Session Information
Contribution
An ongoing argumentation has for 30 years surrounded the field of education that the developments of information and communication technology (ICT) will inevitable change education. Innovation of education by using ICT-tools is often described as more or less self-evident with a naïve faith in the promises of new technology to enable teachers to make improvement in the content, the methods and the organisation of education. Technology use in education also promises far-reaching influence on students’ skills and knowledge. One example is ICT literacy defined as an important component in a set of generic skills that all citizens in the neo-liberal market society must possess (Kozma and Voogt 2003; Krumsvik 2009; Robertson 2003; De Castell, Bryson, and Jenson 2002).
However, educational practices seem to have failed to live up to this utopian expectations and the process of integration has often been described as slow. Reasons for this lethargy has by many researchers been identified in various aspects of educational practice ranging from technical factors such as lack of technology and software in schools and the limited personal expertise of teachers in the use of ICT, to other factors, such as for example teachers’ beliefs, and knowledge about how to integrate ICT in teaching (Robertson 2003; UNESCO Launches ICT Standards Effort 2008; De Castell, Bryson, and Jenson 2002; Goktas, Yildirim, and Yildirim 2009; Govender and Govender 2009).
The aim with this paper is to discuss how ethnographic methods can be used to make visible what educational technologies might offer for teaching and learning of mathematics. This paper offers critical considerations of the official discourse (described above), stemming from economic interests, exhorting the field of education to adopt and integrate information and communication technology (ICT), in teaching and learning. It calls for an alternative, reflexive and critical approach where educational questions about technology uses in education are emphasised. What, educationally, is ICT offer for education?
In this study a group of student teachers were followed during 20 weeks of a mathematic course. The material discussed here, represents 20 hours of participants observation from lab work where student teachers work with computers.
One way of understand the attractiveness of ICT for educational policy makers, is the way new technology is formulated in the official discourse, by the society and its selected agents, where digital technology in many way defines society, and the position education has in the neo liberal society as a role of driving economic competiveness (Ball 2006). The argument for ICT use in education formulated in this discourse is rooted in an economistic theorizing rather than in an educational theory(De Castell, Bryson, and Jenson 2002). This study uses Basil Bernstein conceptual framework about construction of pedagogic discourse as a grammar underlying fields of production, recontextualisation and pedagogical practice. These theoretical concepts could be used to understand the process where dominant group in society through their ideology creates unrealistic expectations about effects of ICT use on teaching and learning by the concern with the intrinsic feature of pedagogic discourse, with the distinctive form and structure of what actually goes on the process of education (Bernstein 2000).
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Ball, Stephen J. 2006. Education policy and social class : the selected works of Stephen J. Ball, World library of educationalists. London ;: Routledge. Bernstein, Basil. 2000. Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity: theory, research, critique, Critical perspectives series, 99-1838755-6. Lanham, Md.:: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. De Castell, Suzanne, Mary Bryson, and Jennifer Jenson. 2002. Object Lessons: Towards an Educational Theory of Technology. First Monday [Online] 7 (1). Goktas, Y., S. Yildirim, and Z. Yildirim. 2009. Main Barriers and Possible Enablers of ICTs Integration into Pre-service Teacher Education Programs. Educational Technology & Society 12 (1):193-204. Govender, D., and I. Govender. 2009. The Relationship between Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Integration and Teachers' Self-efficacy Beliefs about ICT. Education as Change 13 (1):153-165. Kozma, Robert B., and Joke M. Voogt. 2003. Technology, innovation and educational change : a global perspective : a report of the Second Information Technology in Education Study Module 2. Eugene, Or.: International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). Krumsvik, Rune. 2009. Situated learning in the network society and the digitised school. European Journal of Teacher Education 32 (2):167-185. Robertson, Heather-Jane. 2003. Toward a Theory of Negativity: Teacher Education and Information and Communications Technology. Journal of Teacher Education 54 (4):280-296. UNESCO Launches ICT Standards Effort. 2008. T H E Journal 35 (3):14-14.
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