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OUTPUTS
The
EMILE project was not indented to introduce or study innovations
in education.
New teacher and student roles associated with ICT based innovative
pedagogical practices
The
EMILE project suggests that in many countries there has been a
shift from technology-centred towards a teaching–learning centred
approach to ICT in education. According to EMILE project, collaboration
and good relationships among colleagues had an impact on how teachers
effectively introduced ICT in their curricular activities. Good networking and productive relationships among teachers enticed sharing
of ideas and practices that improved teachers' confidence in,
and attitude towards ICT (Hungary,
Sardinia,
Scotland). Another finding is that
primary school teachers tend to collaborate among them easier
than high school teachers do. Moreover, it seems that in different
countries there are different school cultures, which foster different
behaviors regarding the issue of collaboration among the teachers.
For example, in less centralized school systems, such as the Scottish
and the Hungarian, a lot of decisions have to be taken at the
school level, which gives ground for the formation of groups of
teachers with certain responsibilities. As the EMILE project suggests,
the main way to diffuse ICT use in a school is to have ICT skilled
teachers to frankly cooperate and support their less skilled colleagues.
If this is not the case, that is the school environment does not
encourage this kind of exchange and collaboration, then it is
most probable that the ICT will remain at the margin of the school
life and will be used by a minority, who will attract the jealousy
of the other members of the staff.
Main points:
1.
There has been a shift from technology-centred towards a
teaching–learning centred approach to ICT in education.
Provisional
qualitative indicators
·
Increased collaboration and rich interpersonal relationships
among the teachers has a positive impact on the effectiveness
of the introduction of ICT in curriculum-based activities.
·
Decentralisation of decision making encourages the formation
of informal “decision-making” groups of teachers.
·
Teachers as trainers of less skilled colleagues.
Changes in patterns of teacher-student and student-student
interactions as a result of it
According
to EMILE, the location and arrangement of computers in a school
significantly influence how they will be used for educational
purposes. Different arrangements in the same computer lab encourage
different types of use (traditional class, small group projects,
or working individually). In the computer rooms, the pupils are
often co-operating two and two or in a small group. They learn
to listen to each other and to discuss the findings from internet
etc. The teachers put emphasis on co-operation and social and
ethical skills as positive effects of the uses of ICT (Italy,
Norway, Greece). However, these are also countries
with few computers in the classrooms, small computer rooms and
fewer computers than pupils. Working together is both a necessity
and has pedagogical reasons.
The limited access to
computers, computer rooms, software and internet seems to produce
different control systems in the schools. Opposite, project based
assessment, cooperation between pupils seem to produce more flexibility
in the every day schooling. This seems to produce ambivalence
between control and flexibility regarding ICT in the countries
involved in this study. The strategies for controlling the pupils
working with the computers are different, and related to cultural
traditions for schooling. Control is often a result of the structure
and organisation and not necessarily meant to be control. In Norway there is
a tradition for “unified” schooling focusing individual needs
and possibilities. The pupils are therefore less restricted in
behaviour than e.g. in Greek schools. When the every day structure
is loose and prolific, the lessons in the computer rooms are experienced
by teachers and pupils to be restricted. Reasons for this are
the restrictions in use of computers and the demand for effectively
work due to the limited access to this room. This is contrary
to the teachers in the Greece
schools observed, who say they find the lessons at the computer
room looser and relaxed than in the class room. These teachers
gain the experience that need for co-operation, flexibility and
communication during the lesson produces a good atmosphere between
teachers and pupils.
Main points:
1.
Teacher-student and student-student interactions are influenced
by computer-lab arrangements and in particular how computers are
arranged in the lab space (traditional class, small group projects,
or individual work).
2.
Teachers encourage co-operation for both pedagogical reasons
and reasons related to scarcity of resources.
3.
Pupil to pupil interactions are often based on small group
co-operation, collaboration and shared construction of meaning.
4.
The strategies for controlling the pupils working with the
computers are different, and related to cultural traditions for
schooling.
Provisional qualitative indicators
·
based
assessment and cooperation between pupils seem to produce more
flexibility in the every day schooling.
Attitudes
of teachers and trainers towards ICT
The key findings
of EMILE were that attitudes
towards ICT among teachers varied enormously from fear, skepticism
and indifference to wild enthusiasm and excitement. Three
interrelated issues are affecting teachers’ attitudes towards
ICT: a) collaboration vs power exertion, b) quality of ICT training
provided in relation to teachers’ actual level of knowledge and
experience in the use of ICT, and to a minor degree c) teachers’
age.
According to
the EMILE project, differences in attitudes of teachers towards
ICT depended on their possibility to engage in peer-to-peer networking
and to exchange knowledge and experiences. In relation to age
differences, the new generation of young teachers presented a
more homogenised level of ICT skills since their educational background
and training path included ICT training (Scotland, Sardinia,
Greece).
However, although younger teachers were generally likely to have
received training in ICT there was no clear age division regarding
teachers’ attitudes towards ICT. Older teachers could be the most
enthusiastic and younger teachers the most fearful. Although it
was true that some older teachers considered themselves too old
to be learning new tricks and some stuck doggedly to old methods,
it was nonetheless also found that older teachers could reveal
greater patience and tenacity in the acquisition of new skills.
At the same time some younger teachers could feel overwhelmed
by the expectation that they should be more knowledgeable about
ICT because of their age. In all schools participating in the
Emile project old teachers were more willing and eager than young
teachers to show their ICT skills and engage with them creatively.
Indeed, old teachers either loved or hated ICT, in contrast to
young teachers who often regarded ICT with boredom or did not
show any enthusiasm for ICT. This attitude emerged in Sardinia
and France.
Particularly in these two countries, some old teachers were absolutely
brilliant with ICT although they had not received proper ICT training
in school and were mainly self-taught people.
In some cases,
teachers take lack of ICT
knowledge and improper ICT training by local authorities as an
excuse not to engage with computers. This occurred in Sardinia,
Scotland and Hungary. Particularly in the case
of elementary school teachers, motivation and incentives to work
with ICT were quite low if they were not guaranteed proper ICT
training and technical assistance (Hungary,
Scotland). In
France the question
of independence and autonomy of teachers in deciding about their
professional training (l' honneur) constituted a relevant
issue when teachers were offered ICT courses. In some cases, French
teachers' attitudes did not entice a homogenised level of computer
skilled teachers in school.
Power was another issue that emerged throughout the
inquiry about age. In other words, ICT became the status symbol
of a power position for those who managed ICT well and had good
computer skills. According to
EMILE, the likelihood of using ICT as a power game in a school
increases considerably when you have all these factors working
together: location of computers in labs, low teacher expertise
in ICT, lack of teacher cooperation in the school environment
and ICT coordinators who don’t have clearly specified duties and
status. Power games in the ICT territory have serious consequences
regarding the diffusion of the ICT in a school and to the school
climate. The results of the present study, as well of other studies
support the claim that in schools where ICT coordinators exert on
their colleagues the power deriving from their know-how, there
are tensions among the members of the staff and even conflicts,
which put ICT in the margin of the school activities.
Main points:
- Attitudes towards ICT among teachers varied enormously
from fear, scepticism and indifference to wild enthusiasm and
excitement.
- Three interrelated issues are affecting teachers’ attitudes
towards ICT: a) collaboration vs. power exertion in schools,
b) quality of ICT training provided in relation to teachers’
actual level of knowledge and experience in the use of ICT,
and to a minor degree c) teachers’ age.
- Some teachers take lack of ICT knowledge and improper
ICT training by local authorities as an excuse not to engage
with computers.
- ICT became the status symbol of a power position for
those who managed ICT well and had good computer skills.
- In schools where ICT coordinators exert on their colleagues
the power deriving from their know-how, there are tensions among
the members of the staff and even conflicts, which put ICT in
the margin of the school activities.
Provisional qualitative indicators
Quality
training on ICT increases teachers’ motivation to work with ICT
in schools. ·
Collaboration, good interpersonal relationships among teachers
and shared responsibility decrease power and status-related conflicts
in schools and increase the possibilities for ICT to integrate in
school activities.
Affective and
socio-cultural factors that influence learning processes
ICT functions
as a system that shapes students’ lives, learning styles, fashion
concepts and social relations and produces a multiplicity of
technologies of gender, social class or national identity. According
to the EMILE project, ICT is more than a system
of communication and production tools, it is a culture with rules,
genres and consumption patterns of its own.
Hungarian report findings related to socio-cultural
factors that influence learning processes: the Net Generation
The Net Generation can be identified as a social
entity that has important characteristics to be considered both
by parents and teachers. We also found that this generation possesses
new learning potentials and ways of self-expression and creativity.
·
A series of interviews with students and their parents about
the use of ICT in learning and work revealed that the digital divide was in fact age-related.
Students engage in playing games and spend very little time with
ICT-supported studies.
·
An EMILE finding was that the older a student is, the
more he or she uses the Internet for study purposes. Apparently,
the utility of online information resources are more evident for
experienced users.
·
Equity is the issue at stake here
– village kids who have no direct access to information on good
grammar schools as well as secondary school graduates living in
a country town -hours away from desirable universities-, can and
actually do get help to prepare for entrance exams through the
Internet.
·
In all the four Hungarian EMILE schools, ICT-savvy teenagers
formed interest groups, exchanged knowledge and software and extended
this friendly, sharing attitude towards their teachers and less
competent peers as well. Independence,
home-based work in virtual teams and originality of task solutions
are among the features that characterises the Net Generation.
ICT-based project work seems to be the most appropriate form of
study for them. The success of the digital projects reported in
the National Study shows how authentic tasks and real communication
options increase interest in and develop skills of ICT.
·
“Cyberculture”, -ICT-based forms of expression- differs basically
from other, traditional mass media. The Net Generation seems to
enjoy a range of virtual encounters: chat groups (among
them, high level special interest or campaigning forums) are perhaps
the most widely studied among them. ICT competence increases
the number of “traditional” relationships – specially for
older teenagers (ages 16-18). Those who are able to maintain friendships
online can engage on more conversations, receive more attention
and invitations to “real world” activities than those who rely
on the telephone or face-to-face encounters. Computer games
and MUDs (Multiple User Domains or "virtual worlds")
are new playing activities we have to consider when describing
the Net Generation.
·
Comparative studies conducted in the framework of the EMILE
project suggest that the Net generation is global but it maintains
national features that ensure the survival of a closely networked
but multicultural Europe.
Main
institutional changes described as a result of the introduction
of ICT into the existing structures
The EMILE project did not introduce
ICT or related practices into schools and therefore no institutional
changes were observed. However, the
EMILE project put emphasis on the study of institutional factors
affecting the introduction of ICT in schools. The institutional
context of schools was an important factor affecting the use and
implementation of ICT. The technical support and assistance as
well as the level of ICT training afforded to teachers constituted
the main source of appreciation or rejection of ICT by teachers,
particularly by teachers who did not have computers at home and
therefore could not improve their ICT skills easily in their own
time. Furthermore, lack of ICT coordinators was also a fundamental
a problem because teachers did not have a knowledgeable institutional
figure to rely upon to seek ICT assistance.
Main actors,
adopters and resisters to the adoption of the innovation as identified
in the projects
The Main actors were teachers,
students and parents, the regional and national school administrations, political authorities
at the local, national or European levels, and various “pressure”
groups.
·
Parents: According to
EMILE, although parents who lack ICT equipment at home would be
justified to worry that their children might be deprived of learning
what are considered to be essential skills, they tend to intervene
very little in the area of ICT on an individual basis; as for
the others, ICT is rarely a priority for them. This is worth stressing,
because it is what differentiates Europe and the United States
where parents, either individually or collectively, exert a sometimes
considerable influence in the school. In European countries, parental
pressure regarding ICT is manifested especially through the representative
parent associations at a local or national level. How these demands
are taken into consideration depends on local conditions and how
good a relationship parents have with teachers in the school.
·
Students: Young people
are aware that the technology has great power and will have significant
presence in their future lives. The acquisition of computer expertise
as ‘social currency’ is an activity in which some sub-groups –
usually male – invest significant time and energy. This aspect
of the enthusiastic appropriation of technology by young people
has little resonance with the formal uses of ICT in schools, where
the teachers’ purposes and aims in acquiring skills and in teaching
their pupils these skills are so very different. In every country
we found examples of enthusiastic pupils who knew more about the
uses of technology than their teachers.
·
Administrators: pressure from
the administrations that manage education systems for schools
appears to be universal, systematic, and strong. It shows up in
all EU countries in three main forms: the equipping of schools;
teacher training programmes; and the development of educational
applications. Rather paradoxically, in countries with a centralised
national education system, such as France, Greece, or Italy, the
administrative pressure on schools can appear weaker than in a
more decentralised country like Norway. There, the administrative
authority is very close to the schools and can also be more restrictive.
School directors play an intermediary role here: the administration
depends on school directors to present its ICT strategy and put
it into application. At this point the school autonomy parameter
is very important, because it determines the director's freedom
of action. Of the six countries visited, Scotland appears to be
the one where school directors have the most autonomy and France,
where they have the least. In the first case, the director receives
the administrative pressure, reformulates it, and passes it on
the teachers; in the second, the director merely communicates
the directives received from administrative superiors.
·
Political Authorities: national policies have been in favour of the introduction
of ICT in schools for many years in each of the six countries
observed. National ICT policies include the standard components:
equipping schools with computers and Internet access; training
teachers and encouraging utilisation; occasionally supporting
the production of multimedia content. In some countries (France,
Norway, and Scotland in our sampling), ICT policy is also expressed
through independent regional policies, especially where equipping
schools is concerned. In France and Norway, decisions on spending
and choosing equipment are made by the local political authorities.
As the centre of decision-making gets closer to the place where
decisions are applied, their efficiency increases, along with
the pressure exerted by the local authorities on the players in
the schools. The content in the messages conveyed by political
authorities at both national and regional levels often refers
to global objectives in connection with modernizing education
and bringing the population into the information society. Purely
pedagogical considerations usually are secondary. This tendency
is even exaggerated in statements issued by the European Commission
to promote elearning, since the Commission is not directly confronted
with the implementation of its own directives. When they reach
the schools, these political orientations give rise to controversial
debates. The teachers find that the political authorities have
given them the responsibility for a mission that only some of
them fully subscribe to. Others either consider the mission to
be unjustified, or feel incapable of taking it on, or that that
they have not been given the necessary means to accomplish it.
·
Other pressure
groups: we need to distinguish between the economic agents who defend specific
interests with no direct bearing on education, and groups whose
action takes place at the level of public debate - even if the
two categories do overlap. Non-economic lobbies that voice their
opinions on ICT outside the school do not always share positions.
Some - even if they are in the minority – are against the computerisation
of schools and the teaching practices and tendency for commercialising
education that they believe go along with it. On the other side,
groups such as educational research scientists who work in the
area of ICT usage exert pressure on teachers. The research community
in Europe and elsewhere tend to develop arguments that place sometimes
heavy responsibility on teachers - for example, when they suggest
that efficient use of ICT presupposes a radical reassessment of
the teaching methods that are generally practised in schools.
This type of analysis is often echoed by the representatives from
other lobbies, in particular computer firms, and even by political
authorities, e.g., within the European Commission.
·
Teachers: Teachers seem
to take full advantage of the degree of freedom they are given
by choosing to use ICT or not - based on personal choice, their
taste for technology, their aptitude for computer literacy, and/or
their convictions relative to the teaching effectiveness of such
technology. The result is that the significant pressures exerted
on all the players in schools, appear to have a relatively limited effect on the teachers themselves.
This observation is even more worthy of note, given that outside
pressures in favour of ICT often are passed on to the teaching
staff by individual teachers who are interested in and even enthusiastic
about ICT. These teachers accept responsibility for managing the
equipment and actively try to convince their colleagues to use
ICT. Nevertheless, the presence of these go-betweens in the schools
does not seem to sway the overall tendency; we have even noted
that in some cases they have a reverse demotivating effect.
Organisational
conditions that are (un)supportive to new learning processes
Regarding
the “computer lab vs. computers at the back of
the classroom” alternative, the (local and national) administrative
authorities in all the countries represented in the EMILE project,
tend to favour the computer lab solution.
The reasons behind this choice are mostly practical. Grouping
the PCs has many technical and economic advantages when it comes
to Internet access, peripheral sharing, acquiring software licences,
etc. There are also organizational advantages, such as genericity, easy maintenance and
supervision of pupil activity, limiting cabling to a single room
and, especially, the possibility for having a whole class work
on the computer. However, there is little discussion among the
teachers about the organisation of the computers in the schools.
This is generally decided for other than pedagogical reasons,
e.g school buildings, economy, need for technical support and
controlling the use of the machines. Interviews with teachers
in several different countries (France, Scotland, Italy, and Norway,
in particular) indicate that, although educational criteria may
not play a large role when the equipment is set up, they do tend
to resurface over time as more and more teachers develop use,
and as collective experience accumulates. According to EMILE project,
it is not certain that the computer
lab solution has a long future in front of it, however, because
there are a number of arguments (notably pedagogic ones) in favour
of the classroom PC solution. PCs in the classroom
allow more profitable educational
activities than those held in the computer lab, where there
are schedule-planning constraints.
Provisional qualitative indicators
·
Placing
PCs in classrooms allow
more profitable educational activities than those held in
separate computer labs.
Other
issues relevant for the evaluator related with the project:
What was considered innovative?
The
EMILE project did not offer a definition for innovation in the
use of ICT in schools
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