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When the learners know more than the teachers

Dr Alison Elliiott, Information Age

14/12/2004 13:02:49

Today's young people live in a world where digital technologies are embedded in most aspects of their lives- except their classrooms. The rapid growth of ICT has brought powerful changes to teaching and learning for many students. But others are barely touched by new technologies - at least in their classrooms.

Although computers have been in Australian schools for over 20 years and most contemporary curricula are designed to capitalise on ICT potential, there is often a huge gap between rhetoric and reality.

Today, most schools and classrooms have computers and other digital technologies. How they are used is the problem. Our approaches to curricula mean considerable variation in what students should know about ICT and how ICT is used in schools. There is no mandated role for ICT in teaching and learning, and continuing debate over their most effective use. Many schools have rich ICT capabilities and use relevant technologies to boost learning opportunities. Many don't.

Educators would agree that ICTs has not impacted significantly on processes of learning or on classroom organisation. Marion Heale from Frankston High, a Victorian school that has embraced ICT and transformed teaching and learning though computerised technology, describes most ICT use as being "peripheral, with new technologies being added to the traditional teacher centred model of instruction".

As I said many years ago, and have remarked several times since, computers and other technologies are too often used as novelty items for when the "real business of teaching" is over.

Writing recently in the Professional Educator, Petrea Redmon and Katie Brown highlighted a range of difficulties faced by teachers wanting to use ICT in the classroom. They say that in spite of positive ICT attitudes, the Queensland teachers they interviewed did not feel they had "adequate support in their endeavours to integrate ICTs effectively".

The teachers said that hardware availability was still a problem. "Increased ICT availability appeared to be in administration, library and computer labs rather than in classrooms and (teachers) reported difficulties in booking those areas and taking advantage of the 'teachable moment' without easy access to ICT resources."

These views are typical of many teachers all over the country.

While ICT use is limited in many schools, most students seem to have access to computers at home or in other places. Figures from Characteristics of Australians accessing the Internet show that 65 per cent of households, about 4.4 million, had a computer and that 82 per cent of 14-17 year olds access the Internet. (www2.dcita.gov.au/ie/publications/2004).

Not surprisingly, given the cost of computers and associated technologies, more affluent families are likely to have a computer and Internet access. About 90 per cent of people with incomes over $100,000 and 65 per cent of people with incomes between $30,000 and $40,000 have Internet access at home. Just 50 per cent of people with incomes less than $20,000 access the Internet.

The "digital divide" is also apparent in school ICT access. Students from poorer communities who are already most at risk of school failure may well be by passed by ICTs at school. Closing the "digital divide" is looming as a major education challenge over the next few years. Increasingly, ICT access is an equity issue for schools and the wider community.

Knowledge-ready students

Knowledge tools such as computers and knowledge-ready skills are important for two main reasons:

First, students need knowledge skills in the wider community and workforce. Second, there is strong evidence that the tools and technologies that have transformed the workplace are in themselves catalysts for transformation - tools that can enrich curricula, transform learning processes, and shape organisational structures. They are "partners in cognition". They help support and stimulate thinking.

Digital technologies have the potential to enrich learning environments, engage students and enhance learning outcomes. They are especially powerful for students who find traditional classroom learning difficult, disempowering, alienating or disengaging.

Too often though, this potential to engage students is lost.

In a paper called Learners as Customers presented at a Specialist Schools Trust conference in Melbourne recently, researchers confirmed widely held views that attempts "to leverage the digital worlds and integrate the technology with pedagogical best practice have been limited . . . Efforts to 'integrate' information and communication technologies with pedagogy have achieved not much more than technical-level effects that mostly leave traditional approaches to teaching and learning unchanged."

Of interest in this study was that researchers asked students about school ICT use. They found that learners see ICT as central to youth culture and want to use them in class. But they were generally "disenchanted" with the limited ICT opportunities in their classrooms. There was a major mismatch between students' patterns of ICT use in their communities and homes and in their schools.

Students said that they rarely got to use computers at school and that when they did the computers were out of date and teachers placed too many constraints and restrictions on use. They also felt that teachers believed that computers were "distracting" and interfered with learning. The writers argue that ICT is now integral to youth culture and that young people are appropriating and inventing new cultures that are technology-based. They say we ignore this at our peril. Students use "the cultural tools that happen to be within easy reach.... (They use) these tools to create new enriched tools - their own Flash movies, BLOGS, animations, Web sites, images, stories and software... without much adult help." As a result, "many teachers no longer know what learners know and are independently doing and learning". They are left floundering in an alien culture. That many teachers are getting left behind in the ICT avalanche has been well documented. As Jean Underwood said recently in the journal of Technology, Pedagogy and Education, "Islands of excellence exist, in conjunction with huge oceans of poor practice" (p137). Future skills

Changes in the wider culture have been dramatic. Organisational and structural elements of communities and workplaces have been transformed by information and knowledge technologies.

Today, about 85 per cent of jobs require "skilled" workers who have an education beyond high school. In the 1950s, 80 per cent of jobs were considered "unskilled". As members of the Business-Higher Education Forum say in Building a Nation of Learners, it's not entirely clear what jobs will look like in 10-20 years given the continuing growth in technology and rapid pace of change, but one thing is certain, individuals who have sound communication and analytic skills will be well positioned for employment.

The knowledge economy has impacted hardest on people unable to access and apply knowledge-age skills. Workers require transferable thinking skills as much as content knowledge or task-specific skills. As accelerating technological change is making old skills and knowledge obsolete, the ability to generate new skills and knowledge is essential. Increasingly, disadvantaged and vulnerable communities without relevant information and communications skills are alienated from mainstream social and employment opportunities.

The future requires life-long learning and generic and job-specific skills to gain and sustain employment. Schooling must provide the pathway to these competencies and attributes.

The Australian policy, Learning in an online world: School action plan for the information economy (2000) stresses that all schools should prepare students for "the knowledge society and the knowledge economy". In the UK, the ICT National Curriculum says students must "be independent, responsible, effective and reflective in their selection, development and use of information sources and ICT tools". They must use ICTs to "find, explore, analyse, exchange and present information responsibly, creatively and with discrimination". The curriculum indicates that "increased capability in the use of ICT promotes initiative and independent learning..."

Being confident, creative and productive users of new technologies is important, but not enough in a knowledge culture and economy. Students also require thinking skills that are transferable and tools that can help generate new skills and knowledge.

Knowledge-ready skills include the information selection and retrieval skills and the higher order cognitive skills that enable communication, data interpretation and analysis and collaborative problem-solving. They include real-world thinking and problem-solving skills and strategies such as research design, analysis, composition and communication.

Of particular value are reasoning, enquiry, planning, and self-regulation and evaluative strategies. Students also need to be able to explain why something is so. They need to provide evidence, reasons and conceptual and contextual considerations that inform solutions and decisions.

Yet, most teachers who use ICT in class do so for basic skill development or information retrieval and management tasks. And while basic skills underpin more complex learning, it is the thinking and problem-solving skills that are most important in tomorrow's workplace.

In addition to good communication, thinking and problem-solving, lifelong learning skills such as leadership, teamwork, time management, self management, adaptability, global consciousness must be firmly embedded in curriculum outcomes and in teacher practice. Without this combination of thinking, communication and personal skills, academic success and longer term employment will be elusive.

Thinking skills

Reasoning skills. Drawing inferences, making deductions, using precise language to explain thinking, and making judgements and decisions informed by reasons or evidence

Enquiry skills. Asking relevant questions, posing and defining problems, planning what to do and how to do it, predicting outcomes and anticipating consequences, and testing conclusions and improving ideas.

Creative thinking Generating and extending ideas, hypothesising, applying imagination, and looking for alternative outcomes.

Monitoring and evaluating Monitoring each step of a processes, judging the value of what is head, read and done, and developing criteria for judging the value ideas.

www.nc.uk.net/learnthink.html

Transforming teaching

Teachers have a difficult job ahead. First they must be up to date with the complexities of new technologies. Not every teacher needs to be a Flash wiz but teachers must embrace students' views about the roles of ICT in everyday life and use students' existing ICT skills as a launching pad. Simultaneously, they must ensure that students gain thinking, problem-solving and communication capacities to see them through the school to work transition and beyond. But, as we've seen in the recent literacy teaching debate, nothing is clear cut in education, especially in this new digital era.

ICT is a dynamic area and keeping abreast of technological and pedagogical advances is a major challenge for educators. Barriers and enablers for effective ICT teaching and learning have been pinpointed. Now there are calls for national ICT standards, greater institutional support and infrastructure, and better professional development for teachers.

But education department policies, curricula, and digital content and services, while essential, will not in themselves ensure effective ICT use in schools. Teachers must also be prepared, resourceful and adaptive.

For twenty years now Australian teacher education programs have included ICT subjects as part of their programs. But, while there has been considerable effort to bring teachers up to speed with ICT, many don't yet capitalise on ICT capabilities. The Ministerial Council for Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA) has emphasised the need to support teachers' professional learning "so they have the confidence to exploit the new technologies to expand, extend and modify their practice" (p4). It urges education authorities to promote "pre-service teacher education and in-service professional development programs that focus on the integration of ICT into classroom practice, across all curriculum areas" (2002, p17).

The Queensland study mentioned earlier, showed that most teachers (92 per cent) had home computers. My research a couple of years ago showed similar levels of home computer access. This figure is greater than the household average and reflects skewed ICT access by income and education level.

But having a computer at home is no guarantee of classroom ICT use. Teachers in my study and in the recent Queensland study reported difficulty accessing the computer because they were in line behind their children! Further, everyday adult home computer use doesn't prepare teachers for the complexities of classroom practice.

The experiences of the Queensland teachers illustrate the difficulties of classroom ICT use. The researchers found that teachers were proficient at "word processing, sending and replying to e-mails, using the Internet to locate information and using CD ROM programs". Many appeared "not to be aware of the additional tools available to them.

Teachers felt least proficient in Web publishing, the Internet and collaborative projects, operating databases and presentation software and operating peripheral devices such as scanners...". Teachers felt that access to "adequate hardware, software, technical support and guidance in effective ICT integration strategies" would better help them to integrate ICTs to support students' learning. But not all had this access.

Today, the issues confronting ICT use are about both infrastructure and technology, plus teaching. As in previous studies, teachers in the Queensland study seemed motivated and enthusiastic about ICTs, but lacked the confidence to use the technology in a day-to-day classroom context.

The key question is not so much can and should ICTs be used to support learning, or should students be "knowledge-ready", but how do we help optimise learning outcomes for students and how can teachers be better prepared for today's digital classroom?

Teachers consistently indicate that they need support and professional development to make the most of the available technologies, but there is little effort to help them catch up to their students, let alone develop the pedagogical skills to transform teaching and learning in their classrooms.

Where to now?

Research over two decades suggests overwhelmingly that carefully planned ICT activities benefit students' social and cognitive development and academic outcomes. Many studies note substantial gains in learning access and outcomes, especially for students with disabilities and for low achieving and low ability students in both special classes and mainstream settings.

The concept of the "digital divide" is of great concern to educators and policy makers. Inequities caused by poverty and geography are well documented. Today, ICT inequalities are powerful reflectors and drivers of income differentiation.

Importantly, the definition of the digital divide is changing to encompass more than hardware accessibility. Increasingly, it also refers to the knowledge gap caused by limited ICT literacy and absence of the range of cognitive skills that optimise technology use. Hardware and ICT skills alone do not allow individuals to benefit from the technology. Literacy and cognitive skills are equally important to function in a global community increasingly dependent on IT. Clearly, ICT issues do not stand alone. They are connected to the wider issue of learning for the knowledge age, and to broader issues of education quality and standards, the nature of pedagogy, learning outcomes and classroom management, and to school renewal and revitalisation.

While there is no national curriculum in Australia, there is an agreed national schooling framework. The National Goals for Schooling in the Twenty First Century (1999) proposes two important outcomes for schooling:

• That all students will leave school as confident, creative and productive users of new technologies, particularly information and communication technologies, and understand the impact of those technologies on society, and,

• That all schools will seek to integrate information and communication technologies into their operations, to improve student learning, to offer flexible learning opportunities and to improve the efficiency of their business practices.

Responsibility for monitoring progress of the National Goals for Schooling lies with the Ministerial Council for Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs ICT in Schools Taskforce. In the ICT area, a national assessment of ICT literacy starts next year.

ICT literacy is defined as "the ability of individuals to use ICT appropriately to access, manage, integrate and evaluate information, develop new understanding, and communicate with others in order to participate effectively in society".

The national assessment is being managed by the Australian Council for Educational Research and will survey a sample of 8000 Year 6 and Year 10 students. A report detailing the ICT Literacy of Australian school students will be released in 2006.

References and further readings

Ainsworth, G., Groves, R., Rowland, M. & Zbar, V. (2001). Australia: A national mapping of school teacher professional development. Canberra: DEST

Australian Bureau of Statistics (2003). Household use of information technology, Australia, Cat No. 8146.0, Canberra: ABS

British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (2001). Information sheet. National Grid for Learning (http://www.becta.org.uk)

Cuban, L. (2001). Why are most teachers infrequent and restrained users of computers in their classrooms? In J.Woodward & L. Cuban (Eds). Technology, curriculum and professional development. Adapting schools to meet the needs of students with disabilities. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Educational Testing Service (2003). Digital transformation. A framework for ICT literacy. Princeton, NJ: ETS.

Educational Development Centre. (2000). IT pathway pipeline model. Rethinking information technology learning in schools. Newton, MA: Educational Development Centre

Elliott, A. (2003). Scaffolding thinking skills. Information Transfer, 23(1), pp16-18.

Findlay, J., Fitzgerald, R. & Hobby, R. (2004). Learners as Customers. Paper presented at the Specialist Schools Trust Conference, Melbourne.

Fitzgerald, D. & Fitzgerald, R. (2002). The Use of Integrated Learning Systems in Developing Number and Language Concepts in Primary School Children. A Longitudinal Study of Individual Differences, Canberra: DEST.

Heale, M. (2004). ICT and Technology. Transformation through Global Networking, Melbourne, July 2004.

Kozma, R. B. (2003). Technology, innovation and educational change. Eugene, OR: ISTE

Ministerial Council for Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (2002). Learning in an online world: The school education action plan for the information economy. Progress Report. Canberra.

Ministerial Council for Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs (2000). Learning in an online world: the school action plan for the information economy. Canberra:

Ministerial Council for Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs (1999). National Goals for Schooling in the Twenty First Century. Canberra.

Redmond. P. & Brown, K. (2004). Are we there yet? The journey to ICT integration. Professional Educator, 3(4), pp. 14-16.

Stevens, C. (2004). Information and communications technology, special educational needs and schools. A historical perspective of UK Government initiatives. In L. Florian & J. Hegarty (Eds). ICT and special education. A tool for inclusion. Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press.

Underwood, J. (2004). Research into information and communication technologies. Where now? Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 13(1), pp. 135-146. www.triangle.co.uk

US Department of Education, Planning and Evaluation Service (2001). Preparing tomorrow's teacher to use technology, Washington, DC: US Department of Education, Planning and Evaluation Service.

Dr Allison Elliott is Research director, Australian Council for Educational Research and Adjunct Professor of Education, University of Canberra