This paper is concerned with the cumulative improvement of the theoretical foundations of a framework for implementing information and communication technology (ICT) education in developing countries, with a view to making the framework align more accurately with practice. The framework is CATI (Contextualise, Apply, Transfer, Import) (Vesisenaho, 2009). The bases of the framework are local needs and their meeting points with education. The framework has been developed theoretically by integrating it with a cultural ecological view of learning. Research in cultural ecology has shown that the behaviour of people and the environments in which that behaviour takes place exist in mutually transformative relationships (Dillon, 2008). In educational terms these transformations may be relational or co-constitutional. In relational transformations, situations are defined relative to each other, behaviour may be predicted (e.g. by setting objectives) and they are diachronic (i.e. they are part of a historical continuum which recognises a past, a present and a future). In co-constitutional transformations, situations are emergent, behaviours and environments co-construct each other, and things happen episodically (i.e. ‘in the moment’). To be locally adapted, and therefore relevant to developmental needs, educational transformations should be both relational and co-constitutional when they can facilitate both conceptual and perceptual understandings and the links between them (Dillon et al. 2010). Both the CATI and the cultural ecological approach are developments of constructivism and sociocultural theory and draw heavily on these traditions, especially: (i) Dewey’s (1916) notion that understanding derives from personally significant experience, i.e. the sense an individual makes of experience and (ii) the notion, derived from Leont’ev (1959) and Vygotsky (1978) that meaning is the collective understanding captured in language and other social artefacts, see also Stevenson (2004). The importance of the ecological approach is the way it defines environment and the significance it places on interactions with the environment. The individual is seen to be an integral part of the environment and thus inseparable from elements which typically have been labelled as historical, social, cultural, economic, technological, and so on. Whereas there are phenomena which might legitimately be called, for example ‘social’ or ‘technological’, the individual’s experience of them is understood not from some detached objectivity but rather through the interactions in which he or she engages. In such a view individuals, practices and knowledge are transformed and different kinds of meaning become connected as the individual changes in response to, and in relation to, the environment. In educational terms, interactions with the environment can lead to transformations that are of consequence (Beach, 1999) but only if the environment is conducive to them, that is, if it affords these transformations (Gibson, 1979). In such cases both the individual and the environment are adaptive (c.f. von Glasersfeld, 1990).

The new, integrated framework has been tested and refined against data from work with 270 teacher trainees participating in an obligatory course on Information and Communication Technology in Teacher’s Work at the University of Joensuu 2008-2009. The students used learning diaries to define their earlier experiences in using ICT, their current skills and knowledge in the field, their visions for the future, and ways they hope to realise the visions in their profession. Data were also collected from students’ engagement with the practical work of the course. The data show that the framework has been welcomed by the students who have been able to distinguish and define their experiences, skills and knowledge relative to their environments and the context of teacher trainees. They have also begun to think about strategies to develop professionally in ICT education in the future.

In the light of these data, further field trials in developing countries are planned. An approach to development and education will be adopted that is not ‘impositional’ nor ‘transitional’, but rather ecological. The intention is to arrive at a framework which better reflects the ‘ecology’ and ‘localization’ of people’s interaction with ICT. This paper reports the theoretical development of the framework, the data from the trials with teacher trainees, and raises some of the questions to be addressed in the wider application of the framework.