Understanding constraints to innovative pedagogies with ICT and seeking ways to overcome them

Understanding constraints to innovative pedagogies with ICT and seeking ways to overcome them

Turning now to case studies of innovative practice, it seems clear that transformation of pedagogies and learning is constrained in the English education system in a way that it is not in countries like Finland and Norway from which examples were drawn in Chapter 1. Harris (2002) provides an evaluative account of the SITES M2 case studies in England and it is noticeable that in the primary schools the focus is on innovative projects carried out with a selection of students rather than on the work of the schools as a whole, and in two of the three secondary schools it is in relation to enhancing performance in national tests and examinations. In the three primary schools the initiatives are innovative and valuable but they are

de facto ‘add-ons’ to the rest of the work of the schools concerned. In one primary school all 46 students aged 10–11 in one class were provided with a desktop PC and Internet access; in another, 25 students were paired with adult volunteers in a nearby mobile phone factory with whom they communicated by email; in the third, 44 11 year olds used an Internet-based resource for collaborative problem-solving in groups of four to seven. The fi rst and the third of these cases involved substantial changes in pedagogy

Inside innovation 37 with more open-ended, student-centred assignments and less directive teaching; the

second provided rewarding enrichment activities, but students were selected from more than one class because they were seen to need additional support in developing communication skills and it appears that there was little or no impact on pedagogy. In one of the secondary schools 97 students were volunteers who enrolled in a two- year on-line course leading to formal accreditation in ICT at age 16. A pass in this course ‘counted’ as equivalent to four General Certifi cate of Secondary Education (GCSE) passes at grades A*–C (the recognised benchmark), making it highly attractive to students with the result that, despite being designed for students who would be unlikely to achieve fi ve passes at GCSE, most of the students who enrolled were of above average ability. This course was widely taken up by many schools over the ensuing fi ve years, illustrating that in an education system driven by high-stakes assessment the most effective mechanism for introducing an innovative course is to tie it to a new examination. Similarly, another secondary school introduced a new ICT system for collecting data about students’ performance in formal tests and using this to set individual targets for approximately 2,000 students. Here the motivation was again linked to success in examinations: teachers were able to target support more quickly on students who were underachieving, and students were aware that their performance was being more closely monitored by teachers. The emphasis was on improving the effi ciency of the existing system rather than making changes to pedagogy. In the third secondary school students in two upper ability classes were offered the opportunity of spending 20 minutes each week for 10 weeks, in optional lunchtime sessions, participating in video-conferencing sessions with a French school in order to improve oral skills in each other’s languages. Although valuable, this is also clearly an add-on to existing practice that had no impact on pedagogy. The selection of these three cases from secondary schools as representative of the best available in England clearly illustrates the high level of constraint that the curriculum and assessment systems place on innovative ICT-enhanced teaching and learning in secondary schools. The constraints are much less for primary schools and evidence from other research carried out in England strongly suggests that innovative uses of ICT to support teaching across the curriculum are much more common in primary than in secondary schools.

Loveless (2003) provides a further account of innovative work with ICT in primary classrooms in England, looking specifi cally at the supportive context provided by ‘creative subjects’. Her focus is on creativity in learning in primary schools in art, drama, music, design and technology, with some discussion of writing in English and she suggests that these subjects provide more space for creativity because, with the exception of writing, they are not subject to the same ‘high stakes’ testing regimes. Loveless illustrates how government has funded a major report on creativity (NAACE 1999) and put in place resources to support creativity through the provision of on- line resources, including resources from BBC Education. In her article she maps creative opportunities onto the elements of the national curriculum for ICT showing that opportunities are there, within the overall framework. She cites Kimbell’s (2000) crisis warning about lack of opportunities in practice for creativity in primary – let alone secondary – schools, but attempts to remain optimistic, referring to these

38 Understanding innovation anxieties as ‘the grit in the oyster’ which ‘provokes the action and engagement to

“create spaces” ’ for creativity. She ends her article by presenting the vision statement for ‘Creating Spaces’, a new network of educational professionals dedicated to using ICT to develop children’s creativity, encompassing teachers, journalists, software developers, artists and researchers.

There is no formal role in England for universities to support teachers and schools in the development of ICT-enhanced teaching and learning as there is in countries such as Chile and Finland. However, it is important to note the contribution of Mercer (1995) and Wegerif and Dawes (2004) in working with teachers to develop new pedagogical practices that enable ICT to support the development of children’s talk. In early research, such as my own PALM project, it was noticeable that in classrooms children often worked with the computer in groups (as a result of shortage of computers) and that they appeared to be working together and highly engaged. This led to an expectation that the computer might encourage more focused talk in groups than would normally happen without a teacher present. The Spoken Language and New Technology project (SLANT) explored this phenomenon and found, however, that children’s talk around the computer was neither collaborative nor supportive of cognitive development. For example, the child holding the mouse tended to dominate access to the screen and others gave mainly ‘yes’ or ‘no’ responses; those with computers at home became impatient with those who lacked keyboard skills; and the main focus of conversation was on mechanisms for turn taking (Wegerif and Dawes 2004, p. 10). These disappointing fi ndings led to the development of ‘talk lessons’ in which children were given specifi c training in how to ask questions of one another and how to back up their replies with reasons. Mercer and colleagues went on to develop ‘ground rules for exploratory talk’ based on a set of clear principles drawn from linguistic and socio-cultural theory. These encourage children explicitly to share information, provide reasons for their views, accept challenges and discuss alternatives before reaching a decision (Wegerif and Dawes 2004, p. 23). The successful implementation of these methods to transform the quality of children’s talk in English, maths and science lessons provides an excellent example of how radical pedagogical change is possible, even within classrooms constrained by a prescribed curriculum and a tight assessment framework, if there is support from university- based researchers funded by a nationally recognised charitable foundation (that is, support from higher phenomenal levels). This research into innovative practice is tightly focused, however, on the conduct of children’s talk, either with or without an ICT-stimulus, without any need for radical changes in the overall organisation of the classroom or the shape of the school day. It enhances rather than disrupts preparation for national tests. Teaching children to conduct group work within the ground rules ensures that the contribution of ICT to the children’s cognitive development is maximised through dialogue, and with this proceduralised exploratory talk in place ICT interactive resources are very effective in sustaining focused ‘on task’ group work.

The evidence from both Loveless (op. cit.) and Wegerif and Dawes (op. cit.) suggests that drawing schools and teachers into collaboration with researchers and the wider community has an important impact in encouraging as much innovation with

Inside innovation 39 ICT as possible within the constraints of the English education system. In Chapter 3,

I will discuss how far it is possible to develop innovative pedagogies with ICT in our current education system, focusing on our own research in the evaluation of the GridClub children’s website and the Pedagogies with E-Learning Resources project.