The History of ICT Integration

It is 2018, and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are all around us. Yet many of the debates outlined in Wellington's article are mirrored in the current educational settings, specifically that education must;

• prepare our students for an ever changing, internationally competitive workplace,

• have a driven focus on the teaching of transferable skills, but only if they are not too specific,

• figure out how to measure ICT effectiveness (2010).

During many professional learning sessions, I recurrently hear colleagues stating that unless there is clear evidence that ICT use enhances learning, with measurable outcomes, they will choose not to engage with it in their classrooms. Wellington states that "It has proved tremendously difficult to design and carry out research that can show that ICT has an impact on learning” (2005, p.32), a statement, which is a constant source of contention in the current educational discussions around ICT and learning. Whilst teachers can see some benefits to ICT use, more often than not, it becomes an optional extra in an overcrowded curriculum where an emphasis on the ‘grammar of schooling’, the traditional pedagogical approach, wins (Wellington, 2005, p.34).

Our school BYOD policy has a clear focus on embedding ICT across all subject areas, and many of our classes have a 1:1 laptop structure in place, but this affordance has done little to change the culture of ICT use across the school and “has not effected real change” (Wellington, 2005, p.34). This aligns with Bain & Weston's claims that "even when access to ICT is high, the use of ICT is low" (2012, p.5), and supports the contention that increasing ICT access, does not necessarily increase achievement in standardized testing (Bain & Weston, 2012). As teachers are the greatest influence on what is being learnt in the classroom (Hattie 2010), the focus must shift to how we can empower our educators to become better users of ICT, and until this approach is widespread, it will be difficult to initiate transformative change (Soujah 2014). If we are to overcome these challenges, it will be through professional development - specialised training, which will enable educators to form professional learning and support networks (Riviou & Sotiriou, 2017).

Not surprisingly, many of the same challenges outlined in Wellington's review exist today, over a decade later. As predicted, educators are struggling to find a meaningful balance to utilising ICT in the classroom (Wellington, 2005), and there are still few positively measurable outcomes for students (Bain & Weston, 2012). Unfortunately, this lack of meaningful ICT integration in education has left the educational arena, lagging behind many other fields.

References

Hattie, J. (2010). Visible Learning, Tomorrow’s Schools The Mindsets that make the Difference in Education. Visible Learning Laboratories. University of Auckland. Auckland: New Zealand.

Riviou, K., Sotiriou, S. (2017). Teachers’ Professional Development in the Theme of Competence-Based Learning—Impact and Lessons Learnt. In P. Anastasiades, & N. Zaranis (Eds.), Research on e-Learning and ICT in Education (pp. 283-297). Switzerland: Springer, Cham. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-34127-9_21

Soujah, S. (2014). Technology Integration in Schools Is We Overinvested and Underprepared?. International Journal of Information and Education Technology, 4(5), pp. 444-447.

Wellington, J. (2005). Has ICT come of age? Recurring debates on the role of ICT in education, 1982–2004. Research in Science & Technological Education, 23(1), 25-39, doi: 10.1080/02635140500068419