Is ICT Integration A Magic Wand For The Quality of Education? A Comparative Historical Analysis Between Singapore and Turkey

Author(s):

Ekmel Çetin(presenting / submitting)Ebru Solmaz

Conference:

ECER 2016

Network:

17. Histories of Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

17 SES 07, Comparative Approaches

Paper Sesssion

Time:

2016-08-24

17:15-18:45

Room:

OB-H2.40

Chair:

Susannah Wright

Contribution

There is a perception in developing countries that children’s direct access to new technologies increase their learning. Hence, ICT integration in education rapidly improving in these countries. But it is specified in the Global Information Technology Report published in 2015 that this is not a true belief. There are explanations about why ICT integration in education fails in the report and it also mentions about the importance of focusing on educators instead of children access to technology (Behar & Mishra, 2015). United Kingdom aims to cover the 90% of population with superfast internet connection and lowered the computing course age to 5. However, according to the recent results of a wide research shows that diffusion of ICT, internet connection and student access to internet have no significant effect on education and student productivity (Faber, Sanchis-Guarner & Weinhardt, 2015). Similar to this, some of the recently completed ICT integration projects showed that students’ access to ICT has no direct effect on quality of education. It is determined that in the Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) Project, course completion rate is 7% in the year of 2013 (Parr, 2013). There are also several researches about One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project that emphasize giving every child a laptop both enforces the country budget unnecessarily and it has no significant contribution to education (James, 2011; James, 2014; Cristia, 2013). This situation in developing countries creates some questions in mind about ICT integration in education. What is wrong with ICT in education? Is ICT integration is a necessity for education? How should it be planned and implemented?

Several ICT integration projects have being implemented since 1984 by Ministry of Education in Turkey (Goktas, Gedik & Baydas, 2013). At the same time, Turkey has been participating to TIMSS assessments since 1999 and PISA assessments since 2003 as a developing country. Also Turkey is located in the Global Information Report, a detailed research about information technology across the world written by World Economic Forum. Considering Turkey’s ICT integration in education studies, students in Turkey are below the overall average in basic subjects such as science and mathematics, in 21st century competencies such as creative problem solving and in information technology literacy and also quality of education is below the world average according to the World Economic Forum’s report, assessment results such as PISA and TIMSS and ICT integration in Turkey. Examining the PISA, TIMSS assessment results and global reports about countries, it can be seen that Singapore takes first place in most topics and it takes place in Top 5 all the time in all topics. Also, when the ICT integration in education studies of Singapore are examined, it can be understood that Singapore started to these studies at the same time with Turkey and these two countries have some similarities in terms of ICT integration process. Because of this reason it is intended to conduct a research between Turkey and Singapore in terms of ICT in education and it is aimed to find responses to the questions at the end of the first paragraph. In this context, the aim of this study is to present the ICT integration of Turkey and Singapore from past to present by analyzing and comparing their history of ICT in education and to determine the similarities and differences between them.

Method

The method of this study will be a comparative historical analysis because it will examine Singapore and Turkey’s history of ICT integration process in education. Comparative historical research is a method that emphasizes the process over time and uses systematic and conceptualized comparison (Mahoney and Rueschemeyer, 2003). This method includes the examination and comparisons of societies’ or other social units’ situations over time according to some facts. The reason of this method includes the “comparative” term that it provides to discover the common patterns occuring in different time and places. In this context, it is usually a qualitative method to discover the patterns in historical processes of different cultures (Babbie, 2013; 2015). So, comparative historical analysis method will be used because of the reason that this research aims to compare the history of ICT in education of two different countries and present the similarities and differences between them. Basic data collection sources of the comparative historical analysis are historical records (Babbie, 2013). Therefore, official records and reports about national education of these two countries, PISA and TIMSS results reports, World Economic Forum Global Information Technology 2015 Report and Global Competitiveness 2015 Report will be examined in order to present the situation between the years in question. In this context, documents, reports and meeting records of Ministries of National Education of Singapore and Turkey will be accessed between 1997 and 2015. PISA and TIMSS results from the time that Singapore and Turkey participated to assessments will be accessed from their own official website. Global Information Technology Report and Global Competitiveness Report will be gained from World Economic Forum’s official website. In addition, interview records belongs to national educators and experts will be gained when necessary. Thus it will be a detailed analysis and comparison between the histories of ICT in education of these countries considering their situation according to the world and developing countries.

Expected Outcomes

Preliminary investigations shows that Singapore is far ahead from Turkey in terms of both quality of education and ICT integration in education. After analyzing the data collected from the sources mentioned in the method section, ICT integration process will be presented historically and it is intended to access the information about the reasons of the differences between to country. It is expected to emerge the components and variables considered in ICT integration by Singapore and Turkey and determine the Turkey’s mistakes about the ICT integration process. It is also expected to gain results about how to plan and implement ICT integration in education. As an important conclusion, findings may support the view that children’s accessibility to ICT has no positive effect directly on quality of education.

References

Babbie, E. (2013). The basics of social research (14th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning Inc. Babbie, E. (2015). The practice of social research (6th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning Inc. Behar, A., & Mishra, P. (2015). ICTs in schools: Why focusing policy and resources on educators, not children, will improve educational outcomes. In S. Dutta, T. Geiger, & B. Lanvin (Eds.), Global Information Technology Report 2015 (pp. 73-78). World Economic Forum. Retrieved from http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Global_IT_Report_2015.pdf Cristia, J. (2013). One laptop per child in Peru: Findings and the road forward. IDB Blogs, February 28. Retrieved from http://blogs.iadb.org/education/2013/02/28/one-laptop-per-child-in-peru-findingsand-the-road-forward/ Faber, B., Sanchis-Guarner, R., & Weinhardt, F. (2015). ICT and education: Evidence from student home addresses. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No:21306. doi:10.3386/w21306 Goktas, Y., Gedik, N., & Baydas, O. (2013). Enablers and barriers to the use of ICT in primary schools in Turkey: A comparative study of 2005-2011. Computers & Education, 68, 211-222. James, J. (2011). Low-cost computers for education in developing countries. Social Indicators Research, 103(3), 399-408. James, J. (2014). Macroeconomic consequences of the one laptop per child project. Journal of International Development, 27(1), 144-146. Mahoney, J., & Rueschemeyer, D. (2003). Comparative historical analysis in the social sciences. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. Parr, C. (2013). “Mooc Completion Rates ‘below 7%’.” The Times Higher Education, May 9. Retrieved from https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/mooc-completion-rates-below-7/2003710.article

Author Information

Ekmel Çetin (presenting / submitting)

Gazi University

Computer Education and Instructional Technoogies

Ankara

Ebru Solmaz

Gazi University

ankara

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