“New technologies do not change schools: schools have to change before they can make effective use of the new technologies.” Professor Larry Cuban, professor of education at Stanford University, wrote that some time ago. His most recent book, Oversold and Underused: Computers in the Classroom, is looking to see if teachers’ classroom practice has changed.
To do this he has used schools in the area between San Francisco and San Jose, Silicon Valley. His argument for researching in that geographical area is that the schools there have had long exposure to ICT.
Cuban is not against technology; he describes in detail and with great regard the work of teachers who are using the technology with humanity and panache. Nevertheless, he argues: “Historical legacies in school structures and parents’ and tax payers’ social beliefs about what teachers should be doing, I believe, will trump the slow revolution in teaching practices. Those fervent advocates who seek to transform teaching and learning into more efficient, productive work through active student center classrooms will find wholesale access to computers ultimately disappointing.”
The large amounts of finance consumed by ICT are causing politicians and civil servants to question the contribution that ICT is making to education. They will not be comforted by Cuban’s book. It is not, however, written just for that audience. Anyone with a passing interest in the impact of ICT should read this and ask: is it the same in the UK? Does Cuban isolate the right reasons to progress?
There are differences in the US - there is not the constraint of a national curriculum for a start - but the differences do not invalidate most of Cuban’s insights. The similarities are far more marked than the differences. Cuban points out that teachers are making great use of ICT outside the classroom to prepare materials, to do research and in administration. However, in the classroom teachers are simply using the technologies to do what they have always done. In the UK that is reinforced because teachers are expected to teach a traditional curriculum with ICT. Anyone looking at the classroom practice recommended by NOF training providers will see the old methods sprayed with the glitter of ICT.
In the UK there have been optimistic surveys of the impact of ICT on the practice of teachers and many of those have been based on teachers’ own perceptions. One of Cuban’s surprising findings is that teachers often say that ICT has changed their classroom practice, but when his researchers go in to observe they find little change.
In a previous study Cuban looked at the impact of film, radio and instructional television: “Each of these highly touted electronic marvels went through a cycle of high expectations or reforming school, rich promotional rhetoric, and new policies that encouraged broad availability of machines, yet resulted in limited classroom use.”
The polemical title gives away Cuban’s sombre conclusions. “Without attention to the workplace conditions in which teachers labour and without respect for the expertise they bring to the task, there is little hope that the new technologies will have more than a minimal impact.”
Cuban argues that we need to redefine the goals of schooling. “Do we care most about literacy? Social development? Other goals? The school community needs to reach a consensus, then ask: Now, how might the technology help us reach these goals? Finally, once you know where you want to go and how technology might help, you need to look at the structure of the school and how time is used and see what you might need to change in order to meet the goals. The questions really break down into: What are we after? How can technology help? What do we have to change to make use of it?” Cuban makes one suggestion that he knows won’t be acted on. He is attracted to the idea of calling “for a moratorium on buying any more computers for K-12 schools. A moratorium might startle people into openly debating serious questions about how and why computers are used and how they fit in with the larger purposes of universal education.” More attention, Cuban says, needs to be paid to the civic and social goals of schooling. That makes the question of how many computers are in classrooms trivial.
Now, that is radical.
Oversold and Underused: Computers in the Classroom by Larry Cuban, published by Harvard University Press Price: pound;19.50 Email: info@hup-mitpress.co.uk
