The latest report from the OECD titled Students, Computers and Learning: Making the Connection has attracted lots of attention in the past week. The report’s main claim is that computers do not improve student results, and news feeds around the world have picked up on this using headlines suggesting school technology struggles to make an impact and schools are wasting money on computers for kids.
Lying behind the headlines are revelations that technology in the classroom leads to poorer performance among pupils is that it can be distracting and that syllabuses have not become good enough to take make the most of the technologies available. There are also concerns about plagiarism with concerns that if students can simply copy and paste answers to questions, it is unlikely to help them become smarter.
Such headlines are bound to appeal to the ‘digital doubters‘ and those calling for ‘back to basics‘ as the panacea to education’s woes – but what does this report really tell us? Given the level of investment involved with the use of technology it’s certainly not inappropriate to ask whether it makes a difference, but in doing this we need to ask: “Difference in what?”
The OECD researchers found no appreciable improvements in student achievement in reading, mathematics or science in the countries that had invested heavily in ICT for education. It adds that the use of technology in schools has done little to bridge the skills divide between advantaged and disadvantaged students. The report concludes that ensuring that every child reaches a baseline level of proficiency in reading and mathematics seems to do more to create equal opportunities in a digital world than can be achieved by expanding or subsidizing access to high-tech devices and services.
Of course there’s nothing new in studies comparing educational outcomes using technology with those that don’t. Back in the early 1990s the “No Significant Difference” study provided an analysis of several hundred reports comparing student outcomes between face to face and distance delivery courses. It concluded that an overwhelming number of studies showed that when the course materials and teaching methodology were held constant, there were no significant differences (NSD) between student outcomes in a distance delivery course as compared to a face to face course.
One interpretation of the NSD conclusion holds that the use of technology to deliver courses does no harm – that is, face to face learning has no inherent advantage to students over learning at a distance. The other interpretation is that technology does not help – and if a course can be delivered for less expense without technology, there is no need to use technology at all.
In the early 1990s Stanford historian of technology in education, Larry Cuban set out to find out if computers were changing education practice. His findings mirror the original NSD study. In his book he writes “In the schools we studied, we found no clear and substantial evidence of students increasing their academic achievement as a result of using information technologies.” Further, he found “…the overwhelming majority of teachers employed the technology to sustain existing patterns of teaching rather than to innovate.” In other words, by simply using the ICTs as a substitute for traditional approaches it was not surprising to Cuban and his colleagues to find no significant difference in achievement.
Acknowledgement of this is made in the foreword to the OECD report…
The report leaves many questions unanswered. The impact of technology on education delivery remains sub-optimal, because we may overestimate the digital skills of both teachers and students, because of naïve policy design and implementation strategies, because of a poor understanding of pedagogy, or because of the generally poor quality of educational software and courseware.
So here remains a big question for us to answer as educators, leaders and policy makers: “is the apparent lack of ‘difference’ in achievement attributable purely to the affordances of the technology, or is it more to do with the wider issues of teacher and student digital skills, pedagogical practices, assessment regimes etc.?”
In their response to the NSD phenomenon, Diana Oblinger and Brian Hawkins of Educause suggest that asking whether technology makes a difference in student learning implies that learning is a high-tech or no-tech phenomenon. They argue the issue is not that simple. Learning occurs as a result of motivation, opportunities, an active process, interaction with others, and the ability to transfer learning to a real-world situation.
This is the key focus of educational leadership guru, and more recently technology advocate Michael Fullan. His book Stratosphere: Integrating Technology, Pedagogy, and Change Knowledge is about how the ideas embedded in the new technology, the new pedagogy, and the new change knowledge are converging to transform education for all. Fullan claims that…
Technology has had its own pace, wildly outstripped the other two in sheer quantity and in aimless quality. It is now time to reconcile how technology can join the fray in a more purposeful way in order to transform learning for educators and learners in the 21st century.
The OECD’s Andreas Schleicher appears to support this position in his final paragraph in his foreword to the report:
If we want to mobilise support for more technology-rich schools, we need to become better at communicating the need and building support for change. We need to invest in capacity development and change-management skills, develop sound evidence and feed this evidence back to institutions, and back all that up with sustainable financing. Last but not least, it is vital that teachers become active agents for change, not just in implementing technological innovations, but in designing them too.
Computers can be useful when teachers sufficiently understand the technology themselves, believe it will enhance learning, and have the power to shape their own curricula. But these conditions can’t be met without a broader and deeper commitment to public education beyond preparing workers. More attention needs to be paid to the civic and social goals of schooling, goals that make the question of how many computers are in classrooms trivial. As the OECD report points out…
Empowering young people to become full participants in today’s digital public space, equipping them with the codes and tools of their technology-rich world, and encouraging them to use online learning resources – all while exploring the use of digital technologies to enhance existing education processes, such as student assessment or school administration – are goals that justify the introduction of computer technology into classrooms. (OECD report, page 186)
So what are some lessons for us all in this…
- Don’t read the headlines only, read the substance of the report to find out what is really being reported.
- Take note of what the report confirms about comparative studies – if it can be done without technology then it possibly should.
- Consider the appropriate response to concerns about plagiarism and digital distraction in your school.
- Don’t expect technology to, on its own, result in improved student outcomes.
- Don’t give up on the idea of embracing technology in your school – but ensure it’s not simply as a substitute for existing approaches
- Improving levels of digial literacy and digital fluency among teachers and learners is vital – where is our PD focus?
- Focus on how technology, combined with new pedagogies and change knowledge, can transform our practices as educators.