320-331.