With the technologies that have been available to us for a number of years now, teaching professionals are in a strong position to significantly improve the quality of learning in both OECD and developing countries. However, the transformation of learning through the application of IT tools is far from pervasive. Why is this? In part it is about effecting a cultural shift in the understanding of where IT learning tools do and can sit within any syllabus and therefore revising customary teaching practices. In turn, this requires intelligent staff development programmes that are geared to lifelong learning (as opposed to one-off pre-service training). Each of these requires institutional development and reorganisation.
These claims that the true power of ICT in education can only be achieved through a deeper conceptual and methodological shift than has hitherto been put into practice is affirmed in a recent World Bank Report:
ICT has the potential to improve the quality of learning, expand access to learning opportunities, and increase the efficiency of administrative processes … . Before ICT can help improve learning outcomes, however, institutions must be reorganized and teachers must change the way they approach learning. [World Bank Staff, Lifelong Learning in the Global Knowledge Economy (Herndon: World Bank Publications, 2003), p.36].
But the same report also observes that bringing about such changes is by no means straightforward because of two additional very important factors in respect to teaching practitioners. “Bringing about this change in the way teachers and trainers behave”, says the report, “is difficult even in OECD countries …, partly because teachers’ motivation and needs vary depending on where they are in their careers” (op.cit., p.36).
Do you agree with these observations? Have any major factors been omitted? What are your own experiences of improving learning and assessment through ICT, either as a learner, a teacher, a trainer, a school leader or a project/programme manager?
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