Computers, Schools and Students

The Effects of Technology

Cedric Cullingford, Nusrat Haq

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9780754678212
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317162575
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

How have schools been affected by the introduction of computer technology, and has it changed the school life and experience of students? This book uses research from both large and small secondary schools, including those specializing in technology and those with higher numbers of pupils with special needs, to look at the results of all the political initiatives and investment in ICT. The authors found that the ambitious expectations fell short of reality. Their research into the reasons for this shortfall can help teachers understand and develop ways to make the best use of computers in their schools. It is equally informative for educational researchers and policy-makers.

1 The Introduction of Information Technology

10.4324/9781315573250-2

Change can make some people feel bewildered. For others change is fascinating because it is full of possibilities. While people have always been aware of continuing changes in society in terms of attitudes, power, control and morality, there used to be a debate about whether change was a good or a bad thing. We now live in a time in which change is supposed to be inevitable and therefore is not to be doubted. The questions are no longer about its utility, its threats or beneficence, but about how to adapt to it.

This sense of inevitability stems from the fact that change is associated essentially with technology. Change is nowadays not a question of historical or human progress, but of new systems of communication and production. For many years people debated the effects of new technological inventions like the steam engine and the steam presses that allowed the manufacture of millions of books, magazines and newspapers, very quickly and at unprecedented low cost. The implications of mass manufacture for people’s lives have been profound. However, the greatest attention has been paid to the inventions themselves, rather than their consequences.

Like all modern technologies, computers are fascinating in themselves, in their rapid development and increasing applications. The effects on people are less well understood. While we might have learned something about human nature from the horrors of the twentieth century with its world wars and the Holocaust, we know for certain that the wars gave rise to rapid advances in technological invention.

One such invention to which the horrors of war gave such a boost was the computer. While the original idea can be traced to Babbitt, the impetus for its development is more associated with Bletchley Park. The demonstration of the power of technology soon led to a belief in its transforming abilities.

The belief that the world “will” be transformed by information technology goes back a long way and has been couched in the same visionary language for 50 years. While McLuhan (1967) asserted the power of the means of communication over the processes of thought, the belief in transformation specifically through computers was applied in particular to systems of education. The claim was twofold: that systems of communication would change the way people think, and that they would transform schools. Evans (1981) thought that the microelectronic revolution would bring an end to war, poverty, crime and ignorance. Franklin (1990) typically likened technology to democracy: “Like democracy, technology changes the social and individual relationships between us. It has forced us to examine and redefine our notion of power and of accountability” (p. 12).

It is, however, the transformation of education that has led to the most powerful assertions. Westly (1989) described computer technology as the atomic bomb of the information age that would break the barrier between learning and entertainment. There have been many statements supporting the notion that, by themselves, by their sheer existence, computers will change the world (Department of Education and Science 1981, Papert 1993). There are many examples of the same sentiment: “Educational computer usage could change the face of education in a very short space of time” (Underwood 1994). Usually any doubt that would be expressed by the word “could” is excluded by “will”:

Our children will be leaving school IT literate, having been able to exploit the best that technology can offer. (National Grid for Learning 1997, p. 3)

The next generation of students will be increasingly empowered and aware consumers, with a wide choice of educational products (Society for Research into Higher Education. (1996, p. 34)

The National Grid for Learning is a good example of a belief that the availability of information technology will have a profound effect on schools. Those who are aware of what can be done with technology and who marvel at its potential see the effects on schools as (eventually) inevitable and profound.

ICT challenges current descriptions and practice of pedagogy, in terms of all prescriptions of time, place, authority and the purpose of teaching. (Loveless 2002, p. 4)

The ubiquity of the technology is clear, not only its availability in schools, but also in its permeation of everyday life. The question remains of what impact it is having on schools and on the education of children.

Great belief and massive investment have been made in technology before. It is no coincidence that the development of the state education system took place at the same time as the rise of the mass reading public, another result of technology. The application of steam presses to printing made the production of cheap texts possible for the first time, which were seized on by those who realized the opportunity they gave for instruction and at the same time devoured by those who sought entertainment (Altick 1957). The greater availability of books, pamphlets and newspapers, as well as tracts and chapbooks, and the profusion of outlets like WH Smith were the first great signs of the impact of new communication systems (McLuhan 1962).

There were many people in the early nineteenth century who believed in the transforming power of the new technology. Access to great works of literature, let alone the Bible, was seen as a huge educational opportunity. There was a strong belief that access to great literature through the development of reading, and the exploitation of this ability by the promotion of sermons, tracts and other religious literature, would transform the spiritual and moral life of the nation. Reading had previously been confined to a minority, not only because of the lack of educational opportunities but also because printed material, and not only leatherbound books, was so expensive and therefore restricted. The chances that were offered to transform the lives of the masses, especially at a time of major technological development that was radically changing the working and domestic lives of the population, were eagerly seized upon in faith and hope.

In the event, and despite all the endeavour, the results were disappointing. Although the opportunities were taken up by some, giving rise to a quite new conception of literacy (Hoggart 1957), the results of mass reading were somewhat disconcerting. Instead of making use of the opportunity to read Shakespeare, the Bible and all the religious tracts, the reading public sought far easier entertainment. They relished the use of literacy for light relief rather than instruction. The technological changes in the spread of printed materials brought about a mass reading public with mass tastes, seeking sensation and easily acquired entertainment rather than elevating texts. Dickens gives telling accounts of the ways in which religious material was used (for example, to light a pipe) and read (for example, focusing on sensational horrors from which people had to be saved, ignoring the subsequent conversion and the preaching that went with them).

New technologies since then have been presented as opportunities for both greater pleasure and education. The introduction of radio, for example, was seen as part of the break-down of barriers of understanding through greater communication. This meant that it could inform as well as entertain, although radio was first used as a public medium for leisure as much as for the “broadcasting” of information.

When the radio was first introduced, it was seen as being of great potential in education and in the 1920s educational radio was presented to schools and still used as a huge technological advantage for teachers (Plomp and Ely 1996). The broadcasting of educational programs was seen as an opportunity for pupils to have access to knowledge that was more entertaining as well as more instructive.

If radio was seized on as an aid to schools, the introduction of television presented an even greater opportunity. Symbolized by distance learning operations like the Open University, which delivered its materials through public service broadcasting stations, television was presented as the ultimate educational aid (Schramm 1997). The best instructors supported by clear diagrams, visual material and moving pictures rather than still ones – this was seen as a means not just of enhancing teachers but also of replacing them.

Instructional radio and television were seized upon as the best resourced and most appealing forms of programmed learning. Technology was to come to the aid of learning in a way that was assumed to be irresistible. As we now know, however, the impact of television has been almost wholly on leisure. While a great deal is learned through the medium, this is inadvertent rather than a deliberate activity. Whilst it can be argued that television superseded the radio, and was in turn usurped by the computer, there was, in fact, no time when the medium of communication in itself was anything more than a peripheral extra. None of the media ever became central to instruction. Attempts all over the world to enhance lessons by additional resources have been undermined not so much by lack of resources as by the dictates of the curriculum, by the text books, the tests and the desire to make sure that teachers know exactly what students have learned (Alexander 2000).

Nevertheless, the belief in educational technology was strong in the 1960s and the 1970s. The National Council for Educational Technology was founded in 1969 following reports of the Committee on Audiovisual Aids. The Association for Programmed Learning added “Educational Technology” to its title in 1968, and the United States created a National Centre of Educational Technology in 1970. There are many examples and a number of histories of the rise of educational resource centres in schools and attempts to centre the whole of the school, and its ethos, around them. Such enterprise seems quite dated now.

One of the reasons for the lack of penetration of these earlier forms of educational technology, unlike books, is the fact that they are passive media. They are like a teacher to the extent that the listener simply receives ideas without response. They are unlike teachers insofar as they cannot allow iterative dialogue. The early theories of instructional technology saw them as an aid, an extra, alongside the teacher, the textbook and the blackboard. It was soon realized that the best means of learning were not simply through delivering a curriculum, but through two-way communication. What was sought from educational technology was the ideal of interactivity (Garrison 1993). The ideal learning environment is a dialogue between teachers and students and amongst students themselves. One of the reasons for the displacement of one technology by another is the desire to provide the receiver with more to do than simply watch and listen. Educational technology is another reminder of the difference between the ideal conditions of learning, and the policy of detailed and controlled teaching.

While each new medium has been hailed as a significant breakthrough on its introduction, there is something different about the potential of computers. Educational technology was first envisaged as an extension of programmed learning, which, based on behaviourist principles, did at least suggest reactions by the pupils. More entertaining media cannot insist on more than a passive response. Such passivity is what the mass audience prefers rather than more demanding and cerebral attention (Cullingford 1984). Creating the conditions by which viewers will be guaranteed to pay close attention is difficult (Sturm 1991).

The tensions between the uses of instruction and the pleasures of entertainment will always be there. Each medium is dominated by the programs that are the most popular or the easiest to watch or play around with. There has always been a reaction against those forms of communication that are most demanding. This remains true of all the latest communication media, like i-pods. New systems create different habits of banking and transferring goods, but they also transform habits of entertainment. The computer itself is symbolic of that dual role.

Nevertheless, the excitement and the hope surrounding the introduction of information and communications technology (ICT) has been based on the possibilities of what each individual can do with it. As in the ideal of programmed learning, the computer does not merely present material but can be adjusted to react. The potential for interaction suggests that computer technology is different. While any medium can be controlled in terms of pace and timing, there is not the same scope for multiple interactions. Online interactions are believed to result in higher learning outcomes in students. Overhead projectors send out pictures. A calculator will respond to different instructions in handling numeric information. A computer has the capacity to be a huge and dynamic library.

The potential for storage, and access to, a vast amount of information makes the computer different, but more important still could be the way information can be manipulated. The control lies in the hands of the operator. It is because of this that the development of the microprocessor is so important. Computers have changed our lives and microprocessors have changed computers.

The way computers have been introduced into schools has been slow and piecemeal. This is partly as a result of the constant changes in the capacity of the programs and power of storage. There is no moment of stasis. In 1957 there was a conference that attempted to introduce computing techniques into the school setting (Barker 1971). In the 1960s, some schools introduced elements of computing into mathematics, coinciding with a general sense that the United Kingdom was falling behind in computer technology. It was in the 1970s that tutorial software was first developed and used initially in universities. The Microelectronic Education program was set up in 1981 to help schools prepare children to use microelectronics and to help teachers learn how to teach it (Wellington 1985). This was the time when most schools acquired computers and started teaching courses in information technology.

Information technology was seen as a combination of computing, microelectronics and telecommunications. The Microelectronic Education program promoted curriculum development, teacher education, resource organization and support. The most recent attempt to make a radical difference to the use and availability of computers in schools was the National Grid for Learning, promising all schools better connection to the numerous resources of the international information “superhighway”. Promises were made about teacher education and guarantees given that pupils would be computer literate. Each new initiative is a suggestion that, despite the earlier beliefs and investment, there has not been a major breakthrough in the performance of schools despite all their best efforts. The energy and passion are considerable, and yet the results disappointing.

The sense of disappointment does not come about because the technology is not being used. On the contrary, technology pervades every part of people’s lives, from automatic teller machines to online shopping. More insistently, the communication systems of e-mail and mobile phones demonstrate the ubiquity of people’s changing patterns of living. The disappointment lies in the fact that there are dichotomies between the use of computers for entertainment, like games and music, and their utility for education. Despite the many programs that have been developed, and the insistence that all teaching awards are linked to using ICT, and despite the curiosity shown in measuring the effects of different computer uses, there is always a sense, boosted by so many statements by the Departments of Education, that more needs to be done.

The policy makers insist on the importance of ICT. The problem is that there have been few coherent r...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Editor Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Dedication
• Preface
• 1 The Introduction of Information Technology
• 2 The Relationship between Computers and Schools
• 3 Research on Information Technology
• 4 Students’ Attitudes to Computers: The Experience at Home
• 5 Students’ Attitudes to Computers and their Utility
• 6 Students’ Experience of Computers
• 7 The Uses of ICT in Schools
• 8 How ICT is Taught
• 9 The Uses of Computers
• 10 ICT in the Context of School
• 11 The Contemporary School Experience
• 12 The Electronic Age and Schooling
• References
• Index