Why have computer-based technologies failed to radically transform schooling? Looking for the right question
Julianne Lynch
Faculty of Education
Deakin University
Australia
Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, 11-13 September 2003
Abstract:
Many have speculated that the diffusion of computer-based technologies into schools would have a transformative effect on schooling, fundamentally changing the nature of teaching and learning. However, wide-scale qualitative changes have failed to emerge, even in technologically wealthy countries such as Australia where the average computer-to-student ratio is now at 1:4. Even the most enthusiastic educational technologists would admit that, despite the presence of computers in schools, the full realisation of the potential of computer-based (and more recently, networked) technologies has not yet occurred.
In this paper, I draw on sociological and feminist accounts of interactions between technology and users to offer a critique of the assumptions that underpin dominant discourses surrounding technology and schooling. I argue that the dominant storying that constructs classroom technology use is based on a naïve conception of technology, leading to misreadings of teacher practice and the development of flawed policy. I argue that the notion of technology-as-process offers a more generative framework for investigating practice that is better attuned to what goes on in schools, and to understanding the resilience of traditional schooling, leading us to ask more useful questions about technology usage and the context of use.
The integration of computer-based technologies into school learning environments has been an educational policy priority in most developed countries for almost two decades. Governments have funded the provision of equipment and infrastructure, and in Australia state governments have mandated the use of computer-based technologies to support student learning in all subject areas. The rationale fuelling these developments includes the changing needs of students as citizens and as future participants in a changing workforce, and the potential of computer-based technologies to improve teaching and learning. Developments in technology and policy have been accompanied by a proliferation of predictions about an immanent transformation of schooling. While some voices have been sceptical, governments, popular media and school marketing literature profess the merits of a new era of schooling prompted by the use of computer-based technologies.
Debates surrounding the relationship between new technologies and school learning are not new (Hativa & Lesgold, 1995); schooling has always been mediated by technology. Many researchers working in the area of educational technology have expressed the view that the implementation of new computer-based technologies in schools goes hand-in-hand with reform of the roles and structures of education. The US Panel on Educational Technology argued in 1997 that, “the real promise of technology in education lies in its potential to facilitate fundamental, qualitative changes in the nature of teaching and learning” (cited in Becker & Ravitz, 1999, p.357). Duchateau (1995) argued that “the computer provides a wonderful opportunity for inter- or multi-disciplinary activities, which are not limited by the existing subject frontiers” (p.22), predicting that independent subject areas will disappear as the main goal of education becomes “not to learn and master a traditional subject, but only to learn” (p.20). Riel (1999) provided a vision of schools of the future that included increased partnerships between schools and the community, cross-aged learning, a break down of the divide between teachers and administrators and the integration of subject areas.
The provision of computer-based technologies has, for the most part, had little effect on how schooling is done more generally. This is not to say that high-profile but non-typical experiments (eg. Apple Classroom of Tomorrow, see Bitter & Pierson, 2002) and occasional pockets of innovation do not exist, but the broader changes predicted by enthusiasts have not materialised. Many reasons are given for the lack of significant large scale change, including inadequate access to technology with many arguing that we need more computers in schools (eg. Wilson & Notar, 2003), the provision of technology that is poorly suited to school learning and the school environment (eg. Ridgeway & Passey, 1995), inappropriate use by teachers of the technology provided (eg. Mageau, 1992), and teacher resistance to top-down pressure to implement the technology provided (eg. Cuban, 1993). In this paper, I argue that such explanations are based on a naïve understanding of technology-as-product, and on simplistic notions of teachers as receivers of pedagogical innovations. I propose that an understanding of technology-as-process is a more generative lens, allowing us to recognise the productive power teachers have in their usage of educational technology, to see the flaws in current policy and initiatives aiming for change, and to respond accordingly in research.
Technology-as-product vs Technology-as-process
The notion of technology-as-process, developed by feminist researchers (eg. Berg, 1994) who have sought to describe and explain relations between technology and gender, provides a critique of popular conceptions of technology-as-product. Sociologist (eg. Bereano, 1976; Pacey, 1983) and feminist (eg. Berg, 1994; Hacker, 1989; Rakow, 1988; Wajcman, 1985) accounts of interactions between technology and users, suggest that the notion of technology-as-product provides an inadequate explanation of what happens when a technological artefact is introduced into a field of practice. Prior to the 1970s, definitions of technology arising from fields such as engineering focused on the material elements of a machine or a technique (Mitcham, 1978). The technology is seen to be complete when it arrives at the site where it is to be consumed; it has been produced elsewhere. It is defined by its material components (eg. hardward and software) and intentionality that is built into these. Evaluations of use (implementation) are made with reference to intentions that are hardwired into the product. Usage that does not comply with the intentions of the designer/initiator/reformer is seen as misuse.
In contrast to this narrow understanding of technology, sociologists emphasise the place of purposeful human endeavour in definitions of technology, arguing that it is nonsensical to talk of technology without addressing what the material elements mean within the social contexts of use (Bereano, 1976). Social relations make technological artefacts meaningful, and this meaning varies depending on the perspective of different interest groups. The notion of technology-as-process moves the point (in time) and the place of production to the site of usage. Using the language of diffusion of innovation, the configuration of material elements are adopted and adapted by users. If we see technology as process, it is only when it is put to use that this configuration becomes technology. A stick is not a technology until it is used to lever a rock or fend off an attacker; in this usage it becomes a technology. A wooden-spoon may have been designed for stirring porridge, but once it is used to paddle a child, its meaning changes. At least two things are being negotiated in this usage: the meaning of the artefact within a social context and relations of power and identity. The meaning of the wooden spoon is constructed around relations that exist between people, and the spoon becomes a tool in the negotiation of these relations. The notion of technology-as-product challenges dominant ways of seeing technology and technology usage. Within this framework, the site of implementation is the site of production; this is the site where the meaning of the material configuration is negotiated. The material artefact is inscribed by the practice and context of the user. The affordances of the artefact are recruited into the context of consumption (with its values, assumptions and priorities) such that the consumer-user becomes a producer of technology.
Research on user practice tells us that the ideal user imagined by designers is often inconsistent with actual users’ needs or motivations. For example, in North America, the telephone was promoted as a means to reduce women’s loneliness and isolation, particularly those living in isolated rural areas (Rakow, 1988). However, Rakow explained that,
If there had been a genuine interest in easing farm women’s isolation, telephone sets would have been designed differently so that women could talk together while they worked. In the 1920s one farm woman resorted to peeling potatoes with the telephone receiver lying in the bottom of a large aluminium pan, which reflected the voices of the telephone conversation back up to her at her seat on a stool. (p.211)
From the perspective of the design and intended usage of the telephone, this woman’s usage is deviant and is constructed by the designers as misuse. However, seeing this usage as misuse points to a failure to understand technology and how material artefacts come to mean within social contexts. Within the context of use, this farm woman is the producer of technology. She has co-opted the telephone to her own agenda and in doing so its meaning is transformed.
Berg (1994) explains:
Once technology is seen as a process instead of an already-made ‘thing’ the user of technology is no longer its passive recipient but can come into view as an important actor in its shaping. Intentions baked into technology may restrict the flexibility of a given artefact, but they cannot altogether determine its use or its meaning. (pp.95-6).
The concept of technology-as-process was used by Berg to explain women’s use of the Minitel (a video information system, attached to a telephone, and marketed for home use). The women involved in this study made their mark on the Minitel by using it in inventive ways (eg. fitting it in with the décor of the home and using it as an electronic telephone directory), inscribing it with meaning not intended by the designers. Berg’s analysis illustrates how the integration of such artefacts into a field of practice involves a complex process of negotiation. The Minitel did not determine social relations within the home, rather it became a site for the negotiation of roles and identities and relations of gender. A conception of technology-as-product would not allow us to see what this artefact meant in use; instead, it would have us construct the women’s usage as misuse, partial use or failure to use correctly (ie. take the part of the designer).
Technology and schooling
The notion of technology-as-product predominates in popular discourses surrounding computer-based technologies and schooling. As indicated above, it can be found in government policies, popular media and school marketing literature. It can also be found in research into technology and schooling. This narrow understanding is insufficient in terms of explaining, or allowing use to see, what goes on in schools. It leads to a misreading of educational practice and flawed conclusions about diffusion of innovations, the support required by schools and the impacts of technology on schooling.
Seeing technological artefacts as already finished products encourages an input-output approach to policy. This approach is deterministic, based on an assumption that new artefacts will have a unidirectional impact on practice and on the outcomes of practice. A manifestation of this approach is the expectation that the mere provision of computers will result in improved outcomes for learners. This can be seen in government spending patterns in Australia. A national sample study of information technology resources in Australia found that schools spend more money on software, hardware and connectivity than on the professional development of teachers and that only a third of school principals surveyed agreed that professional development in their schools is adequate (Meredyth, Russell, Blackwood, Thomas, & Wise 1999). The input-output approach that results from the conception of technology-as-product leads to very crude provision for, and assessment of, the status of computers in schools. In Australia and elsewhere, government targets in terms of the implementation of computers are usually expressed and assessed in terms computer-to-student ratio, focusing on quantifying the material artefacts that will be injected into the system and, in doing so, constructing teachers as recipients of technology and failing to acknowledge or respond to the complexity of usage.
Historically, studies of computers and schooling have tended to focus on quantifying the number of computers or the degree of Internet connectivity, ascertaining the effects of computer use on learning outcomes, and measuring the correspondence of use of computers against planned or intended use. Each of these foci stem from an understanding of technology-as-product and fail to account for the productive power of teachers. Relative to attention paid to these foci, questions about how computer-based technologies are recruited to the purposes of teachers are often neglected or are understood only with reference to the intentions of the designer or change initiator.
Effect studies are not necessarily problematic; however, when based upon an understanding of technology-as-product, effect studies can result in unhelpful conclusions about the relationship between computer use and learning outcomes. Extreme manifestations of this approach to research into educational technology are studies that investigate effects of provision without accounting for how the provided tools and resources are used. For example, Angrist and Lavey (2002) reported on a large scale quantitative study in Israel of the effects on students’ test scores in Maths and Hebrew of a program that aimed to reduce the student-computer ratio in schools by providing computers. They compared the test scores of students in schools that received computers under this program with those of students in schools that did not, concluding that the provision of computers did not appear to have had educational benefits. No account was taken of how students and teachers used these resources (discussed in more detail in Lynch, 2002). This study constructed computers as already finished products that would have a uni-directional effect on learning outcomes. It did not account for interactions between the artefacts and the users, so there is no telling how the learning effects measured aligned (or not) with the intentions of the users.
When studies do look at how computers are used, they tend to compare actual usage with intended usage; that is, they investigate the diffusion of a particular interpretation of an artefact, rather than the meaning of that artefact within a field of practice. Referring to this approach to diffusion studies, Fullan and Pomfret (1977) first used the term fidelity of implementation to refer to the degree to which usage matched an imagined ideal implementation. Early manifestations of this approach to looking at classroom computer use constructed teachers as fearful, lazy, insecure, conservative and irrational when they failed to implement computers in the ways intended by initiators of change (Hodas, 1998). However, during the 1980s, researchers began to criticise the way earlier work framed teacher practice (eg. Hart, 1995), and studies of technology and schooling began to focus on teachers in the context of schooling (Grunberg & Summers 1992). This change in focus often led to the construction of teacher practice as resistance to top-down implementation strategies, and made cases for understanding teachers’ resistance as a rational response to initiatives that have poor fits with their existing work practices. For example, in a study of the main factors that influenced the way science curriculum innovations were implemented in Scotland, Brown and McIntire (1982) argued that the innovation must make sense in terms of teachers’ concerns: “it is entirely rational for teachers ... to give priority to ensuring that they can cope fluently with the practical situations with which they are faced and meet the criteria for which they are accountable” (p.123). Similarly, in a study of the costs and rewards associated with teachers’ use of computers, Olson and Eaton (1986) found that teachers’ main concerns were based on the challenges to well established classroom procedures. Gillman (1989) explained that many teachers are reluctant to invest the additional time and energy required to incorporate a new technology into their teaching methodology because they have already developed adequate solutions to many of their pedagogical problems within the given organisational structures.