An investigation of the incorporation of Information and Communication Technology and thinking skills with year 1 and 2 students.

Introduction

Learning through the integration of thinking processes with technology is fundamental for curriculum planning in schools (Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (Victoria), 2007). Much of the current interest in teaching thinking skills has been prompted by technological changes in the nature of work and the implications of these changes for student learning. In the information economies of the twenty-first century, the emphasis is on the acquisition of

transferable thinking skills rather than content knowledge or task-specific skills. They [students] particularly require an ability to learn how to learn new things since accelerating technological change is making old skills (and knowledge) redundant and generating needs for new skills (and knowledge). (Wegerif, 2002, p. 3)

This paper reports on one aspect of a larger study investigating the effects of integrating Information and Communication Technology (ICT) into children's thinking and learning processes. It describes an inquiry-based approach to learning (Murdoch, 2004), the introduction of ICT skills and thinking processes (de Bono, 1992) in a Catholic primary classroom in metropolitan Melbourne. The research design incorporated case study (Stake, 1995, 2000) and practitioner action research (Cherry, 1998; Kemmis & McTaggart, 1990, 2004) approaches. The results of this study document four observable stages exhibited by the children as they learned to use ICT within the classroom environment. The stages identified are: Discovering and Engaging; Demonstrating; Analysing; and Synthesising. The implications for teachers incorporating ICT in order to enhance students' learning are illustrated through teaching and learning activities relevant to each of these four stages of students' experiential learning. In the following sections of this paper, active learning is first defined, followed by a discussion of ICT in the classroom. The current investigation is then described in terms of theoretical background, research cycle findings, and implications. The paper concludes with a comment on the children's learning experiences within this study, and recommendations for further research.

Active learning

Basic human learning can occur in a variety of ways such as by rote, mimicry, the unquestioning acceptance of facts and the experimental and experiential exploration of different environments--but learning has the capacity to be a far richer experience, with consequences that are more complex. One can learn in a potentially transformative way that endows our experiences with meaning and which empowers us to perceive differently, to value and appreciate differently and to adapt and create new ways of behaving. Atken (1999) asks the critical question, 'What is the nature and value of learning?', and this question needs to be addressed when researching education for learning.

Learning should not be about passive reception of information but about active participation in the process of meaning-construction. 'Learners do not just take in and store up given information. They make tentative interpretations of experience and go on to elaborate and test interpretations' (Perkins, 1992, p. 49). Active learning entails student interaction, connections among schools, collaboration between teachers and students, the involvement of teachers as facilitators, and an emphasis on technology as a tool for learning. Incorporating teaching and learning strategies with ICT capabilities in order to enhance thinking skills becomes the real challenge for schools.

Many educationalists strive to support the development of students as active, independent and reflective learners by providing a wide range of teaching strategies and learning opportunities to enhance thinking skills. In the past this has not necessarily occurred. If learning, in a formal setting, is more concerned with the acquisition of content knowledge about the world, than question such as 'how' and 'why', then students' independent thinking skills may not be enhanced. What is most important in the learning process is thinking about knowledge and experience, and constructing personal meaning; successful learners make intellectual connections, experiencing the world in terms of meaningful patterns and organised wholes (Rogers, 1994). Feeling and emotion are integral parts of the learning process. Human learning involves constructing and reconstructing meaning, and while foundational knowledge is needed in order to continue learning, the challenge for educators has become to discern essential facts from procedures and skills necessary to further learning and thinking.

The integration of ICT supports students as they learn through a process of inquiry. New perspectives and tools can enhance the quality of education, and ICT has the potential to be integrated into meaningful and purposeful activities and learning for the classroom (Jones, Valdez, Nowakowski & Rasmussen, 1995). Indeed, ICT in an educational setting plays an invaluable role in student learning, as Seymour Papert's findings suggest:

Imaginative progressive teachers who had computers in the classrooms and were prepared to give students the time and support to learn often created wonderfully fertile learning environments--children can learn to use computers in a masterful way; learning to use computers can change the way they learn everything else. (Papert, 1993, cited in Casey, 2000, p. 1776)

Much research has shown that the benefits of ICT go well beyond the classroom (Casey, 2000, 2001; Shields & Behrman, 2000). A study conducted by the U.S. Department of Education (1996) has revealed that when schools provided students with home computers and modems so they could connect to the schools' networks, students increased the amount of time spent on educational activities outside of school. Furthermore, students with home computers spent less time watching television, enhanced their problem solving and critical thinking skills, improved their writing and math skills, and showed greater computer literacy.

During the past decade, Australian schools have been endeavouring to keep abreast of rapid advances in ICT. As for example, in Victoria, schools such as the Navigator schools (Department of Education & Training (Victoria), 1998) and LaTTiCE (1)--Learning and Teaching Technologies in Catholic Education (Catholic Education Office, 2004) schools were established in order to fully utilise the latest developments in ICT. These schools have fostered an approach to learning and teaching that enhances student access to ICT and promotes independent thinking. Students are challenged with complex, authentic tasks with an emphasis on multidisciplinary projects, cooperative learning groups and flexible classroom curriculum scheduling. In this paper, active learning is defined as the level of engagement displayed by the children as they participated in the four stages of interactive learning identified: Discovering and Engaging stage, Demonstrating stage, Analysing stage, and Synthesising stage.

Technology in the classroom

Issues of learning and technology are more critical today than ever before. The advances being made in technology continue to both increase and astonish users. However, it is important to keep in mind that the real measure of the effectiveness of technology-enhanced educational programs is the extent to which they promote and support student learning. Early use of computers and various forms of information technology had a focus on the technology itself, or its use within narrow confines. Today's ICT impinges on all aspects of daily life--including school life. Electronic mail can incorporate text, photographic images, video clips and sound. Chat rooms exist where people from geographically diverse locations can communicate in real time for relatively little cost and with the possibility of visual interaction using webcams. Users do not have to be in the same room or even the same country in order to participate in a variety of interactive games. ICT allows virtually instantaneous communication and access to information across boundaries of space and time with impressive quality. What this has led to is a change in teaching and learning practices across the curriculum.

If teaching is a process of helping learners to construct and reconstruct their own experiences, changing practice as a result of the incorporation of ICT is essential. In the past, technology has been largely used in education to learn from, but technologies are more effectively used as tools with which to think and learn with, and to construct knowledge (Jonassen, Peck & Wilson, 1999). Researchers are positing ways of looking at learning that promote engaged meaningful learning, involve challenging and real-life tasks, and the use of technology as a tool for learning and collaboration. Engaged learners are both responsible for and energised by their learning, both strategically and collaboratively (Jones et al., 1995).

Broadly, the development of thinking skills is enhanced by the application of ICT in three ways: as tutor or teaching machine; as cognitive tool; as facilitator of learning conversations (NESTA, 2002). Each of these aspects of ICT is important to the development of thinking processes. ICT can engage learners quite differently than a classroom teacher. As for example, ICT capabilities can provide instantaneous and unambiguous feedback, and concept maps or programming languages can be used for teaching transferable thinking skills that may be enhanced by pair or group work. In addition, the articulation and discussion of ideas may be facilitated within groups and even beyond the classroom by such features as email, webcams, Intranet and Internet chat rooms. This has been the case where students have been involved in designing and implementing an Intranet that was used to facilitate discussion and foster collaboration throughout the school community (St Vincent de Paul School Strathmore, cited in Catholic Education Office, 2004).

Potentially, ICT allows students to work at their own pace, encouraging initiative and independent learning. Jonassen (1994) describes technological tools as intellectual partners and powerful catalysts in the process of learning, scaffolding the processes of articulation and reflection which are the foundations of knowledge construction.

Taking these challenges as the starting point the current study set out to investigate how the incorporation of ICT into the curriculum of young children can be enhanced by utilising thinking skills as a focus.

Underlying theory of the current study

In this study, the classroom teacher was the action researcher, or practitioner researcher. The investigation involved a qualitative design (Denzin & Lincoln, 1994; Geertz, 1973; Guba & Lincoln, 1994), incorporating a Case Study approach (Stake, 1978, 1980, 1988, 1994, 1995, 2000) and an Action Research methodology (Cherry, 1998; Kemmis & McTaggart, 1982, 1988, 1990, 2004). These approaches were chosen because of their appropriateness for a reflective, practising teacher, who desired to carry out an investigation in the natural setting of her own classroom. The classroom became the case about which it was intended to draw insights. The cyclical process of action research--planning, implementing, monitoring, assessing and evaluating--complemented the educational process of the classroom. Data collection methods were similar to those regularly used in classroom practice: journal keeping, observations, reflective practices and artefact collection.

This paper reports of the use of de Bono's six thinking skills to identify the children's changing abilities to use ICT as a tool in the classroom. A framework based on Murdoch's inquiry approach (Murdoch 2004, 1999, 1998, 1997, 1992) guided the integrated curriculum direction. The work of Kemmiss and McTaggart (2004) and Cherry (1998) on Action Research provided a framework that guided not only the inquiry learning but also the Action Research cycles. The Action Research component of the study took one year to complete including both data collection and analysis.

The following table outlines the research process, identifying the stages and cycles of the research and the underpinning studies that provided the theoretical basis for each design decision. Figure 1, subsequent to Table 1, provides an example of how the research cycle was planned and implemented.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

Figure 1 illustrates one stage of the curriculum cycle, showing the process utilised in the study. This fi gure highlights the very simple initial tuning-in tasks that occurred to determine prior knowledge of these Year 1 and 2 children and to begin to paint a picture of the way in which to proceed. The student participants were able to access the Internet with Internet Explorer, and given access to Microsoft Offi ce and other software such as: Bailey's Book House, Gizmos and Gadgets, Hyperstudio, Kid Pix and Sammy's Snake House. In the home-room, students had access to a small bank of networked machines with a Macintosh operating system. Group instruction in the laboratory was enabled through the use of an Averkey, a device that connects a computer to a television monitor in order to provide a larger display.

A learning-centred teaching process was utilised for the explicit ICT instruction. The teacher fi rst modelled a new strategy and then talked through what the strategy referred to, when it should be used, and how to go about doing so. Following this, the teacher engaged in the task with the students helping out. This lead to the students taking over the task using the strategy, with the teacher helping and intervening as needed. The fi nal outcome was for the students to use the strategy independently (Wilhelm, Baker & Dube, 2001).

Alongside the initial introduction of simple ICT tasks--with the gradual inclusion of more challenging, increasingly complex tasks--was the implementation of a thinking skills programme. The implementation of de Bono's (1992) 'Six Thinking Hats for Schools: Book 1' occurred as the explicit teaching of ICT was taking place. Explicit teaching was concerned with teaching relevant skills in thinking and ICT in conjunction with the continuous use of correct and appropriate terminology. A thinking and learning journal helped students express their thoughts and ideas. In addition, this journal provided documentation of the learning processes occurring. Figure 2 is excerpted from one student's learning journal.

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

Results

During the implementation of this research, patterns of behaviour displayed by the participating students began to emerge. Graphic representation of the iterative cycles, as presented earlier, serve to clearly indicate the engaged learning tasks that were utilised in this process, and student responses to those tasks illuminate phases or stages through which the participating students progressed in their journey of discovery. These major and observable changes were identified as stages of progress: Discovering and Engaging, Demonstrating, Analysing, and Synthesising. Information and artefacts in subsequent sections are illustrative of each successive phase.

Discovering and Engaging: students knew very little about articulating their thinking or ICT, but were interested in both and began to participate and engage in related activities. This stage involved lots of experimenting and experiential learning. All the participating students went through this stage and beyond.

[FIGURE 3 OMITTED]

Demonstrating: students were beginning to use ICT in their daily routines, but were still in the stage of trial and error and consolidating their understandings. All the participating students went through this stage and beyond.

Computer Task: This task was part of the inquiry cycle 'Finding Out' (Table 1 and Figure 1). It involved following directions--accessing network and word processing

[FIGURE 4 OMITTED]

Analysing: students were using both their thinking skills and ICT continuously. These had become intrinsic to their daily practices and were used as a matter of course. Most of the participating students were working within this stage towards the end of the school year. && Synthesising: students had established skills and were using them to explore and go further. The students used the computers in a variety of ways in order to build computer skills: logging on to the network and the Internet with usernames and passwords; accessing online information and games; printing, saving and bookmarking web sites for subsequent recall. Students could create new Word documents, insert pictures, save, print, retrieve and--simultaneously--have fun! They displayed the ability to open a document, move the cursor to the appropriate section, key in information, save and print. Most of the participating students were operating comfortably within this stage by the end of the school year.

Findings

The students involved in this study moved through stages in their learning that clearly indicate that they did in fact adopt, adapt and integrate ICT and thinking skills into their learning and daily practices. Student moved through the Discovering and Engaging stage, Demonstrating stage and Analysing stage over the course of the year. Several students were clearly displaying attributes of the Synthesising stage as others were beginning to operate within that stage. The major findings of this study were interpreted as being embedded in engaged learning practices and progressing through key stages in an ICT/ thinking learning process, as represented diagrammatically in Figure 6.

The term 'engaged learning' and its features, as outlined by Jones et al. (1995), best encapsulate what occurred in the research classroom, represented by data and artefacts together with an atmosphere--a learning ambience, a positive learning environment--in which students worked collaboratively, actively and independently on authentic, meaningful learning activities and inquiries. The features of this learning environment are represented diagrammatically in Figure 7. From our study it may be surmised that the environment in which learning occurs is as important to its success as the explicit teaching of ICT and thinking skills.

[FIGURE 6 OMITTED]

Extrinsic factors can have significant impact on a research project. Aspects that impacted on the implementation of this study, particularly in the area of ICT, were those of reliable computer hardware and infrastructure. A great deal of time needed to be devoted to ensuring that the technology was ready for student access on a daily basis, and this is an area that has considerable implications for the implementation of ICT in the classroom.

Discussion

The students' use of technology across all curriculum areas increased over the year. In the early stage of discovering and engaging, the students often used technology as something they went to after they had completed set tasks, rather than as part of completing that set task. They had limited knowledge of computer programs and the possibilities that computers offered, so they relied on simple published software for access. This was an important aspect to discovering and engaging as these published programs offered development of the simple skills--opening and accessing documents, mouse and keyboard skills, saving and exiting programs--necessary for general computer usage. These programs were visually engaging and provided success for learners in that early stage by consolidating learning from the language arts and helping build confidence. However, it was important for student learning and for the purposes of this study that the students were moved on from this view of computer usage and became aware of the more advanced levels of technology use that was both desirable and clearly possible.

[FIGURE 7 OMITTED]

The students' ability to incorporate thinking skills as part of their daily ICT practice indicates that students have the capacity to develop thinking skills as well as learn specific content; and that these skills may in fact be central to cognition and learning (Black and McClintock cited in Nanjappa & Grant, 2003). The current study explored this connection through the explicit teaching of thinking skills within the context of the regular class programme.

Students in the current study learned about, used thinking skills, and became reflective about their own learning. They articulated ways in which explicit thinking skills assisted them in their learning, and independently transferred these skills to new situations--they learned how to be learners; they learned how to be thinkers; and become active participants not passive recipients in their own learning journey. 'Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime'.

Implications and conclusion

The current research demonstrates how the integration of ICT, explicit teaching of thinking skills and inquiry-based practice can facilitate student learning across the curriculum. The study supports the work of researchers conducting studies in the constructivist paradigm who consider that thinking skills, learning and technology are closely related and should be further developed (Wegerif, 2002; Swain & Pearson, 2001; Jonassen, 1994). The four stages identified in the current study have implications for structuring the learning and teaching environments of classrooms responding to curriculum and technological imperatives for future schooling.

In this article, we have discussed how learning developed through the explicit teaching of thinking skills in conjunction with the focused teaching of ICT in a Year 1/2 classroom. The young learners in this study developed transferable skills and became active and engaged learners who were able to utilise skills and knowledge in both familiar and new situations. However, this study also points to the need for ongoing research to document the impact of ICT on children's learning and curriculum design so schools can continue to adapt to the ever-demanding requirements of technological change.

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Marlene Walters

St John's School, Thomastown East

Heather Fehring

RMIT University, Melbourne

(1) The LaTTiCE project supported school-based professional learning teams in the effective integration of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT's) in the learning process. During 2001 & 2002 LaTTiCE schools were supported in the development and implementation of Quality Teacher Programme (QTP) projects which explored the use of ICT in the learning process. These projects informed the professional development of teachers facilitated by staff of the Catholic Education Office. It was a requirement of the LaTTiCE and Quality Teacher Programme that LaTTiCE schools provide professional development to teachers in other Catholic Schools. LaTTiCE Teams offered professional development in the effective integration of ICT in the curriculum. Professional development was provided through central CEO programmes, network meetings, negotiated school visits, staff meetings, school closure days and workshops conducted at LaTTiCE schools. (Catholic Education Office Website, 2004)

Action Research Process and Curriculum Inquiry Process

Table 1: Broad outline of ongoing Action Research and
Curriculum Inquiry Processes

ATTENDING, NOTICING, DIAGNOSING, FOCUSING AND REFOCUSING
(Cherry, 1998)

TAKING ACTION (Murdoch, 1999, 1998, 1997, 1992)
Identifying or defining a problem, an issue or opportunity. The
research topic was 'An investigation of adopting, adapting and
integrating of ICT and incorporating the explicit teaching of
thinking skills across the curriculum'.

ACTION PLANNING (Cherry, 1998)

TUNING IN (Murdoch, 1999, 1998, 1997, 1992)
Developing a strategy for collecting data or solving a problem or
implementing an idea: beginning to identify questions/problems and
finding ways to determine known/unknown for future learning experiences

ACTION AND EXPERIENCE (Cherry, 1998)

SORTING OUT (Murdoch, 1999, 1998, 1997, 1992)
Collecting, organising and classifying data or information

FINDING OUT/INVESTIGATING (Murdoch, 1999, 1998, 1997, 1992)
Cyclical process; use of ongoing teacher observation; data gathering:
in-depth interviews; collection of artefacts; participant observation
(reflective journal); embedded in classroom culture; involvement of
independent observer
Assessing and evaluating work samples; Implementing planned tasks;
reviewing and modifying process; planning next part of cycle;
determining data collection and selection of artefacts

GOING FURTHER (Murdoch, 1999, 1998, 1997, 1992)
Problem solving; testing ideas; implementing action

OBSERVING, EVALUATING AND CONCLUDING (Cherry, 1998)

An independent observer had been an ongoing presence in the classroom
during the fourth term of the year, recording observations of planned,
specific sessions in which the participating students were engaged.
As well as the observations recorded for each session, a summary that
revealed the independent observer's insights and opinion as to the
overall picture presented was sought. The independent observer
presented these insights as an evaluation tool in the form of a grid
under various headings related to the goals and indicators of engaged
learning (Jones et al., 1995, 1994).

DRAWING CONCLUSIONS (Murdoch, 1999, 1998, 1997, 1992

Studying the consequences of action/Specifying learnings /Making
sense of experience: Analysing data ; establishing themes; describing
findings; making conclusions; generating assumptions

Figure 5: Example displaying a computer-generated published report

Light

The sun is the main source of light. Light also
helps us to see.
Light is a form of energy, travels in straight lines
and can be reflected.

There are other sources of light like light bulbs,
torches, fluorescent light and flash lights.

One Indian story tells us that light came from
buffaloes. A group of buffaloes were running
down the dusty roads. Sparks came from the
ground from the buffaloes' hooves and made fire.
They used the flames for light.

Final draft (undated).
Independent writing and
publishing
Participation in

* Small-group
conferencing for
authorial content

* Student-child editing
conference