I spent much of the last ten years teaching teachers how to use thinking strategies and technologies for learning.
Although I have witnessed radical and ubiquitous family, community, business and society wide adoption of ICTs in New Zealand in this time, I have yet to observe any significant school wide adoption of effective use of ICTs in teaching and learning.
For example,
Outside of school I see ICTs in use everywhere I look, from waiting staff at local restaurants taking orders on wireless mobile devices and pinging them to them to the kitchen, to the over eighties I meet using electronic banking, texting pictures of their grandchildren to Flicker and saving money on keeping an ear and an eye on the family through Skype, to The Magnet who has yet to read Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother
installing an electronic tracking device on her phone that will enable Air New Zealand to track how many times we approach the wine bar in the Koru Club departure lounge.
Within schools and classrooms I continue to see patchy use of ICTs; (e) learning practice that is too often based on the enthusiasms of individuals rather than that of whole staff. In the glossy ICT educashin magazines I continue to read articles promoting individual even idiosyncratic success rather than collective successful practice. And if your day job allows you to travel around as many schools as we do each year it is hard to claim the adoption of effective use of ICTs in teaching and learning in New Zealand as common collective activity in schools.
We are pretty good at promoting the activities of individuals we describe as “early adopters” in schools, we are pretty poor at finding and promoting schools where all the “late adopters” have arrived.
All this thinking makes me realise that a little bit of me is still hanging out for the arrival of the late adopters.
I feel foolish when I realise how long I have been waiting for something that never arrives. I am the equivalent of Estragon waiting for the arrival of a Mr. Godot. "Personally I wouldn't know him if I ever saw him."
My Mr. Godot like waiting is unlikely to surprise Cuban who identified the expectations, rhetoric, policies and limited–use stages in the use of technology in education cycle over twenty years ago, (Cuban 1986).
However waiting has its uses.
Careful observation of patterns of adoption by teachers in ict_pd clusters allows me to realise that the notion of the early adopter has limited the ways in which we understand the use or non use of ICTs in education.
Our focus on the early adopter means we are asking the wrong questions.
Each year the ictpd cluster milestone reporting has encouraged me to focus on the barriers that are stalling the “late adopters”. To survey our teachers and principals and ask them about the barriers they face in the adoption of ICTs in teaching and learning.
Each year I have faithfully collated “barrier data” from ictpd clusters; and each year I have generalised from the “barrier data” to create those “we need more” lists.
Before we can master ICTs and use them effectively in teaching and learning ...we need ...
• Professional development
• Time
• Hardware, software and connectivity
• Technical and infrastructure support
• Management strategies when students are learning though ICTs.
• Money for all of the above
However, given the improvements in; professional development, time allowances, hardware, software and connectivity, technical and infrastructure support, and management strategies available to teachers and schools in 2008 compared to what was on offer even ten years ago it is tempting to suggest that some of these barriers are “in the eyes of the beholder” barriers rather than actual barriers.
The resourcing, time and ICT environments available to all teachers in 2008 more than meet the barrier busting “we need ...” lists of schools in the late 1990’s, and yet, and yet, we are still waiting for those late adopters..
It seems to me that “barriers” are relative frustrations. Frustrations that are are independent of conditions experienced. For as conditions improve in our schools and classrooms so our expectations increase .... and as a consequence our frustrations remain the same.
If I am right in thinking that barriers are relative, that barriers are perceived and will always be with us, then focusing on identifying barriers in the ictpd clusters is a logical fallacy, institutionalised busy work .... red herring activity.
This is possibly why the content of the “we need more” lists have remained the same ever since teacher were first asked about their use of classroom radio and educational TV in the 1940’s (Teachers and Machines Larry Cuban p25 Teachers and Machines: The Classroom Use of Technology Since 1920
and remained the same across countries, refer Lai, Pratt and Trwern’s New Zealand research cited on p11 of E-learning Communities: Teaching And Learning With the Web
It seems we have been collecting “barrier lists” in education for a long time.
Perhaps it is time to stop pretending that identifying perceived barriers to implementation will bring the late adopters on board. Perhaps it is time to acknowledge that identifying what teachers suggest are barriers to their use of ICTs in teaching and learning is akin to identifying learning styles or referring to Edgar Dale’s Cone of Experience ... spurious and unhelpful. Perhaps it is time that we threw out the term “early adopter”.
For the descriptor “early” implies there will be a “late”. “Early adopter” suggests that “the late adopter is just around the corner.” This presumption of earliness causes us to focus on barriers to adoption. To identify barriers that might explain why teachers don’t use ICTs in their teaching and presumably address them we hope to encourage the late adopters to arrive. But barriers are relative notions, subjective rather than objective measures.
It seems likely that this focus on finding and identifying barriers has prevented us from understanding what is really going on when teachers fail to collectively adopt the effective use of ICTs in teaching and learning.
I suspect this focus on barriers has prevented us from asking the right questions ...
If everyone else on the planet is integrating ICTs in their programmes of living then something more is at work when teachers do not buy in to ICTs in their programmes of learning.
I sense we have to look past notions of "We need: ...
What I need is to explore different questions from questions that focus on barriers ... I am not sure what they might be ... perhaps I can start by asking ...
For example,
Outside of school I see ICTs in use everywhere I look, from waiting staff at local restaurants taking orders on wireless mobile devices and pinging them to them to the kitchen, to the over eighties I meet using electronic banking, texting pictures of their grandchildren to Flicker and saving money on keeping an ear and an eye on the family through Skype, to The Magnet who has yet to read Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother
installing an electronic tracking device on her phone that will enable Air New Zealand to track how many times we approach the wine bar in the Koru Club departure lounge. Within schools and classrooms I continue to see patchy use of ICTs; (e) learning practice that is too often based on the enthusiasms of individuals rather than that of whole staff. In the glossy ICT educashin magazines I continue to read articles promoting individual even idiosyncratic success rather than collective successful practice. And if your day job allows you to travel around as many schools as we do each year it is hard to claim the adoption of effective use of ICTs in teaching and learning in New Zealand as common collective activity in schools.
We are pretty good at promoting the activities of individuals we describe as “early adopters” in schools, we are pretty poor at finding and promoting schools where all the “late adopters” have arrived.
All this thinking makes me realise that a little bit of me is still hanging out for the arrival of the late adopters.
I feel foolish when I realise how long I have been waiting for something that never arrives. I am the equivalent of Estragon waiting for the arrival of a Mr. Godot. "Personally I wouldn't know him if I ever saw him."
My Mr. Godot like waiting is unlikely to surprise Cuban who identified the expectations, rhetoric, policies and limited–use stages in the use of technology in education cycle over twenty years ago, (Cuban 1986).
However waiting has its uses.
Careful observation of patterns of adoption by teachers in ict_pd clusters allows me to realise that the notion of the early adopter has limited the ways in which we understand the use or non use of ICTs in education.
Our focus on the early adopter means we are asking the wrong questions.
Each year the ictpd cluster milestone reporting has encouraged me to focus on the barriers that are stalling the “late adopters”. To survey our teachers and principals and ask them about the barriers they face in the adoption of ICTs in teaching and learning.
Each year I have faithfully collated “barrier data” from ictpd clusters; and each year I have generalised from the “barrier data” to create those “we need more” lists.
Before we can master ICTs and use them effectively in teaching and learning ...we need ...
• Professional development
• Time
• Hardware, software and connectivity
• Technical and infrastructure support
• Management strategies when students are learning though ICTs.
• Money for all of the above
However, given the improvements in; professional development, time allowances, hardware, software and connectivity, technical and infrastructure support, and management strategies available to teachers and schools in 2008 compared to what was on offer even ten years ago it is tempting to suggest that some of these barriers are “in the eyes of the beholder” barriers rather than actual barriers.
The resourcing, time and ICT environments available to all teachers in 2008 more than meet the barrier busting “we need ...” lists of schools in the late 1990’s, and yet, and yet, we are still waiting for those late adopters..
It seems to me that “barriers” are relative frustrations. Frustrations that are are independent of conditions experienced. For as conditions improve in our schools and classrooms so our expectations increase .... and as a consequence our frustrations remain the same.
If I am right in thinking that barriers are relative, that barriers are perceived and will always be with us, then focusing on identifying barriers in the ictpd clusters is a logical fallacy, institutionalised busy work .... red herring activity.
This is possibly why the content of the “we need more” lists have remained the same ever since teacher were first asked about their use of classroom radio and educational TV in the 1940’s (Teachers and Machines Larry Cuban p25 Teachers and Machines: The Classroom Use of Technology Since 1920
and remained the same across countries, refer Lai, Pratt and Trwern’s New Zealand research cited on p11 of E-learning Communities: Teaching And Learning With the WebIt seems we have been collecting “barrier lists” in education for a long time.
Perhaps it is time to stop pretending that identifying perceived barriers to implementation will bring the late adopters on board. Perhaps it is time to acknowledge that identifying what teachers suggest are barriers to their use of ICTs in teaching and learning is akin to identifying learning styles or referring to Edgar Dale’s Cone of Experience ... spurious and unhelpful. Perhaps it is time that we threw out the term “early adopter”.
For the descriptor “early” implies there will be a “late”. “Early adopter” suggests that “the late adopter is just around the corner.” This presumption of earliness causes us to focus on barriers to adoption. To identify barriers that might explain why teachers don’t use ICTs in their teaching and presumably address them we hope to encourage the late adopters to arrive. But barriers are relative notions, subjective rather than objective measures.
It seems likely that this focus on finding and identifying barriers has prevented us from understanding what is really going on when teachers fail to collectively adopt the effective use of ICTs in teaching and learning.
I suspect this focus on barriers has prevented us from asking the right questions ...
If everyone else on the planet is integrating ICTs in their programmes of living then something more is at work when teachers do not buy in to ICTs in their programmes of learning.
I sense we have to look past notions of "We need: ...
- Professional development
- Time
- Hardware, software and connectivity
- Technical and infrastructure support
- Management strategies when students are learning though ICTs.
- Money."
What I need is to explore different questions from questions that focus on barriers ... I am not sure what they might be ... perhaps I can start by asking ...
- Why are new practices universally adopted [by people/teachers]?
- How are new practices universally adopted [by people/teachers]?
- What determines whether a new practice will be universally adopted and sustained?
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