Global perspectives on educational technology: trends and issues.

The availability of new technologies is increasing and changing the ways in which we communicate with others, interact with ideas to increase our knowledge base, and entertain ourselves. Schools, faced with the challenge of preparing students for life in a changing society, need to provide opportunities for children to incorporate new technologies as a natural part of their play and learning.

As guest editors, we invited colleagues around the world to describe some of the ways in which new technologies are being used in their classrooms and to outline some of the debates and controversies surrounding their use. While each country examined here remained unique in its cultural flavor, several similarities in terms of concerns and promises can be discerned across all the articles.

Government Mandates and National Curricular Standards

Perusing these articles, it is immediately apparent that governments across the globe view educational technology as a vehicle for bolstering their country's stature. Several of the authors comment on the fact that until the late 1990s, technology was not specifically included in the national curricular framework. In the last few years, however, the Finnish and Swedish governments have started educational initiatives with the intention of enhancing their respective country's international competitiveness. This goal also is distinctly reflected in the Indian government's education mandate, the English National Curriculum Framework, and Hong Kong's initiative to include technology as a separate KLA (Key Learning Area). Singapore's Masterplan for IT (Information Technology) is viewed specifically as a strategy to achieve their national educational goals. An important caveat related to these efforts concerns the importance of teacher competence and preparedness with new technologies in determining the effectiveness of the new programs.

Teacher Education

Also uniformly apparent across the spectrum of articles is a finding that appropriate teacher training has not accompanied the rapid immersion of technology into classrooms. Consequently, we see the dire need, as expressed here by Liz Brooker, to pay greater attention to the efforts of DATEC in Europe. Sheridan and Samuelsson bring up another important consideration: the pedagogical belief systems of many veteran teachers, who still view educational technology with skepticism. Kilderry, Yelland, Lazaridis, and Dragicevic poignantly capture the resultant tension. Teachers are teaching the old curriculum in traditional ways, when what is needed is a reconceptualization of both content and pedagogy.

Curricular Integration: Add-on or Catalyst?

The wide range of classroom applications seen here extend from basic drill-and-practice exercises to more technologically creative practices such as digital storybooks (SeokHoon), teleconferencing (Szente), computer simulations (Kankaanranta and Kangassalo), and artistic inquiry endeavors (Kilderry, Yelland, Lazaridis, and Dragicevic). These latter initiatives focus on new pedagogical practices that incorporate new technologies alongside other materials; thus, children may investigate a variety of problems, generated by themselves or by their teachers. This approach is in contrast to many state-mandated curricula, which, when technology is even mentioned, incorporate educational technology as an add-on rather than as a catalyst for new thinking about teaching and learning. It is encouraging to note that the global preference strongly favors a high quality of integration, as exemplified by children being critical inquirers and learning through technology rather than about or simply with it (Brooker; Sheridan and Samuelsson).

Selection and Use of IT Tools

Increasingly, there is a realization that technological environments provide rich opportunities for play, and that information and communication technologies engage children with learning in new and dynamic ways. Ngan, Lee, and Koo delineate interactivity as an important criterion for deciding on the validity of IT tools, whether it is specific software or a high-tech tool. In Finland, however, the most extensive use of IT is for word processing, sending E-mail, and playing games (among other things). Thirumurthy and Sundaram voice the concerns of Indian teachers who have difficulty locating appropriate software.

Equity and Accessibility

It is also important to consider issues of equity, access, and the impact of new technologies on shaping the cultural experiences of young children. Singapore, with its tightly knit community, offers an example of an ideal situation. On the opposite end of the spectrum are the disparities in availability and quality among the different SES groups in India, as highlighted by Thirumurthy and Sundaram. A related concern is the inequity in availability of IT resources for the primary grades. Funding is certainly an issue in eradicating these inequities; however, we also must confront the powerful influence of pedagogical skepticism. Surprisingly, culture is not mentioned by any of the articles as an attribute of inequity in access or stereotypical use. In fact, Thirumurthy and Sundaram offer an interesting perspective on the support for technological pursuits offered by India's cultural heritage.

The Home Environment

When using technologies, it is apparent that we need to consider the home experiences of children and build on these within the classroom. Increasingly, children have access to computers at home; therefore, most of children's inventive free explorations probably happen within the home environment (Kankaanranta and Kangassalo). Thirumurthy and Sundaram highlight the parental support and active encouragement for technological pursuits offered to some Indian children.

Assessment of Outcomes

In the current education climate, in which education is considered a cost rather than an investment, we are faced with increased challenges to account for outcomes that are basically measured in tests of skill and knowledge achievement. Those valued activities that promote active exploration, inquiry, and problem solving in collaborative contexts, and that encourage language use and the negotiation of ideas, have been relegated to the sidelines because their benefits are not easily tested in the short term. Governments across the world want studies to illustrate improvements in test scores as a result of significant spending on computer technology in schools, yet the tests themselves focus on a small range of basic skills in literacy and numeracy and, sometimes, science. This attitude is antithetical to what most educators want: a more holistic and rich educational experience for their children. It is in this climate that many state boards of education across the globe have found a rationale for reducing funds for education, especially in light of the global economic downturn. In addition, they have suggested a return to the basics, out of fear that standards have fallen compared to what they used to be in pre-technological eras. A small number of initiatives (Kilderry, Yelland, Lazaridis, and Dragicevic; Sheridan and Samuelsson) have heralded a new era of educational opportunities for small populations of students. These students are fortunate enough to participate in rich educational environments, as well as the more traditional teaching and learning methods that can be measured in standardized tests. Liz Brooker offers an alternative assessment model that is based on authentic forms of observation, and that captures the social and cognitive learning that can occur during interaction with IT.

Rethinking Traditional Pedagogy

New initiatives have had as their foundation the belief that teaching and learning in the 21st century needs a fresh impetus that encapsulates new learning with new pedagogies and new technologies. These initiatives are not contexts for adding more to an already crowded curriculum, but rather are a reconceptualization of curriculum and pedagogies for the information age.

The articles should stimulate our thinking about early childhood education and the ways in which we provide engaging contexts for learning. They have important ramifications for the content of our teacher education programs, in which we seem to have wasted a decade through inactivity and through which we have not seized opportunities to integrate the use of new technologies in our work. The articles in this issue explore such topics, and enable us to rethink our goals for enriching the lives of young children in new and dynamic ways.

Sudha Swaminathan is Associate Professor, Department of Education, Eastern Connecticut State University, Willimantic, CT, USA. Nicola Yelland is Professor, Department of Early Childhood, RMIT, Victoria, Australia.