Does technology improve education?
19-January-2006
permalink email thisGuardian Unlimited Technology | Technology | Inside IT: Breaking down class barriers:
Interesting snippet from the Guardian (shame they do not reference the studies):
"At this feast, there is a skeleton: the lack of solid evidence showing that IT actually improves education. Some international research suggests the opposite. A University of Munich study of secondary pupils in 32 countries reported in 2004 that, while at first sight students with access to computers at school and at home do better than those without, this advantage disappears when other factors such as family income are taken into account.
The study also found that while students who used computers occasionally did better than those who did not, those who used them several times a week generally performed worse. The study followed earlier Israeli research showing that IT did not improve test scores."
Gets even more interesting when you look at the wording of a recent Becta job advert: "You will manage research projects to determine how ICT has improved management and raised young people's attainment levels."
It seems Becta has already made up its mind!
The problem is largely political but it has very real repercussions. At least in the UK, the Government wishes to justify the growing expenditure on IT infrastructure in schools on improving attainment, somewhat narrowly defined as test results.
There is little evidence that ICT alone does this. The wider benefits of educational technology, in term of students learning how to used and shape information technology is ignored. So too is the pedagogy of ICT based learning. Meanwhile as the Guardian suggests the real winners may be suppliers rather than pupils.
Technorati Tags: e-learning, pedagogy
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