Too much hurray for technology in education?

In the fifties, I witnessed the introduction of school radio in my primary school. The class listened once or twice a week to radio documentaries, educational radio plays, dialogues, interviews. Occasionally we watched an educational film - for which, to our great excitement, the classroom was darkened - on topics of geography, history, biology. Once I heard two of my teachers talk about how film and radio in school would change education and thus their work as teachers. They said to be afraid that their main task would soon just be surveillance and marking tests. Information, the stories, the explanations, the exercises would come to us through the new media. They deplored - though at that time I thought they were joking - that they would lose what they obviously regarded as the most interesting and stimulating part of their work: the business of raising and feeding the inquisitiveness of young people and of dealing in the classroom with subjects they themselves were interested in.

Sixties

In the sixties, the impact of media on education became a topic in school again with the introduction of school television and a few years later with video. Again many educationalists stated that education would never be the same again. Teachers with a blackboard and a stick of chalk in front of the class - 'as if nothing had changed since the early 19th century!' - simply could not compete with well made, slick video programs. From now on, information, instruction and explanation would be provided for by audiovisual media. Teachers would have to take the role of general educator and coach.

Seventies

In the early seventies, I worked for an institute that both produced film and video programs for higher and academic education and opened up film and audio archives for historical research and educational purposes. Many of my colleagues at that time were convinced that they, more than the strictest cutting down policies by the minister of education, contributed to less costly and more efficient higher education. 'Our audiovisual products' would make hundreds of university teachers and lecturers redundant and rightly so, they argued. A video recorder and a few video monitors in the lecture room and a stock of well made, scientifically and didactically sound video productions can save countless lecturer's hours and the students countless hours of boring lectures.

Eighties

The net result of audiovisual media in education in the seventies and eighties has been that teachers occasionally made use of video in the classroom. But they stayed firmly the principal actors in educational processes. Nothing more efficient and stimulating in the classroom than a teacher, enthusiastic about his subject, with blackboard and chalk, explaining concepts, telling illuminative stories, asking questions, assigning tasks and discussing the results.

Nineties

Since the nineties, new technology, computers (simulations, specific software, databases), the World Wide Web and other internet applications (here further referred to as ict) entered the classrooms. The use of this technology for social education has probably been embraced nowhere more enthusiastically than in the United States.

Social Education

In April 1999, Social Education (The Official Journal of National Council for the Social Studies, www.socialstudies.org) published a special issue on technology. And again, several authors were convinced that the role of social studies teachers would change profoundly. For them, this was not a threat, as was the case for my primary school teachers, but a giant and liberating step forward in the history of education. One of the authors was a social studies teacher recognized and applauded for integrating internet into the curriculum. In her contribution 'The social studies classroom on the eve of the cyberspace', she writes: 'No longer will we lecture in teacher-centered, text-based classes with neat rows of desks. Rather, we will become mentors in an instructional environment, that is decidedly student-centered, discovery based, conducive to collaboration and accommodating of all learning styles and intelligences. Given a classroom computer and online access, it is possible to move your classroom into the cyber world of tomorrow, even if you are not particularly computer literate.'And she continues with the mind blowing possibilities of 'having your own web pages, enhancing communication with students and parents, a venue for publishing student work, encompass multimedia presentations and direct students in projects and research assignments.' And of course, 'you can bring a limitless world of resources into the classroom' and moreover 'you can prepare your students to select materials critically and to interpret, evaluate, analyze and synthesize the data so that they become intelligent and efficient information processors.' This quotation is an excellent summary of the high hopes for positive changes in (social) education at the end of the 20th century when the internet hype - more widely than just in education - was at its zenith.

Retrospective

Six years later, in the April issue of 2005, Social Education published a retrospective of articles and special issues on technology in its last twenty years. It is a useful overview of trends in themes and approaches of technology and social education. The authors conclude that almost all articles were written by members of university faculties, so by the teachers of teachers. They then recommend the editors of Social Education to encourage classroom teachers to publish on ict applications in the curriculum themselves. Is this lack of input from the 'class roots' a coincidence? Are teachers too busy preparing lessons, teaching and carrying out other tasks in school to be able to publish? Or are their experiences in using ict in the curriculum not by far as spectacular as the articles of the university educationalists in the professional press suggest?

Utopian

Even more striking in these twenty years of writing on technology and social education is the lack of empirical evidence of the usefulness - regardless how defined and how measured - of the implementation of ict in social education. Nearly all articles are either about the limitless potentialities of computer based education, and especially the advantages of internet for the use of primary sources (archives, documents), or are uncritical descriptions of best practices (often with an air of 'look how advanced and inventive we have made use of technological possibilities'). It is astonishing how little results (if at all) of empirical research on the effects of new technologies have been published in Social Education after twenty years of practice. At least in the United States, there exists a giant gap between expectations and claims of the blessings of ict applications in social education on the one hand and evidence of positive results on the other. There seems to be a complete lack of even the beginning of substantiated evaluations of single projects and empirically founded assessments of broader and long term use of ict in the classroom.

Empirical

The most recent issue of The International Journal of Social Education (Vol. 21, nr. 1, Spring/Summer 2006) is titled Enhancing Democracy Trough Technology and it illustrates this gap once more. The issue contains ten contributions on ict in social education. One article deals more generally with the impact of the internet on citizenship and political participation in the United States. The latter contribution by Phillip J. VanFossen (Purdue University) is mainly a useful inventory of research results of the last ten or so years on the effects of ict on civic engagement. He starts with the wild utopian visions of Grossman on the revolutionizing impact of ict on democracy in his The Electronic Republic (1995). According to Grossman, ict was 'shrinking the distance between the governed and those who govern' and 'more citizens were gaining a greater voice in the making of public policy than at any time since the direct democracy of the ancient Greek city states.' After a search of dozens of research reports and scientific articles on the subject, VanFossen has to conclude, seemingly with some reluctance 'that the impact of the internet on civic engagement has not met the expectations of its proponents. (...) For example, several studies have found that those who use the internet to access political information were no more likely to vote or to participate in other forms of civic engagement than those who did not use the internet. (...) The citizen as a consumer of government services however can benefit from internet. Whether renewing a driver's license online or e-mailing a senator, many citizens have established stronger contact with their government through the internet. (...) Given the high expectations associated with the evolution of internet (perhaps too high), its marginal impact on civic engagement seems especially small.'

Techno-ideology

This article, however, is the only one in the issue that bothers with empirical evidence. Nearly all of the contributions on the role and the impact of ict on social education are full of techno-ideological statements. Some quotes as examples taken from different articles in this issue: 'Today, technology and the internet in particular is bringing constant change to American society, including the potential to enhance democracy by fostering citizen's ability to cast a more informed vote. As technology evolves and becomes more ubiquitous, it is likely that it will continue to reshape the American political process and landscape.' Or: 'New technologies make it possible for children to become researchers and explore a wide range of topics from several perspectives. Children can create products to demonstrate the acquisition of new knowledge and skills.' And even: 'In the past a student's education was primarily dependent upon the schools to which he or she was assigned, but today the internet offers immeasurable opportunities for students to guide their own learning and become actively involved in civic life.' (And mind you, these articles were written in late 2005, not in the early nineties!)

Caricature

Apart form the lack of empirical evidence of the results of all this terrific technology two other features struck me while reading this issue. The first is the recurrent use of the caricature of the old-fashioned - supposedly ineffective - teacher-centered, transmission of information model of learning as opposed to the new 'constructivist' view of acquiring knowledge: student-centered, learning based on enquiry and research by the student. 'Learning as an active process of constructing rather than acquiring knowledge and instruction as a process of supporting that construction rather than communicating knowledge.' As if a theory of knowledge 'that purports all new knowledge is constructed based on the learner's previous experiences and knowledge and so an interaction between one's current knowledge and new ideas or situations' (p. 124) represents a new deep understanding of cognitive processes instead of a platitude that even the most old fashioned teacher would subscribe. And as if before the ict-age in education the only way of learning was to listen to a teacher and memorizing 'facts' from a textbook.

Epistemology

This brings me to the second striking feature in these technology driven discourses on education: their epistemological (Meaning? Google it!) poverty. Concepts as 'information' or 'knowledge' are mostly taken for granted. No author for example even makes the crudest distinction between data (sometimes loosely called 'facts') and information. Education in these discourses is simply gathering information, solving problems, meeting new situations and, at its best, learning to seek multiple perspectives on a given issue. Even the key concept of information - used in all articles in a variety of contexts - is not seriously being questioned. Or do you think the following quote represents a useful way of dealing with this concept? 'Within this context, the function of the school is to dispense information and to teach the student how to process information. In this sense the word "information" takes on a different meaning from the generally accepted idea that it is verbally conveyed facts. [sic, I.H.] Here, information means any impulse received by the human body' (p.150). (A sound trashing - a strong impulse on the human body - as an effective way of information transmittance; this is really old fashioned education!)

Naivety

I suppose nobody will deny that the internet and other ict applications can play a useful role in social education. But a less naïve, overstrained way than is shown in this issue of the International Journal of Social Education to communicate this, would have been more convincing. Maybe the editors should look for a VanFossen-like researcher to make an inventory of the results of empirical research on the effects of ict in social education. And if this kind of research has not been done yet, the editors could try to stimulate a discussion in their periodical about the reasons behind this omission.

Cheers

In the meanwhile, I am inclined to stress the importance of the role of the old-fashioned teacher, transmitting enthusiasm to students for his or her subject, telling stories, discussing students' work and letting students use ict in a focused, well guided way. So five cheers for classroom teachers and, okay, one hurray (and a half) for ict in social education.

Ivo Hartman, Instituut voor Publiek en Politiek, Amsterdam

Social Education, Vol. 63, Number 3, April 1999. Social Education, Vol. 69, Number 3, April 2005. The International Journal of Social Education, Vol. 21, Number 1, Spring/Summer 2006