ACEC 2010 MOVING BEYOND ' INTEGRATING ICTs ACROSS THE CURRICULUM '

For many practising teachers, the push to integrate ICTs across the curriculum has become yet another example of those top-down impositions that only distract them from their primary task of teaching. While the spirit behind that push may well have been to encourage teachers to use ICTs as powerful tools for enhancing, or even transforming, their teaching, for many it has had a very different effect in practice. This position paper suggests that it is time to move beyond the ‘integration of ICTs across the curriculum’, and redefine the success of a school’s implementation of ICTs in terms of user empowerment. In contrast to the more technology-centred emphases on access, or even on use, this re-definition needs to place its primary emphasis on the extent to which the implementation actually empowers the school community in its practice – as determined by its users. This more user-centred definition of success, especially when applied at an individual school level, and to the school as a whole, can then be used as the basis for both a usercentred model to guide the on-going development of a school’s implementation, as well as a formative, user-centred process for evaluating its effectiveness. While research has established the potential for ICTs to be used as empowering tools by both teachers and students (Becta, 2004; Jonassen, 2000), findings also verify practitioners’ concern that this potential is rarely achieved in the typical school day or typical classroom (Cox, Abbott, & Webb, 2004). Research has focused on discovering the factors that have led, and continue to contribute, to the discrepancy between the potential and the reality (Ertmer, 1999, 2005), and most recently studies have been focusing on the need to improve professional development for teachers (Cox et al., 2004; Lloyd & Cochrane, 2006; Phelps, Graham, & Kerr, 2004), which has long been in need of a paradigm shift from basic skills training to transformative development, especially in the use of ICTs (Lieberman, 1995; Schibecci, MacCallum, Cumming-Potvin, Kissane, & Miller, 2008). However, it is the central premise of this paper that there is another significant area that also needs urgent attention. This area has more to do with the school’s implementation of digital technologies, and most to do with what is the main focus of that implementation. In particular, it has to do with the prominence of technology-centred, generalised implementations that create barriers to empowering use by teachers and students (Fabry & Higgs, 1997), and with the need to move to a more usercentred, personalised implementation. Some schools have successively overcome most of the obviously-technical problems of earlier implementations, such as lack of computers, lack of power in those computers, lack of software, lack of infrastructure, lack of technical support, lack of user-skills training, and lack of helpdesk support (Becker, 2000). However, the tendency is to assume that these implementations are now useable and useful (and thereby empowering), and that it is simply a matter of integrating ICTs across, and into, the curriculum. Research from the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) has consistently shown that such technology-centred assumptions are generally unfounded (Davis, 1989; Vankatesh, 2000). So the discrepancy between the potential for ICTs to empower teaching and learning, and the realities of the typical classroom, persists (Cuban, 2001). This problem is a very practical one that many school Moving beyond 'Integrating ICTs across the curriculum'. Steve Knowles ACEC2010: DIGITAL DIVERSITY CONFERENCE 6-9 APRIL 2010, MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA communities face, and one they have difficulty knowing how to solve. They may recognise the importance of ICTs in modern culture, and the consequent importance of students understanding them and being able to use them effectively and critically. They may even subscribe to the idea that ICTs can be used to transform teaching and learning. However, they still have a disquieting sense that, in practice, their existing implementation is not having the sort of impact they expected (Staples, Pugach, & Himes, 2005). Rarely, however, does this lead to an overt questioning of the practice of ‘integrating ICTs across the curriculum’ – it is simply assumed that the more widely and deeply that ICTs are integrated across and into the curriculum, the more successful will be the school’s implementation. Unfortunately, integrating ICTs does not guarantee better teaching and learning. In fact, in situations where such integration has been imposed upon users without adequate consultation or respectful consideration of their concerns and needs, it may well be that it has led to token usage on the one hand, or outright resistance on the other, rather than empowerment of the users. A ‘new’ concept of successful implementations The position taken in this paper, and the research-in-progress from which it is drawn, is that it is time to move beyond simply assuming that the level of integration across the curriculum is a good indication of the success of a school’s implementation of ICTs. It is time to start assessing the success of a school’s implementation according to how well its core users are being empowered to carry out the core business of the school (MCEETYA, 2005), and making this criterion the central one in the design and planning process. The question then becomes: how do we assess user empowerment? The position taken in this paper, and in the research on which it is based, is that the answer is relatively simple: by determining the extent to which the implementation is user-centred, and personalised to the particular way that the school does school. Since this position has come directly out of the author’s professional practice over nearly 30 years as teacher and ICT implementer, and ICT consultant, it is naturally driven by the philosophy underlying that practice, and in particular by two emphases of that philosophy: firstly on the uniqueness of the individual, whether student, teacher, class, or school; and consequently on making users, whether students, teachers, classes or schools, absolutely central to any effective design or evaluation process. Whether applied to the pedagogical aspect, or the technological aspect, this dual emphasis on personalisation, and on user-centredness, is at the heart of empowering users. In the context of developing and evaluating a school’s implementation of digital technologies, these emphases lead to two core premises, presented here in relatively simplistic terms: the first is that, since there is no one right way of ‘doing school’, there is no one right way of ‘doing ICTs’ in schools. The second is that, since schools are first and foremost about people, and only subsequently about ICTs, a school’s implementation of digital technologies must also put people first. These premises highlight two extensions to re-defining the success of a school’s implementation according to how well its core users are being empowered to carry out the core business of the school. The first is that success should be understood as the extent to which a school’s implementation is personalised to that school’s particular way of doing school. This contrasts with the idea that there is a particular type or style of implementation that can be considered appropriate for every school. The second premise is that success should be understood as the extent to which a school’s implementation is user-centred, in the sense that the users and their needs are explicitly placed at the centre of its design and evaluation processes. This contrasts with the more technology-centred approaches, which place the perceived need to use ICTs at the centre of those processes. The tendency over the years, and continuing to greater or lesser degrees in schools today, has been to tie the idea of ‘successful’ implementations to more technology-centred criteria, such as the: Moving beyond 'Integrating ICTs across the curriculum'. Steve Knowles ACEC2010: DIGITAL DIVERSITY CONFERENCE 6-9 APRIL 2010, MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA • number and/or type of computers and/or type of operating systems • specific uses of computers: objects of study, tutors, productivity tools, thinking tools • ratio of students to computers • placement of computers: labs, classrooms, libraries; aggregated and/or distributed • level and extent of infrastructure • level of technical and helpdesk support • level of students’ and/or teachers’ competency in computing skill-sets • level of actual use by teachers and/or students • level of ICT integration into the teaching and learning environment • the extent to which ICT integration is transforming teaching and learning While positive results on each of these criteria can and do contribute to a successful implementation of ICTs, the position taken in this paper is that they do not (no one of them, nor any combination of them) constitute the best criterion for determining the success of the implementation. The essential criterion is something qualitatively different – the extent to which the implementation empowers the users in carrying out the school’s core business. To over-simplify the point, if the school’s core business is to use ICTs, then these technology-centred criteria are the most important; but if its core business is elsewhere – for example teaching and learning – then the essential criterion is in a different category altogether, and is far more important than any technology-centred criteria. Making empowering users the main criterion for success does not exclude any of the items in the above list from consideration. In practice, the research on which this paper is based indicates that when a school takes a user-centred approach that focuses on personalising the implementation to the school’s particular way of doing school, most of the issues highlighted by a predominantly technology-centred approach still arise. Howeve