Toward
a Sociology of Educational Technology
Stephen
T. Kerr
Chapter
for the
Handbook
of Research on Educational Technology
[Revised Edition]
Preface
to the Revised Edition
By its nature, technology changes
constantly. Technology in education is
no different. At the time the original
version of this chapter was prepared, the Internet was still the exclusive
province of academic and a few educational enthusiasts; distance education was
a clumsy congeries of TV broadcasts, correspondence, and the occasional e-mail
discussion group; discussions of inequalities in how educational technology was
used focused mostly on the mechanics of distribution of and access to hardware;
perhaps most saliently, the developing wave of constructivist notions about
education had not yet extended far into the examination of technology
itself.
Internet connectivity and use in
schools became a major issue in 1996 during the US presidential campaign that
year, and later became a central political initiative for the US Government,
with considerable success (PCAST, ;ISET, ). At about the same time, distance learning, as
delivered via on-line environments, suddenly came to be seen as the wave of the
future for higher education and corporate training, and was also the source for
some of the inflated stock market hopes for "dot-com" companies in
the late 1990s. As access to computers
and networks became more affordable, those interested in the "digital
divide" began to switch their attention from simple access to less
tractable issues such as how technology might be involved in generating "cultural
capital" among the disadvantaged.
The intervening years have also witnessed emerging concerns about how
technology seems to be calling into questions long-standing basic assumptions
about educational technology: for
example, might on-line learning in fact turn out to be less dehumanizing than
sitting in a large lecture class? All
the issues noted here are addressed in this revision.
Introduction
Common images of technology,
including educational technology, highlight its rational, ordered, controlled
aspects. These are the qualities that many observers see as its advantages, the
qualities that encouraged the
Education is one of those arenas in
which Americans have long assumed that technological solutions might bring
increased efficiency, order, and productivity.
Our current interest in computers and multi-media was preceded by a
century of experimentation with precisely articulated techniques for organizing
school practice, carefully specific approaches to the design of school
buildings (down to the furniture they would contain), and an abiding enthusiasm
for systematic methods of presenting textual and visual materials (Saettler,
1968; Godfrey, 1965).
There was a kind of mechanistic
enthusiasm about many of these efforts.
If we could just find the right approach, the thinking seemed to go, we
could address the problems of schooling and improve education immensely. The
world of the student, the classroom, the school was, in this interpretation, a
machine (perhaps a computer), needing only the right program to run smoothly.
But technology frequently has
effects in areas other than those intended by its creators. Railroads were not
merely a better way to move goods across the country; they also brought
standard time and a leveling of regional and cultural differences. Telephones allowed workers in different
locations to speak with each other, but also changed the ways workplaces were
organized and the image of what office work was. Television altered the political culture of
the country in ways we still struggle to comprehend. Those who predicted the social effects that
might flow from these new technologies typically either missed entirely, or
foresaw inaccurately, what their impact might be.
Similarly with schools and
education, the focus of researchers interested in educational technology has
usually been on what is perceived to be the outcome of these approaches on what
is thought of as their principal target -- learning by pupils. Occasionally, other topics related to the way
technology is perceived and used have been studied. Attitudes and opinions by teachers and
principals about the use of computers are an example. Generally, however, there have been few
attempts to limn a "sociology of educational technology" (exceptions: Kerr & Taylor, 1985;
Hlynka & Belland, 1991. In their 1992
review, Scott, Cole, and Engel also went beyond traditional images to focus on
what they called a "cultural constructivist perspective.") The task here, then, has these parts: to say
what ought to be included under such a rubric, to review the relatively small
number of works from within the field that touch upon these issues, and the
larger number of works from related fields or on related topics that may be
productive in helping us to think about a sociology of educational technology;
and finally, to consider future directions for work in this field.
What
to Include?
To decide what we should consider
under the suggested heading of a "sociology of educational
technology" we need to think about two sets of issues: those that are
important to sociologists, and those that are important to educators and to
educational technologists. Sociology is
concerned with many things, but if there is a primary assertion, it is that we
cannot adequately explain social phenomena if we look only at individuals. Rather, we must examine how people interact
in group settings, and how those settings create, shape, and constrain
individual action.
Defining what is central to
educators (including educational technologists) is also difficult, but central
is probably (to borrow a sociological term) cultural reproduction -- the
passing on to the next generation of values, skills, knowledge that are judged
to be critical, and the improvement of the general condition of society. Three aspects of this vision of education are
important here: first, interactions and relationships among educators,
students, administrators, parents, community members, and others who define
what education is to be ("what happens in schools and classrooms?");
second, attempts to deal with perceived social problems and inequities, and
thus provide a better life for the next generation ("what happens after
they finish school?"); and third, efforts to reshape the educational
system itself, so that it carries out its work in new ways and thus contributes
to social improvement ("how should we arrange the system to do its
work?").
The questions about educational
technology's social effects that will be considered here, then, are principally
those relating (or potentially relating) to what sociologists call
collectivities -- groups of individuals (teachers, students, administrators,
parents), organizations, and social movements.
Sociology of organizations. If our primary interest is in how educational
technology affects the ways that people work together in schools, then what key
topics ought we to consider? Certainly a
prime focus must be organizations, the ways that schools and other educating
institutions are structured so as to carry out their work. It is important to note that we can use the
term "organization" to refer to more than the administration of
schools or universities. It can also
refer to the organization of classrooms, of interactions among students or
among teachers, of the ways individuals seek to shape their work environment to
accomplish particular ends, and so forth.
Organizational sociology is a
well-established field, and there have been some studies on educational
organizations. Sub-parts of this field
include the functioning of schools as bureaucracies; the ways in which new
organizational forms are born, live, and die; the expectations of actors within
the school setting of themselves and of each other (in sociological terms, the
roles they play); and the sources of power and control that support various
organizational forms.
Sociology of groups and classes. A second focus of our review here will regard
the sociology of groups, including principally groups of ascription (that one
is either born into or to which one is assumed to belong by virtue of one's
position), but also those of affiliation (groups which one voluntarily joins,
or comes to be connected with via one's efforts or work). Important here are the ways that education
deals with such groups as those based on gender, class, and race, and how
educational technology interacts with those groupings. While this topic has not been central in
studies of educational technology, the review here will seek to suggest its
importance and the value of further efforts to study it.
Sociology of social movements. Finally, we will need to consider the
sociology of social movements and social change. Social institutions change under certain
circumstances, and education is currently in a period where large changes are
being suggested from a variety of quarters.
Educational technology is often perceived as a harbinger or facilitator
of educational change, and so it makes sense for us to examine the sociological
literature on these questions and thus try to determine where and how such
changes take place, what their relationships are to other shifts in the
society, economy, or polity, etc.
Another aspect of education as a
social movement, and of educational technology's place there, is what we might
call the role of ideology. By ideology
here is meant not an explicit, comprehensive and enforced code of beliefs and
practices to which all members of a group are held, but rather a set of
implicit, often vague, but widely shared set of expectations and assumptions
about the social order. Essential here
are such issues as the values that technology carries with it, its presumed
contribution to the common good, and how it is perceived to interact with
individuals' plans and goals.
Questions of sociological method. As a part of considering these questions, we
will also examine briefly some questions of sociological method. Many sociological studies in education are
conducted via surveys or questionnaires, instruments that were originally
designed as sociological research tools.
Inasmuch as sociologists have accumulated considerable experience in
working with these methods, we need to note both the advantages and the
problems of using such methods. Given
especially the popularity of opinion surveys in education, it will be
especially important to review the problem of attitudes vs. actions ("what
people say vs. what they do").
A further question of interest for
educational technologists has to do with the "stance" or position of
the researcher. Most of the studies of
attitudes and opinions that have been done in educational technology assume
that the researcher stands in a neutral position, "outside the
fray." Some examples from
sociological research using the ethnomethodological paradigm are introduced,
and their possible significance for further work on educational technology are
considered.
The conclusion seeks to bring the
discussion back specifically to the field of educational technology by asking
how the effects surveyed in the preceding sections might play out in real
school situations. How might educational
technology affect the organization of classes, schools, education as a social
institution? How might the fates of
particular groups (women, minorities) intersect with they ways educational
technology is or is not used within schools?
And finally, how might the prospects for long-term change in education
as a social institution be altered by educational technology?
Sociology
and Its Concerns
A Concern for Collective Action
In the
Sociology as a discipline appeared
during the nineteenth century in response to serious tensions within the
existing social structure. The industrial revolution had wrought large shifts
in relationships among individuals, and especially in the relationships among
different social groups. Marx's interest
in class antagonisms, Weber's focus on social and political structure under
conditions of change, Durkheim's investigations of the sense of
"anomie" (alienation; something seen as prevalent in the new social
order) -- all these concerns were born of the shifts that were felt especially
strongly as Western social life changed under the impact of the industrial
revolution.
The questions of how individuals define their lives together,
and how those definitions, once set in place and commonly accepted, constrain
individuals' actions and life courses, formed the basis of early sociological
inquiry. In many ways, these are the
same questions that continue to interest sociologists today. What determines how and why humans organize
themselves and their actions in particular ways? what
effects do those organizations have on thought and action? and
what limitations might those organizations impose on human action?
if
psychology focuses on the individual, the internal processes of cognition and motives for action that individuals
experience, then sociology focuses most of all on the ways people interact as
members of organizations or groups, how they form new groups, and how their
status as members of one or another group affects how they live and work. The "strong claim" of sociologists
might be put simply as "settings have plans for us." That is, the social and organizational
contexts of actions may be more important to explaining what people do than
their individual motivations and internal states. How this general concern for collective
action plays out is explored below in relation to each of three topics of
general concern here: organizations, groups, and social change.
Sociology
of Organizations
Schools and other educational
enterprises are easily thought of as organizations, groups of people
intentionally brought together to accomplish some specific purpose. Education as a social institution has existed
in various forms over historical time, but only in the last 150 years or so has
it come to have a distinctive and nearly universal organizational form. Earlier societies had ways to ensure that young people were provided with
appropriate cultural values (enculturation), with specific forms of behavior
and outlooks that would allow them to function successfully in a given society
(socialization), and with training needed to earn a living (observation and
participation, formal apprenticeship, or formal
schooling). But only recently
have we come to think of education as necessarily a social institution
characterized by specific organizational forms (schools, teachers, curricula,
standards, laws, procedures for moving from one part of the system to another,
etc.)
The emphasis here on education as a
social organization leads us to three related sub-questions that we will
consider in more detail later. These
include: first, how does the fact that the specific organizational structure of
schools is usually bureaucratic in form affect what goes on (and can go on)
there, and how does educational technology enter into these relationships? Second, how are social roles defined for
individuals and members of groups in schools, and how does educational
technology affect the definition of those roles? And third, how does the organizational
structure of schools change, and how does educational technology interact with
those processes of organizational change?
Each of these questions will be introduced briefly here, and treated in
more depth in following sections.
Organizations and bureaucracy. The particulars of school organizational
structure are a matter of interest, for schools and universities have most
frequently been organized as bureaucracies.
That is, they develop well-defined sets of procedures for processing
students, for dealing with teachers and other staff, and for addressing the
public. These procedures deal with who
is to be allowed to participate (rules for qualification, admission,
assignment, and so forth), what will happen to them while they are part of the
system (curricular standards, textbook selection policies, rules for teacher
certification, student conduct, etc.), how the system will define that its work
has been completed (requirements for receiving credit, graduation requirements,
tests, etc.), as well as with how the system itself is to be run (administrator
credentialing, governance structures, rules for financial transactions, relations
among various parts of the system -- accreditation, state vs. local vs. federal
responsibility, etc.) Additional
procedures may deal with such issues as how the public may participate in the
life of the institution, how disputes are to be resolved, and how rewards and
punishments are to be decided upon and distributed (Bidwell, 1965). Educational
organizations are thus participating in the continuing transition from what
German sociologists called "gemeinschaft" to "gesellschaft,"
from an earlier economic and social milieu defined by close familial bonds,
personal relationships, and a small and caring community, to a milieu defined
by ties to impersonal groups, centrally mandated standards and requirements,
and large, bureaucratic organizations.
While bureaucratic forms of
organization are not necessarily bad (and indeed were seen in the past century
as a desirable antidote to personalized, arbitrary, corrupt, social forms), the
current popular image of bureaucracy is exceedingly negative. The disciplined and impersonal qualities of
the bureaucrat, admired in the last century, are now frequently seen as
ossified, irrelevant, a barrier to needed change.
A significant question may therefore
be, "What are the conditions that encourage bureaucratic systems,
especially in education, to become more flexible, more responsive?" And since educational technology is often
portrayed as a solution to the problems of bureaucracy, we need to ask about
the evidence regarding technology and its impact on bureaucracies.
Organizations and social roles. To understand how organizations work, we need
to understand not only the formal structure of the organization, the
"organization chart." We also
need to see the independent "life" of the organization as expressed
and felt through such mechanisms as social and organizational roles. Roles have long been a staple of sociological
study, but they are often misunderstood.
A role is not merely a set of responsibilities that one person (say, a
manager or administrator) in a social setting defines for another person (e.g.,
a worker, perhaps a teacher). Rather, it
is better thought of as a set of interconnected expectations that participants
in a given social setting have for their own and others' behaviors. Teachers expect students to act in certain
ways, and students do the same for teachers, principals expect teachers to do
thus and so, and teachers have similar expectations of principals. Roles, then, are best conceived of as
"emergent properties" of social systems -- they appear not in
isolation, but rather when people interact and try to accomplish something
together. Entire systems of social
analysis (such as that proposed by George Herbert Mead (1934)
under the rubric "symbolic interactionism") have been built on this
basic set of ideas.
Educational institutions are the
site for an extensive set of social roles, including those of teacher,
student/pupil, administrator, staff professional, parent, future or present
employer, and community member. Each of
these roles is further ramified by the perceived positions and values held by
the group with respect to which a member of a subject group is acting (for
example, teachers' roles include not only expectations for their own activities,
but also their perceptions of the values and positions of students, how they
expect students to act, etc.) Especially
significant are the ways in which the role of the teacher may be affected by
the introduction of educational technology into a school, or the formal or
informal redefinition of job responsibilities following such introduction. How educational roles emerge and are modified
through interaction, how new roles come into existence, and how educational
technology may affect those processes, then, are all legitimate subjects for
our attention here.
Organizations and organizational
change. A further question of
interest to sociologists is how organizations change. New organizations are constantly coming into
being, old ones disappear, and existing ones change their form and
functions. How this happens, what models
or metaphors best describe these processes, and how organizations seek to
assure their success through time have all been studied extensively in
sociology. There have been numerous
investigations of innovation in organizations, as well as of innovation
strategies, barriers to change, and so forth.
In education, these issues have been
of special concern, for the persistent image of educational institutions has
been one of unresponsive bureaucracies.
Specific studies of educational innovation are therefore of interest to
us here, with particular reference to how educational technology may interact
with these processes.
Sociology
of Groups
Our second major rubric involves
groups, group membership, and the significance of group membership for an
individual's life chances. Sociologists
study all manner of groups -- formal and informal, groups of affiliation (which
one joins voluntarily) and ascription (which one is a member of by virtue of
birth, position, class), and so on. The
latter kinds of groups, in which one's membership is not a matter of one's own
choosing, have been of special interest to sociologists in this century. This
interest has been especially strong since social barriers of race, gender, and
class are no longer seen as immutable but rather as legitimate topics for state
concern. As the focus of sociologists on
mechanisms of social change has grown over the past decades, so has their
interest in defining how group membership affects the life chances of
individuals, and in prescribing actions official institutions (government,
schools, etc.) might take to lessen the negative impact of ascriptive
membership on individuals' futures.
Current discussion of education has
often focused on the success of the system in enabling individuals to transcend
the boundaries imposed by race, gender, and class. The pioneering work by James Coleman in the
1960s (Coleman, 1966) on race and educational outcomes was critical to changing
how Americans thought about integration of schools. Work by Carol Gilligan (Gilligan, Lyons,
& Hanmer, 1990)
and others starting in the 1980s on the fate of women in education has led to a
new awareness of the gender non-neutrality of many schooling practices. The continuing importance of class is a topic
of interest for a number of sociologists and social critics who frequently view
the schooling system more as a mechanism for social reproduction than for
social change (Apple, 1988;
Giroux, 1981; Spring, 1989). These issues are
of major importance for how we think about education in a changing democracy,
and so we need to ask how educational technology may either contribute to the
problems themselves, or to their solution.
Sociology
of Social Change and Social Movements
A third large concern of
sociologists has been the issue of social stability and social change. The question has been addressed variously
since the days of Karl Marx, whose vision posited the inevitability of a
radical reconstruction of society based on scientific "laws" of
historical and economic development, class identification, and class conflict
via newly mobilized social movements. Social change is of no less importance to
those who seek not to change, but to preserve the social order. Talcott Parsons, an American sociologist of
the middle of this century, is perhaps unjustly criticized of being a conservative,
but he discussed in detail how particular social forms and institutions could
be viewed as performing a function of "pattern maintenance" (Parsons,
1949, 1951).
Current concerns about social change
are perhaps less apocalyptic today than they were for Marx, but in some
quarters are viewed as no less critical.
In particular, educational institutions are increasingly seen as one of
the few places where society can exert leverage to bring about desired changes
in the social and economic order.
Present fears about "global economic competitiveness" are a
good case in point; it is clear that for many policy makers, the primary task
of schools in the current economic environment ought to be to produce an
educated citizenry capable of competing with other nations. But other voices in education stress the
importance of the educational system in conserving social values, passing on
traditions. A variety of social
movements have emerged in support of both these positions. Both positions contain a kernel that is
essentially ideological -- a set of assumptions, values, positions as regards
the individual and society. These
ideologies are typically implicit, and thus rarely are articulated openly. Nonetheless, identifying them is especially
important to a deeper understanding of the questions involved.
It is reasonable for us to ask how
sociologists have viewed social change, what indicators are seen as being most
reliable in predicting how social change may take place, and what role social
movements (organized groups in support of particular changes) may have in
bringing change about. If education is to be viewed as a primary engine for
such change, and if educational technology is seen by some as a principal part
of that engine, then we need to understand how and why such changes may take
place, and what role technology may rightly be expected to play. This raises in turn the issue of educational
technology as a social and political movement itself, and of its place vis
á vis other organizations in the general sphere of education. The ideological underpinnings of technology
in education are also important to consider.
The values and assumptions of both supporters and critics of
technology's use in education bear careful inspection if we are to see clearly
the possible place for educational technology.
The following section offers a
detailed look at the sociology of organizations, the sociology of school
organization and of organizational roles and the influences of educational
technology on that organization.
Historical studies of the impact of technology on organizational
structures are also considered to provide a different perspective on how
organizations change.
Sociological Studies of Education and Technology
The Sociology of Organizations
Schools are many things, but (at
least since the end of the nineteenth century) they have been organizations --
intentionally created groups of people pursuing common purposes, and standing
in particular relation to other groups and social institutions; within the
organization, there are consistent understandings of what the organization's
purposes are, and participants stand in relatively well-defined positions vis a
vis each other (e.g., the roles of teachers, student, parent, etc.) Additionally, the organization possesses a
technical structure for carrying out its work (classes, textbooks, teacher
certification), seeks to define job responsibilities so that tasks are
accomplished, and has mechanisms for dealing with the outside world (PTSA
meetings, committees on textbook adoption, legislative lobbyists, school board
meetings).
Sociology has approached the study
of organizations in a number of ways.
Earlier studies stressed the formal features of organizations, and
described their internal functioning and the relationships among participants
within the bounds of the organization itself.
Over the past twenty years or so, however, a new perspective has
emerged, one that sees the organization in the context of its surrounding environment
(Aldrich & Marsden, 1988). Major issues in
the study of organizations using the environmental or organic approach include
the factors that give rise of organizational diversity, and those connected
with change in the organization.
Perhaps it is obvious that questions
of organizational change and organizational diversity are pertinent to the
study of how educational technology has come to be used, or may be used, in
educational environments, but let us use the sociological lens to examine why
this is so. Schools as organizations are
increasingly under pressure from outside social groups and from political and
economic structures. Among the
criticisms constantly leveled at the schools are that they are too hierarchical,
too bureaucratized, and that current organizational patterns make changing the
system almost impossible. (Whether these
perceptions are in fact warranted is entirely another issue, one that we will
not address here; see Carson, Huelskamp, Woodall, 1991).
We might reasonably ask whether we should be focusing attention on the
organizational structure of schools as they are, rather than discuss desirable
alternatives. Suffice it to say that
massive change in an existing social institution, such as the schools, is
difficult to undertake in a controlled, conscious way.
Those who suggest (e.g., Perelman,
1992) that schools as institutions will soon "wither away" are
unaware of the historical flexibility of schools as organizations (Cuban, 1984;
Tyack, 1974), and of the strong social pressures that militate for preservation
of the existing institutional structure. The perspective here, then, is much
more on how the existing structure of the social organizations we call schools
can be affected in desirable ways, and so the issue of organizational change
(rather than that of organizational generation) will be a major focus in what
follows.
To make this review cohere, we will
start by surveying what sociologists know about organizations generally,
including specifically bureaucratic forms of organization. We will then consider the evidence regarding
technology's impact on organizational structure in general, and on bureaucratic
organization in particular. We will then
proceed to a consideration of schools as a specific type of organization, and
concentrate on recent attempts to redefine patterns of school
organization. Finally, we will consider
how educational technology relates to school organization, and to attempts to
change that organization and the roles of those who work in schools.
Organizations:
Two Sociological Perspectives
Much recent sociological work on the
nature of organizations starts from the assumption that organizations are best
studied and understood as parts of an environment. If organizations exist within a distinctive
environment, then what aspects of that environment should be most closely
examined? Sociologists have answered
this question in two different ways: for
some, the key features are the resources and information that may be used
rationally within the organization or exchanged with other organizations within
the environment; for others, the essential focus is on the cultural surround
that determines and moderates the organization's possible courses of action in
ways that are more subtle, less deterministic than the resources-information
perspective suggests. While there are
many exceptions, it is probably fair to say that the resources-information
approach has been more often used in analyses of commercial organizations, and
the latter, cultural approach used in studies of public and non-profit
organizations.
The environmental view of
organizations has been especially fruitful in studies of organizational
change. The roles of outside normative
groups such as professional associations or state legislatures, for example,
were stressed by DiMaggio and Powell (1983; see also Meyer & Scott, 1983),
who noted that the actions of such groups tend to reduce organizational
heterogeneity in the environment and thus inhibit change. While visible
alternative organizational patterns may provide models for organizational
change, other organizations in the same general field exert a counter-influence
by supporting commonly accepted practices and demanding that alternative
organizations adhere to those models, even when the alternative organization
might not be required to do so. For
example, an innovative school may be forced to modify its record-keeping
practices so as to match more closely "how others do it"
(Rothschild-Whitt, 1979).
How organizations react to outside
pressure for change has also been studied.
There is considerable disagreement as to whether such pressures result
in dynamic transformation via the work of attentive leaders, or whether
organizational inertia is more generally characteristic of organizations'
reaction to outside pressures (Astley & Van de Ven, 1983; Hrebiniak &
Joyce, 1985; Romanelli, 1991). Mintzberg (1979)
suggested that there might be a trade-off here: large organizations have the
potential to change rapidly to meet new pressures (but only is they use
appropriately their large and differentiated staffs, better forecasting
abilities, etc.; small organizations can respond to outside pressures if they
capitalize on their more flexible structure and relative lack of established
routines.
Organizations face a number of
common problems, including how to assess their effectiveness. Traditional evaluation studies have assumed
that organizational goals can be relatively precisely defined, outcomes can be
measured, and standards for success agreed upon by the parties involved
(McLaughlin, 1987). More recent approaches suggest that examination of the
"street-level" evaluation methods used by those who work within an
organization may provide an additional, useful perspective on organizational
effectiveness (Anspach, 1991). For example,
"dramatic incidents," even though they are singularities, may define
effectiveness or its lack for some participants.
Bureaucracy
as a Condition of Organizations
We need to pay special attention to
the particular form of organization we call bureaucracy, since this is a
central feature of school environments where educational technology is often
used. The
emergence of this pattern as a primary way for assuring that policies are
implemented and that some degree of accountability is guaranteed lies in the
nineteenth century (Peabody & Rourke, 1965; Waldo, 1952). Max
Weber described the conditions under which social organizations would move away
from direct, personalized, or "charismatic" control, and toward
bureaucratic and administrative control (Weber, 1978).
The problem with
bureaucracy, as anyone who has ever stood in line at a state office can attest,
is that the organization's workers soon seem to focus exclusively on the rules
and procedures established to provide accountability and control, rather than
on the people or problems the bureaucratic system ostensibly exists to address
(Herzfeld, 1992). The
tension for the organization and those who work therein is between commitment
to a particular leader, who may want to focus on people or problems, and
commitment to a self-sustaining system with established mechanisms for assuring
how decisions are made and how individuals work within the organization, and
which will likely continue to exist after a particular leader is gone. In this sense, one might view many of the
current problems in schools and concerns with organizational reform (especially
from the viewpoint of teachers) as attempts to move toward a more collegial
mode of control and governance (Waters, 1993). We
will return to this theme of reform and change in the context of school
bureaucratic structures below when we deal more explicitly with the concepts of
social change and social movements.
Technology and Organizations
Our intent here
is not merely to review what current thinking is regarding schools as
organizations, but also to say something about how the use of educational
technology within schools might affect or be affected by those patterns of
organization. Before we can address
those issues, however, we must first consider how technology has been seen as
affecting organizational structure generally.
In other words, schools aside, is there any consensus on how technology
affects the life of organizations, or the course of their development? While the issue would appear to be a
significant one, and while there have been a good many general discussions of
the potential impact of technology on organizations and the individuals who
work there (e.g., McKinlay & Starkey, 1998; Naisbitt & Aburdene, 1990; Toffler, 1990), there is remarkably little consensus about
what precisely the nature of such impacts may be. Indeed, Americans
seem to have a deep ambivalence about technology: some see it as villain and scapegoat, others
stress its role in social progress (Florman, 1981; Pagels, 1988; Segal, 1985;
Winner, 1986).
Some of these concerns stem from the
difficulty of keeping technology under social control once it has been
introduced (Glendenning, 1990; Steffen, 1993, especially chapters 3, 5).
Perrow (1984) suggests that current technological systems are so complex
and "interactive" (showing tight relationship among parts) that
accidents and problems cannot be avoided--they are, in effect, no longer
accidents but an inevitable consequence of our limited ability to predict what
can go wrong. Even the systems approach,
popularized after World War II as a generic approach to ferreting out
interconnections in complex environments (including in education and
educational technology), lost favor as complexity proved extraordinarily
difficult to model effectively (Hughes & Hughes, 2000).
Historical studies of technology. As a framework for considering how technology
affects or may affect organizational life, it may be useful to consider
specific examples of earlier technological advances now seen to have altered
social and organizational life in particular ways. A problem here is that initial prognoses for
a technology's effects -- indeed, the very reason a technology is developed in
the first place -- are often radically different from the ways in which a technology
actually comes to be used. Few of those
who witnessed the development of assembly-line manufacture, for example, had
any idea of the import of the changes they were witnessing; although these
shifts were perceived as miraculous and sometimes frightening, they were rarely
seen as threatening the social status quo (Jennings, 1985; Marvin, 1988).
Several specific technologies
illustrate the ways initial intentions for a technology often translate over
time into unexpected organizational and social consequences. The development of printing, for example, not
only lowered the cost, increased the accuracy, and improved the efficiency of
producing individual copies of written materials; it also had profound
organizational impact on how governments were structured and did their
work. Governments began to demand more
types of information from local administrators, and to circulate and use that
information in pursuit of national goals (Boorstin, 1983; Darnton, 1984; Eisenstein, 1979; Febvre & Martin, 1958; Kilgour, 1998; and Luke, 1989).
The telephone offers another example
of a technology that significantly changed the organization of work in
offices.
Chester Carlson, an engineer then
working for a small company called Haloid, developed in 1938 a process for
transferring images from one sheet of paper to another based on principles of
electrical charge. Carlson's process,
and the company that would become Xerox, also altered the organization of
office life, perhaps in more local ways than the telephone. Initial estimates forecast only the
"primary" market for Xerox copies, and ignored the large number of
extra copies of reports that would be made and sent to a colleague in the next
office, a friend, someone in a government agency or university. This "secondary market" for copies
turned out to be many times larger than the "primary market" for
original copies, and the resulting dissemination of information has brought
workers into closer contact with colleagues, given them easier access to
information, and provided for more rapid circulation of information (Mort, 1989;
Owen, 1986).
The impact of television on our
forms of organizational life is difficult to document, though many have
tried. Marshall McLuhan and his
followers have suggested that television brought a view of the world that
breaks down traditional social constructs.
Among the effects noted by some analysts are the new position occupied
by political figures (more readily accessible, less able to hide failures and
problems from the electorate), changing relationships among parents and
children (lack of former separation between adult and children's worlds), and
shifts in relationships among the sexes (disappearance of formerly exclusively
"male" and "female" domains of social action; Meyrowitz,
1985).
Process technologies may also have
unforeseen organizational consequences, as seen in mass production via the
assembly line. Production on the assembly line rationalized production of
manufactured goods, improved their quality, and lowered prices. It also led to anguish in the form of worker
alienation, and thus contributed to the development of socialism and Marxism,
and to the birth of militant labor unions in the US and abroad, altering forms
of organization within factories and the nature of worker-management
relationships (Boorstin, 1973; Hounshell, 1984; Smith, 1981. See also Bartky, 1990, on the introduction of
standard time; and Norberg, 1990, on the advent of punch card technology).
Information
technology and organizations. Many have argued that information technology will flatten
organizational hierarchies and provide for more democratic forms of management;
Shoshana Zuboff's study of how workers and managers in a number of corporate
environments reacted to the introduction of computer-based manufacturing
processes is one of the few empirically based studies to examine this issue
(Zuboff, 1988).
However, some have argued from the opposite stance that computerization
in fact strengthens existing hierarchies and encourages top-down control
(Evans, 1991). Still
others (Winston; 1986) have argued that information technology has had minimal
impact on the structure of work and organizations, or that information networks
still necessarily rely at some level on human workers (Downey, 2001; Orr, 1996). Kling (1991)
found remarkably little evidence of radical change in social patterns from
empirical studies, noting that while computerization had led to increased
worker responsibility and satisfaction in some settings, in others it had
resulted in decreased interaction. He
also indicated that computer systems are often merely "instruments in
power games played by local governments" (p. 35; see also Danziger et al.,
1986).
One significant
reason for the difficulty in defining technology's effects is that the variety
of work and work environments across organizations is so great (Palmquist, 1992). It is
difficult to compare, for example, the record-keeping operation of a large
hospital, the manufacturing division of a major automobile producer, and the
diverse types of activities that teachers and school principals typically
undertake. And even between similar
environments in the same industry, the way in which jobs are structured and
carried out may be significantly different.
Some sociologists have concluded that it may therefore only make sense
to study organizational impacts of technology on the micro level, i.e., within
the subunits of a particular environment (Comstock & Scott, 1977; Scott, 1975, 1987).
Defining and predicting the organizational context of a new
technology on such a local level has also proven difficult; it is
extraordinarily complex to define the web of social intents, perceptions,
decisions, reactions, group relations, and organizational settings into which a
new technology will be cast. Those who
work using this framework (e.g., Bijker, Hughes, & Pinch, 1987; Fulk, 1993;
Joerges, 1990; Nartonis, 1993) often try to identify the relationships among the
participants in a given setting, and then on that basis try to define the
meaning that a technology has for them, rather than focus on the impact of a
particular kind of hardware on individuals' work in isolation.
A further aspect of the social
context of technology has to do with the relative power and position of the
actors involved. Langdon Winner (1980) argues that technologies are in fact not merely tools, but
have their political and social meanings "built in" by virtue of the
ways we define, design, and use them. A
classic example for Winner is the network of freeways designed by civil
engineer Robert Moses for the New York City metropolitan region in the 1930s. The bridges that spanned the new arterials that
led to public beaches were too low to allow passage by city buses, thus keeping
hoi polloi away from the ocean front,
while at the same time welcoming the more affluent, newly mobile (car-owning)
middle class. The design itself, rather
than the hardware of bridge decks, roads, and beach access points, defined what
could later be done with the system once it had been built and put into
use. Similar effects of
predisposition-through-design, Winner argues, are to be found in nuclear power
plants and nuclear fuel reprocessing facilities (Winner, 1977, 1993).
Many of these difficulties in
determining how information technology interacts with organizations stem from
the fact that our own stances as analysts contribute to the problem, as do our
memberships in groups that promote or oppose particular (often technological)
solutions to problems, as do the activities of those groups themselves in
furtherance of their own positions.
Technology creates artifacts which rarely stay in exactly the same form
in which they were first created – their developers, and others interested,
push these artifacts to evolve in new directions. These facets of information technology are
reflections of a view of the field characterized as "the Social Construction
of Technology" (SCOT), which has been hotly debated for the past 15 years
(Bijker & Pinch, 2002; Clayton, 2002; Epperson, 2002).
Technology and bureaucracy. One persistent view
of technology's role within organizations is as a catalyst for overcoming
centralized bureaucratic inertia (Rice, 1992; Sproul & Kiesler, 1991a).
Electronic mail is widely reputed to provide a democratizing and
leveling influence in large bureaucracies; wide access to electronic databases
within organizations may provide opportunities for whistle-blowers to identify
and expose problems; the rapid collection and dissemination of information on a
variety of organizational activities may allow both workers and managers to see
how productive they are, and where changes might lead to improvement (Sproull
& Kiesler, 1991b). While
the critics are equally vocal in pointing out technology's potential
organizational downside in such domains as electronic monitoring of employee
productivity and "deskilling"--the increasing polarization of the
work force into a small cadre of highly skilled managers and technocrats, and a
much larger group of lower-level workers whose room for individual initiative
and creativity is radically constrained by technology (e.g., Garson, 1989) -- the general consensus (especially following
the intensified discussion of the advent of the "information
superhighway" in the early 1990s) seemed positive.
But ultimately
the role of technology in an increasingly bureaucratized society may depend
more on the internal assumptions we ourselves bring to thinking about its use
(Borgmann, 1999; Higgs, Light, & Strong, 2000). Rosenbrock (1990) suggests that we too easily confuse achievement of particular,
economically desirable ends with the attainment of a more general personal,
philosophical, or social good. This
leads to the tension that we often feel when thinking about the possibility of
replacement of humans by machines.
Rosenbrock (1990) asserts that
Upon
analysis it is easy to see that 'assistance' will always become 'replacement'
if we accept [this] causal myth. The
expert's skill is defined to be the application of a set of rules, which
express the causal relations determining the expert's behavior. Assistance then
can only mean the application of the same rules by a computer, in order to save
the time and effort of the expert. When
the rule set is made complete, the expert is no longer needed, because his
skill contains nothing more than is embodied in the rules (p. 167).
But when we do this, he notes, we lose sight of basic human needs
and succumb to a "manipulative view of human relations in technological
systems" (p. 159).
Schools as Organizations
One problem that
educational sociologists have faced for many years is how to describe schools
as organizations. Early analyses focused
on the role of school administrator as part of an industrial production
engine--the school. Teachers were
workers, students--products, and teaching materials and techniques--the means
of production. The vision was persuasive
in the early part of this century when schools, as other social organizations,
were just developing into their current forms.
But the typical
methods of analysis used in organizational sociology were designed to provide a
clear view of how large industrial firms operated, and it early became clear
that these enterprises were not identical to public schools - their tasks were
qualitatively different, their goals and outcomes were not equally definable or
measurable, the techniques they used to pursue their aims were orders of
magnitude apart in terms of specificity.
Perhaps most importantly, schools operated in a messy, public
environment where problems and demands came not from a single central location,
but seemingly from all sides; they had to cater to the needs of teachers,
students, parents, employers, and politicians, all of whom might have different
visions of what the schools were for.
It was in answer
to this perceived gap between the conceptual models offered by classical
organizational sociology and the realities of the school that led to the rise
among school organization theorists of the "loose-coupling"
model. According to this approach,
schools were viewed as systems that were only loosely linked together with any
given portion of their surroundings. It
was the diversity of schools' environment that was important, argued these
theorists. Their view was consistent
with the stronger emphasis given to environmental variables in the field of
organizational sociology in general starting with the 1970s.
The older, more
mechanistic vision of schools as mechanisms did not die, however. Instead, it lived on and gained new adherents
under a number of new banners. Two of
these -- the "Effective Schools" movement and "outcome-based
education" -- are especially significant for those working in the field of
educational technology because they are connected with essential aspects of our
field. The effective schools approach
was born of the school reform efforts that started with the publication of the
report on the state of America's schools A nation at risk (National
Commission, 1983). That
report highlighted a number of problems with the nation's schools, including a
perceived drop in standards for academic achievement (but note Carson et al.,
1991)). A
number of states and schools districts responded to this problem by attempting
to define an "effective school"; the definitions varied, but there
were common elements -- high expectations, concerned leadership, committed
teaching, involved parents, and so forth.
In a number of cases these elements were put together into a
"package" that was intended to define and offer a prescription for
good schooling (Mortimer, 1993; Fredericks & Brown, 1993; Purkey & Smith, 1983; Rosenholtz, 1985; Scheerens, 1991.).
A further
relative of the earlier mechanistic visions of school improvement was seen during
the late 1980s in the trend toward definition of local, state and national
standards in education (e.g., National Governors', 1986, 1987), and in the new enthusiasm for
"outcome-based" education.
Aspects of this trend become closely linked with economic analyses of
the schooling system such as those offered by Chubb and Moe (1990).
There were a
number of criticisms and critiques of the effective schools approach. The most severe of these came from two
quarters -- those concerned about the fate of minority children in the schools,
who felt that these children would be forgotten in the new drive to push for
higher standards and "excellence" (e.g., Dantley, 1990; Boysen, 1992), and those concerned with the fate of teachers
who worked directly in schools, who were seen to be "deskilled" and
ignored by an increasingly top-down system of educational reform (e.g., Elmore,
1992). These
factions, discontented by the focus on results and apparent lack of attention
to individual needs and local control, have served as the focus for a
"second wave" of school restructuring efforts that have generated
such ideas as "building-based management," school site councils,
teacher empowerment, and action research.
Some empirical
evidence for the value of these approaches has begun to emerge recently,
showing, for example, that teacher satisfaction and a sense of shared community
among school staff are important predictors of efficacy (Lee, Dedrick, &
Smith, 1991).
Indications from some earlier research, however, suggest that the school
effectiveness and school restructuring approaches may in fact simply be two
alternative conceptions of how schools might best be organized and
managed. The school effectiveness model
of centrally managed change may be more productive in settings where local
forces are not sufficiently powerful, well organized, or clear on what needs to
be done, whereas the locally determined course of school restructuring may be
more useful when local forces can in fact come to a decision about what needs
to happen (Firestone & Herriott, 1982).
How to make sense
of these conflicting claims for what the optimal mode of school organization
might be? The school effectiveness
research urges us to see human organizations as rational, manageable creations,
able to be shaped and changed by careful, conscious action of a few
well-intentioned administrators. The
school restructuring approach, on the other hand, suggests that organizations,
and schools, are best thought of as collectivities, groups of individuals who,
to do their work better, need both freedom and the incentive that comes from
joining with peers in search of new approaches.
The first puts the emphasis on structure, central control, and rational
action; the latter on individuals, community values, and the development of
shared meaning.
A potential linkage
between these differing conceptions is offered by James Coleman, the well-known
sociologist who studied the issue of integration and school achievement in the
1960s. Coleman (1993) paints a broad picture of the rise of corporate
forms of organization (including notably schools) and concomitant decline of
traditional sources of values and social control (family, church). He sees a potential solution in reinvesting
parents (and perhaps by extension other community agents) with a significant
economic stake in their children's future productivity to the state via a kind
of modified and extended voucher system.
The implications are intriguing, and we will return to them later in
this chapter as we discuss the possibility of a sociology of educational
technology.
Educational technology
and school organization
If we want to think about the
sociological and organizational implications of educational technology as a
field, we need something more than a "history of the creation of devices." Some histories of the field (e.g., Saettler,
1968) have provided just that; but while it is useful to know
when certain devices first came on the scene, it would be more helpful in the
larger scheme of things to know why school boards, principals, and teachers
wanted to buy those devices, how educators thought about their use as they were
introduced, what they were actually used for, and what real changes they
brought about in how teachers and students worked in classrooms and how administrators
and teachers worked together in schools and districts. It is through thousands of such decisions,
reactions, perceptions, and intents that the field of educational technology
has been defined.
As we consider
schools as organizations, it is important to bear in mind that there are
multiple levels of organization in any school--the organizational structure
imposed by the state or district, that established for the particular school in
question, and the varieties of organization present in both the classroom and
among the teachers who work at the school.
Certainly there are many ways of using technology that simply match (or
even reinforce) existing bureaucratic patterns -- districts that use e-mail
only to send out directives from the central office, for example, or
large-scale central computer labs equipped with integrated learning packages
through which all children progress in defined fashion.
As we proceed to
think about how technology may affect schools as organizations, there are three central
questions we should consider. Two of
these -- the overall level of adoption and acceptance of technology into
schools (i.e., the literature on educational innovation and change), and the
impact of technology on specific patterns of organization and practice within
individual classrooms and schools (i.e., the literature on roles and role
change in education)-- have been commonplaces in the research literature on
educational technology for some years; the third -- organizational analysis of
schools under conditions of technological change -- is only now emerging.
The problem of
innovation. We gain perspective on
the slow spread of technology into schools from work on innovations as social
and political processes. Early models of
how new practices come to be accepted were based on the normal
distribution; a few brave misfits would
first try a new practice, followed by community opinion leaders, "the
masses," and finally a few stubborn laggards. Later elaborations suggested additional
factors at work--concerns about the effects of the new approach on established
patterns of work, different levels of commitment to the innovation, lack of
congruence between innovations and existing schemata, and so on (Greve &
Taylor, 2000; Hall & Hord, 1984; Hall & Loucks, 1978; Rogers, 1962).
If we view
technologies as innovations in teachers' ways of working, then there is
evidence they will be accepted and used if they buttress a teacher's role and
authority in the classroom (e.g., Godfrey, 1965, on overhead projectors), and disregarded if they are proposed as
alternatives to the teacher's presence and worth (e.g., early televised
instruction, programmed instruction in its original Skinnerian garb; Cuban,
1986).
Computers and related devices seem to fall somewhere in the middle--they
can be seen as threats to the teacher, but also as helpmates and liberators
from drudgery (Kerr, 1991).
Attitudes on the parts of teachers and principals toward the new
technology have been well studied, both in the past and more recently regarding
computers (e.g., Honey & Moeller, 1990; Pelgrum, 1993). But
attitude studies, as noted earlier, rarely probe the significant issues of
power, position, and changes in the organizational context of educators' work,
and the discussion of acceptance of technology as a general stand-in for school
change gradually has become less popular over the years. Scriven (1986), for example, suggested that it would be more
productive to think of computers not simply as devices, but rather as new
sources of energy within the school, energy that might be applied in a variety
of ways to alter teachers' roles.
Less attention
has been paid to the diffusion of the "process technology" of
instructional development/instructional design.
There have been some attempts to chart the spread of notions of
systematic thinking among teachers, and a number of popular classroom teaching
models of the 1970s (e.g., the "Instructional Theory into Practice,"
or ITIP, approach of Madeline Hunter) seemed closely related to the notions of
ID. While some critics saw ID as simply
another plot to move control of the classroom away from the teacher and into
the hands of "technicians" (Nunan, 1983), others saw ID providing a stimulus for
teachers to think in more logical, connected ways about their work, especially
if technologists themselves recast ID approaches in a less formal way so as to
allow teachers leeway to practice "high influence" teaching (Martin
& Clemente, 1990; see also Shrock, 1985; Shrock & Higgins, 1990). More
elaborated visions of this sort of application of both the hardware and
software of educational technology to the micro and macro organization of
schools include Reigeluth and Garfinkle's (1992) depiction of how the education system as a
whole might change under the impact of new approaches (see also Kerr, 1989a,
1990a).
Recent years have
seen increased interest among teachers in improving their own practice via
professional development, advanced certification (for example, the National
Board for Professional Teaching Standards), approaches such as "Lesson
Study" and "Critical Friends," and so on. Internet- and computer-based approaches can
clearly play a role here, as a number of studies demonstrate. Burge, Laroque, and Boak (2000) discovered significant difficulties in managing the dynamic
tensions present in on-line discussions.
Orill (2001) found that computer-based materials served as
a useful focus for a broader spectrum of professional development with
teachers. A series of studies by Becker
and his colleagues (e.g., Becker & Ravitz, 1999; Dexter, Anderson, & Becker, 1999) showed that an interest in working intensively
with Internet-based materials is closely associated with teachers' holding more
constructivist beliefs regarding instruction generally. A study by Davidson, McNamara, and Grant
(2001) demonstrated that using networked resources
effectively in pursuit of reform goals required "substantive
reorganization across schools' practices, culture, and structure."
Studies of
technology and educational roles.
What has happened in some situations with the advent of contemporary
educational technology is a quite radical restructuring of classroom
experience. This has not been simply a
substitution of one model of classroom life for another, but rather an
extension and elaboration of what is possible in classroom practice. The specific elements involved are
several: greater student involvement in
project-oriented learning, and increased learning in groups; a shift in the
teacher's role and attitude from being a source of knowledge to being a coach
and mentor; and a greater willingness on the parts of students to take
responsibility for their own learning.
Such changes do not come without costs; dealing with a group of
self-directed learners who have significant resources to control and satisfy
their own learning is not an easy job.
But the social relationships within classrooms can be significantly
altered by the addition of computers and a well-developed support
structure. (For further examples of
changes in teachers' roles away from traditional direct instruction and toward
more diverse arrangements, see: Davies,
1988; Hardy, 1992; Hooper, 1992; Hooper & Hannafin, 1991; Kerr, 1977, 1978; Laridon, 1990a, 1990b; Lin, 2001; McIlhenny, 1991. For a
discussion of changes in the principal's role, see Wolf, 1993).
Indeed, the
evolving discussion on the place of ID in classroom life seems to be drawing
closer to more traditional sociological studies of classroom organization and
the teacher's role. One such study
suggests that a "more uncertain" technology (in the sense of general
organization) of classroom control can lead to more delegation of authority,
more "lateral communication" among students, and increased
effectiveness (Cohen, Lotan, & Leechor, 1989). The
value of intervening directly in administrators' and teachers' unexamined
arrangements for classroom organization and classroom instruction was affirmed
in a study by Dreeben and Barr (1988).
Technology may
also exert and unanticipated impact on the existing structure of roles within a
school or school district. Telem (1999), for example, found that school department
heads' work was altered significantly with the introduction of computerization,
with greater focus on "accountability, instructional evaluation,
supervision, feedback, frequency of meetings, and shared decision
making." And Robbins (2000) discovered potential problems and conflicts
inherent in the style of collaboration (or lack thereof) between instructional
technology and information services departments in school districts.
The
organizational impact of educational technology. If
the general conclusion of some sociologists (as noted above) that the
organizational effects of technology are best observed on the micro level of
classrooms, offices, and interpersonal relations, rather than the macro level
of district and state organization, then we would be well advised to focus our
attention on what happens in specific spheres of school organizational
life. It is not surprising that most
studies of educational technology have focused on classroom applications, for
that is the image that most educators have of its primary purpose. Discussions of the impact of technology on
classroom organization, however, are rarer.
Some empirical studies have found such effects, noting especially the
change in the teacher's role and position from being the center of classroom
attention to being more of a mentor and guide for pupils; this shift, however,
is seen as taking significantly longer than many administrators might like,
typically taking from three to five years (Kerr, 1991;
Hadley & Sheingold, 1993).
Some models of
application of technology to overall school organization do suggest that it can
loosen bureaucratic structures (Hutchin, 1992; Kerr, 1989b; McDaniel, McInerney, & Armstrong, 1993).
Examples include: the use of technology to allow teachers and
administrators to communicate more directly, thus weakening existing patterns
of one-way, top-down communication; networks linking teachers and students,
either within a school or district, or across regional or national borders,
thus breaking the old pattern of isolation and parochialism and leading to
greater collegiality (Tobin & Dawson, 1992).
Linkages between schools, parents, and the broader community have also
been tried sporadically, and results so far appear promising (Solomon, 1992; Trachtman, Spirek, Sparks, & Stohl, 1991).
There have been some studies that
have focused on administrators' changed patterns of work with the advent of
computers. Kuralt (1987),
for example, described a computerized system for gathering and analyzing
information on teacher and student activity.
Special educators have been eager to consider both instructional and
administrative uses for technology, with some seeing the potential to
facilitate the often-cumbersome processes of student identification and
placement through better application of technology (Prater & Ferrara, 1990). Administrators
concerned about facilitating contacts with parents have also found solutions
using technology to describe assignments, provide supportive approaches, and
allow parents to communicate with teachers using voice mail (Bauch, 1989). However, improved communication does not
necessarily lead to greater involvement, knowledge, or feelings of
"ownership" on the parts of educators. In a study of how schools used technology to
implement a new budget planning process in school-based management schools,
Brown (1994)
found that many teachers simply did not have the time or the training needed to
participate meaningfully in budget planning via computer.
The organizational structure of
educational activities has been significantly affected in recent years by the
advent of courses and experiences delivered via on-line distance learning. Researchers and policy makers have identified
a number of issues in these environments that might become causes for concern:
whether participants in such courses experience the same sense of community or
"belonging" as those who work in traditional face-to-face settings, whether
these environments provide adequate advising or support for learners, and
whether such environments can appropriately support the sorts of collaborative
learning now widely valued in education.
The presence (or absence) of
community in on-line learning has been a concern for many investigators. A widely publicized book by Turkle (1995) suggested that the often-criticized anonymity of on-line
settings is actually a positive social phenomenon, possibly associated with an improved
self-image and a more flexible personality structure. In more traditional educational settings, studies
of on-line learning have demonstrated that the experience of community during
courses can grow, especially when supported and encouraged by instructors
(Rovai, 2001). In another study, community among learners
with disabilities was improved via both peer-to-peer and
mentor-to-protégé interactions, with the former providing a more
personally significant sense of community (Burgstahler & Cronheim, 2001).
Others who have examined on-line learning
settings have considered how the environment may affect approaches to group
tasks, especially problem solving.
Jonassen and Kwon (2000) found that problem solving in an on-line environment was
more task-focused, more structured, and led to more participant satisfaction
with the work. Svensson (2000) found a similar pattern: learners were more oriented
toward the specific tasks of problem solving, and so self-limited their
collaboration to exclude interactions perceived as irrelevant to those goals.
One common rationale for the
development and implementation of on-line courses is that they will permit
easier access to educational experiences for those living in remote areas, and
for those whose previous progress through the educational system has been
hindered. An interesting study from
Whether on-line environments
themselves call forth new modes of interaction has been debated among
researchers. At least some suggest that
these settings themselves call forth new patterns. For example, Barab et al. (2001) created an on-line project to support teachers in
reflecting critically about their own pedagogical practice. As the project evolved, those studying it
gradually shifted their focus from usability issues to sociability, and from a
concern with the electronic structure to what they came to call a
"sociotechnical interaction network."
In another study, Järvelä et al. (1999) showed that carefully designed approaches to
computer-based learning supported new ways for teachers and students to
negotiate meanings in complex technological domains.
Several strands of current work show
how preparing students to interact effectively in on-line environments may
improve effectiveness of those environments for learning. Susman (1998) found that giving learners specific instruction on
collaboration strategies improved results in CBI settings. But in a study in higher education, MacKnight
(2001) found that current Web-based tools to encourage critical thinking
(defined as finding, filtering, and assimilating new information) still do not
generally meet faculty expectations.
But use of technology does not
necessarily always translate into organizational change. Sometimes, existing organizational patterns
may be extraordinarily strong. In higher
education, for instance, some have suggested that the highly traditional nature
of post-baccalaureate instruction and mentoring is ripe for restructuring via
technology. Under the "Nintendo
generation" hypothesis, new graduate students (familiar since childhood
with the tools of digital technology) would revolutionize the realm of graduate
study using new technologies to circumvent traditional patterns and experiment
with new forms of collaboration, interaction, and authorship (Gardels, 1991). In a test of this
argument, Covi (2000)
examined work practices among younger doctoral students. She found that, while there were some
differences in how these students used technology to communicate with others,
elaborate their own specializations, and collect data, the changes were in fact
evolutionary and cumulative, rather than revolutionary or transformative.
Educational
technology and assumptions about schools as organizations. There is clearly no final verdict on the
impact educational technology may have on schools as organizations. In fact, we seem to be faced with competing
models of both the overall situation in schools, and the image of what role
educational technology might play there.
On the one hand, the advocates of a rational-systems view of school
organization and management--the effective school devotees-- would stress technology's
potential for improving the flow of information from administration to
teachers, and from teachers to parents, for enabling management to collect more
rapidly a wider variety of information about the successes and failures of
parts of the system as they seek to achieve well-defined goals.
A very different
image would come from those enticed by the vision of school restructuring; they
would likely stress technology's role in allowing wide access to information,
free exchange of ideas, and the democratizing potentials inherent in linking
schools and communities more closely.
Is one of these
images more accurate than the other?
Hardly, for each depends on a different set of starting
assumptions. The rational-systems
adherents see society (and hence education) as a set of more or less
mechanistic linkages, and efficiency as a general goal. Technology, in this vision, is a support for
order, rationality, and enhanced control over processes that seem inordinately
"messy." The proponents of the
"teledemocracy" approach, on the other hand, are more taken by
organic images, view schools as institutions where individuals can come
together to create and recreate communities, and are more interested in
technology's potential for making the organization of the educational system
not necessarily more orderly, but perhaps more diverse.
At the moment, in
the
These images and
assumptions, in turn, play out in the tasks each group sets for
technology: monitoring, evaluation,
assurance of uniformity (in outcomes if not methods), and provision of data for
management decisions on the one hand; communication among individuals, access
to information, diversification of the educational experience, and provision of
a basis on which group decisions may be made, on the other. We shall discuss the implications of these
differences further in the concluding section.
Social Aspects of Information Technology and Learning in
Non-School Environments.
The discussion to
this point has focused mostly on the use of educational technology in
traditional school, settings, and the receptivity of those organizations to
changed patterns of work that may result.
But information technology does not merely foster change in traditional
learning environments; it can also facilitate learning in multiple locations,
at times convenient to the learner, and in ways that may not match traditional
images of what constitutes "appropriate" learning. Two types of environments, both highly
affected by developments in information technology and both loci for non-formal
learning, call for attention here: digital on-line resources, and museums.
Informal social
learning using on-line digital resources.
As use of the World Wide Web has become more widespread, increased
numbers of young people regularly use it for informal learning projects of
their won construction. There have been
many studies of how children use the Web for school related projects and most
of these have been highly critical of the strategies that young people employ
(e.g., Fidel, 1999; Schacter, Chung, & Dorr, 1998).
A different
approach, more attuned to what young people do on their own, in less
constrained (i.e., adult-defined) environments, yields different sorts of
results. For example, children may make
more headway in searches if not required constantly to demonstrate and justify
the relevance of results to adults, but rather turn to them for advice on an
"as-needed" basis. Also,
rather than see young peoples' differing standards for a successful search as a
barrier, they might also be seen as a stimulus for deeper consideration of
criteria for "success" and of how much to tolerate ambiguity
(Dresang, 1999). Social
aspects of informal on-line learning (collaboration, competition, types of
informal learning projects undertaken, settings where explored, etc.) could
also be profitably explored.
Informal social
learning via information technology in museums. Museums represent perhaps the quintessential
informal learning environments. Museum visitors
are not coerced to learn particular things, and museum visits are often social
in nature, involving groups, families, or classes as a whole. Yet there are often expectations that one
will learn something from the visit, or at least encounter significantly new
perspectives on the world. Further,
opportunities to explore museums for informal learning may constitute one form
of educationally potent "cultural capital" (top be explored further
below).
Information
technology is increasingly being integrated into museums, and support for
informal learning is a common rationale for these infusions. Individualized access to materials, to
age-appropriate descriptions of them, and interaction around images of artifacts
are examples of informal learning activities museums can foster using
information technology (Marty, 1999). Other
approaches suggest that information technology may be used productively to
allow learners to bridge informal and formal educational environments, bringing
images of objects back to classrooms from external locations, annotating and
commenting on those objects in groups, and sharing and discussing findings with
peers (Stevens & Hall, 1997).
All these new
approaches to enhancing informal social learning bring with them significant
and largely unstudied questions: How
does informal social learning intersect with formal learning? How do learners behave in groups when working
in these informal settings? How may the
kinds of environments described here shape long-term preferences for ways of
interacting around information generally, and for assumptions about the value
of results from such work? Perhaps most
saliently, how can such opportunities be provided to more young people in ways
that ultimately support their further social and intellectual development?
The Sociology of Groups
American
sociologists have recently come to focus more and more on groups that are
perceived to be in a position of social disadvantage. Racial minorities, women, and those from
lower socio-economic strata are the primary examples. The sociological questions raised in the
study of disadvantaged groups include:
how do such groups come to be identified as having special, unequal
status? What forms of discrimination do
they face? How are attitudes about their
status formed, and how do these change, among the population at large? And what social or organizational policies
may unwittingly contribute to their disadvantaged status? Because these groupings of race, gender, and class
are so central to discussions of education in American society, and because
there are ways that each intersects with educational technology, they will
serve as the framework for the discussion that follows.
For each of these
groups, there is a set of related questions of concern to us here. First, assuming that we wish to sustain a
democratic society that values equity, equal opportunity, and equal treatment
under law, are we currently providing
equal access to educational technology in schools? Second, when we do provide access, are we
providing access to the same kinds of experiences? In other words, are the experiences of males
and females in using technology in schools of roughly comparable quality? Does one group or the other suffer from bias
in content of the materials with which they are asked to work, or in the types
of experiences to which they are exposed?
Third, are there differing
perspectives on the use of the technology that are particular to one group or
the other? The genders, for example,
may in fact experience the world differently, and therefore their experiences
with educational technology may be quite different. And finally, so what? That is, is
it really important that we provide equality of access to educational
technology, bias-free content, etc., or are these aspects of education
ultimately neutral in their actual impact on an individual's life chances?
Minority Groups
The significance
of thinking about the issue of access to education in terms of racial groupings
was underlined in studies beginning with the 1960s. Coleman's (1966) landmark study on the educational fate of
American schoolchildren from minority backgrounds led to a continuing struggle
to desegregate and integrate American schools, a struggle that continues. Coleman's findings -- that African-American
children were harmed academically by being taught in predominantly minority
schools, and that Caucasian children were not harmed by being in integrated
schools -- provided the basic empirical justification for a whole series of
federal, state and local policies encouraging racial integration and seeking to
abolish de facto segregation. This
struggle continues, though in a different vein.
As laws and local policies abolished de facto forms of segregated
education, and access was guaranteed, the need to provide fully valuable
educational experiences became more obvious.
Minorities and Access to Educational Technology.
The issue of
minority access to educational technology was not a central issue before the
advent of computers in the early 1980s.
While there were a few studies that explicitly sought to introduce
minority kids to media production techniques (e.g., Culkin, 1965; Schwartz, 1987; Worth & Adair, 1972), the issue did not seem a critical one. The appearance of computers, however, brought
a significant change. Not only did the
machines represent a higher level of capitalization of the educational
enterprise than had formerly been the case, they also carried a heavier
symbolic load than had earlier technologies, being linked in the public mind
with images of a better future, greater economic opportunity for children, and
so forth. Each of these issues led to
problems vis á vis minority access to computers.
Initial concerns
about the access of minorities to new technologies in schools were raised in
Becker's studies (1983), which seemed to show not only that children
in poor schools (schools where a majority of the children were from
low-socio-economic-status family backgrounds) had fewer computers available to
them, but also that the activities they were typically assigned by teachers
featured rote memorization via use of simple drill-and-practice programs,
whereas children in schools with a wealthier student base were offered
opportunities to learn programming and to work with more flexible
software.
This pattern was
found to be less strong in a follow-up set of studies conducted a few years
later (Becker, 1986), but it has continued to be a topic of
considerable concern. Perhaps school administrators and teachers became
concerned and changed their practices, or perhaps there were simply more
computers in the schools a few years later, allowing broader access. Nonetheless, other evidence of racial disparities
in access to computing resources in schools was collected by Doctor (1991), and by Becker and Ravitz (1998), who noted continuing disparities. In 1992, the popular computer magazine Macworld
(Borrell, 1992; Kondracke, 1992; Piller, 1992) devoted an issue (headlined "America's
Shame") to these questions, noting critically that this topic seemed to
have slipped out of the consciousness of many of those in the field of educational
technology, and raising in a direct way the issue of the relationship (or lack
of one) between government policy on school computer use and the continuing
discrepancies in minority access. Access
and use by minorities became a topic of interest for some researchers and
activists from within the minority community itself (see Bowman, 2001, and related articles in a special issue of Journal of Educational Computing Research).
If the issue of
minority access to computing resources was not a high priority in the scholarly
journals, it did receive a good deal of attention at the level of federal
agencies, foundations, state departments of education, and local school
districts. States such as
The issue for the
longer term may well be how educational technology interacts with the
fundamental problem of providing not merely access, but also a lasting and
valuable education, something many minority children are clearly not receiving
at present. The actual outcomes from use
of educational technology in education may be less critical here than the
symbolic functions of involvement of minorities with the hardware and software
of a new era, and the value for life and career chances of their learning the
language associated with powerful new forms of "social capital." We shall have occasion to return to this idea
again below as part of the discussion of social class.
Gender
Gender and Technology
With the rise of
the women's movement and in reaction to the perceived "male bias" of
technology generally, technology's relationship to issues of gender is one that
has been explored increasingly in recent years.
One economic analysis describes the complex interrelationship among
technology, gender, and social patterns in homes during this century. Technological changes coincided with a need
to increase the productivity of household labor: as wages rose, it became more
expensive for women to remain at home, out of the work force, and labor-saving
technology, even though expensive, became more attractive, at first to
upper-middle class women, then to all.
The simple awareness of technology's effects was enough, in this case,
to bring about significant social changes (Day, 1992).
Changes in patterns of office work by women have also been intensively
considered by sociologists (Kraft & Siegenthaler, 1989).
Gender and Education
Questions of how
boys' and girls' experiences in school differ have come to be a topic of
serious consideration. Earlier assertions that most differences were the result
of social custom or lack of appropriate role models have been called into
question by the work of Gilligan and her colleagues (Gilligan, 1982; Gilligan, Ward, & Taylor, 1988) which finds distinctive differences in how the
sexes approach the task of learning in general, and faults a number of
instructional approaches in particular.
Gender and
access to technology in schools.
Several scholars have raised the question of how women are accommodated
in a generally male-centric vision of how educational technology is to be used
in schools (Becker, 1986; Damarin, 1991; Kerr, 1990b; Turkle, 1984). In
particular, Becker's surveys (1983, 1986) found that girls tended to use computers
differently, focusing more on such activities as word processing and
collaborative work, while boys liked game playing and competitive work. Similar problems were noted by Durndell and Lightbody (1993), Kerr (1990b),
Lage (1991), Nelson & Watson (1991), and Nye (1991).
Specific strategies to reduce the effect of gender differences in
classrooms have been proposed (Neuter, 1986). The
issue has also been addressed through national and international surveys of
computer education practices and policies (Reinen & Plomp, 1993; Kirk, 1992).
There is much
good evidence that males and females differ both in terms of amount of computer
exposure in school and in terms of the types of technology-based activities
they typically choose to undertake. Some
studies (Ogletree & Williams, 1990) suggest that prior experience with computers
may determine interest and depth of involvement with computing by the time a
student gets to higher grade levels. In
fact, we are likely too close to the issues to have an accurate reading at
present; the roles and expectations of girls in schools are changing, and
different approaches are being tried to deal with the problems that exist. There have been some questions raised about
the adequacy of the research methods used to unpack these key questions. Kay (1992), for example, found that scales
and construct definitions were frequently poorly handled.
Ultimately, the
more complex issue of innate differences in social experience and ways of
perceiving and dealing with the world will be extraordinarily difficult to
unknot empirically, especially given the fundamental importance of initial
definitions and the shifting social and political context in which these
questions are being discussed. An
example of the ways in which underlying assumptions may shape gender-specific
experience with technology is seen in a study by Mitra, LaFrance, and
McCullough (2001). They found that men and
women perceived computerization efforts differently, with men seeing the
changes that computers brought as more compatible with existing work patterns,
and as more "trialable" – able to be experimented with readily on a
limited basis.
The question of
how males and females define their experiences with technology will continue to
be an important one. Ultimately, the
most definitive factor here may turn out to be changes in the surrounding
society and economy. As women
increasingly move into management positions in business and industry, and as
formerly "feminine" approaches to the organization of economic life
(team management styles, collaborative decision making) are gradually reflected
in technological approaches and products (computer-supported collaborative
work, "groupware"), these perspectives and new approaches will
gradually make their way into schools as well.
Social Class
Surprisingly
little attention has been paid to the issue of social class differences in
American education,. Perhaps this is
because Americans tend to think of their society as "classless," or
that all are "members of the middle class." But there is a new awareness today that
social class may in fact play a very significant role in shaping and mediating
the ways in which information resources are used educationally by both students
and teachers
The Digital Divide Debated
Access to digital
resources by members of typically disadvantaged groups became a more central
social and political issues in the mid-1990s at the same time that Internet businesses
boomed and the
Another important
question is whether simple physical access to hardware or Internet connections
lies at the root of problems that may hinder those in disadvantaged communities
from fully participating in current educational, civic, or cultural life. Some have gone so far as to characterize two
distinctly separate "digital divides." If the first divide is based on physical
access to hardware and connectivity, then the second has more to do with how
information itself is perceived, accessed, and used as a form of "cultural
capital." The physical presence of
a computer in a school, home, or library, in other words, may be less
significant to overcoming long-standing educational or social inequalities than
the sets of assumptions, practices, and expectations within which work with
that computer is located. Imagine a
child who comes from a family in which there is little value attached to
finding correct information. In such a
family, parents do not regularly encourage use of resources that support
learning, and the family activity at mealtimes is more likely to involve
watching television than engaging in challenging conversations based on information
acquired or encountered during the day.
In this setting, the child is much less likely to see use of a computer
as centrally important, not only to educational success, but to success in
life, success in becoming what one can become (Gamoran, 2001; Kingston, 2001; Persell & Cookson, 1987).
Information Technology, Cultural Capital, Class, and Education
Some evidence for
real interactions of cultural capital with educational outcomes has been
provided by studies of the ways such resources are mediated in the
"micropolitical" environment of classroom interaction and
assessment. In one examination, such
cultural capital goods as extracurricular trips and household educational
resources were found to be less significant for minority children than for
whites, a finding the researchers attributed to intervening evaluations by
teachers and track placement of minority students (Roscigno &
Ainsworth-Darnell, 1999). Similar findings emerged
from a computer-specific study by Attewell and
With knowledge
that the digital divide may exist at levels deeper than simple access to
hardware and networks, sociologists of education may be able to assist in
"designing the educational institutions of the digital age." A thoughtful analysis by Natriello (2001) suggests several specific directions in which
this activity could go forward: advising
on the structure of digital libraries of materials, to eliminate unintended
barriers to access; helping to design on-line learning cooperatives so as to
facilitate real participation by all who might wish to join; creating and
operating distance learning projects so as to maximize interaction and
availability; and assisting those who prepare corporate or other non-school
learning environments to "understand the alternatives and trade-offs"
involved in design.
Educational Technology as Social Movement
An outside observer reading the
educational technology literature over the past half century (perhaps longer)
would be struck by the messianic tone in much of the writing.
Why has this been, and how can we
understand educational technology's role over time as catalyst for a
"movement" toward educational change, for reform in the status
quo? To develop a perspective on this question,
it would be useful to think about how sociologists have studied social
movements. What causes a social movement
to emerge, coalesce, grow, and wither?
What is the role of organized professionals vs. lay persons in
developing such a movement? What kinds
of changes in social institutions do social movements bring about, and which
have typically been beyond their power?
How do the ideological positions of a movement's supporters (educational
technologists, for example) influence the movement's fate? All these are areas in which the sociology of
social movements may shed some light on educational technology's role as
catalyst for changes in the structure of education and teaching.
The Sociology of Social Movements
Sociologists have viewed social movements
using a number of different perspectives--movements as a response to social
strains, as a reflection of trends and directions throughout the society more
generally, as a reflection of individual dissatisfaction and feelings of
deprivation, and as a natural step in the generation and modification of social
institutions (McAdam, McCarthy, & Zald, 1988). Much traditional
work on the sociology of mass movements concentrated on the processes by which
such movements emerged, how they recruited new members, defined their goals,
and gathered the initial resources that would allow them to survive.
More recent work has focused
attention on the processes by which movements, once organized, contrive to
assure the continued existence of their group and the long-term furtherance of
its aims. Increasingly, social problems
that in earlier eras were the occasion for short-lived expressions of protest
by groups that may have measured their life-spans in months, are now the foci
for long-lived organizations, for the activity of "social movement
professionals," and for the creation of new institutions (McCarthy &
Zald, 1973). This process is
especially typical of those "professional" social movements where a
primary intent is to create, extend, and preserve markets for particular
professional services.
But while professionally oriented
social movements enjoy some advantages in terms of expertise, organization, and
the like, they also are often relatively easy for the state to control. In totalitarian governments, social movements
have been controlled simply by repressing them; but in democratic systems,
state and federal agencies, and their attached superstructure of laws and
regulations, may in fact serve much the same function, directing and
controlling the spheres of activity in which a movement is allowed to operate,
offering penalties or rewards for compliance (e.g., tax-exempt status).
Educational
Examples of Social Movements
While we want to focus here on
educational technology as a social movement, it is useful to consider other
aspects of education that have recently been mobilized in one way or another as
social movements. Several examples are
connected with the recent (1983 to date) efforts to reform and restructure
schools. As noted above, there are
differing sets of assumptions held by different sets of actors in this trend,
and it is useful to think of several of them as professional social movements: one such grouping might include the
Governors' Conference, Education Council of the States, and similar
government-level official policy and advisory groups with a political stake in
the success of the educational system; another such movement might include the
Holmes Group, NCREST (the National Center for the Reform of Education, Schools
and Teaching), NCTAF (the National Council on Teaching and America's Future), the
National Network for Educational Renewal, and a few similar centers focused on
changing the structure of teacher education; a further grouping would include
conservative or liberal "think tanks" such as the Southern Poverty
Law Center, People for the American Way, or the Eagle Forum, having a specific
interest in the curriculum, the content of textbooks, and the teaching of particularly
controversial subject matter (sex education, evolutionism vs. creationism,
values education, conflict resolution, racial tolerance, etc.) We shall return later to this issue of the
design of curriculum materials and the roles technologists play therein.
Educational
technology as social movement. To
conceive of educational technology itself as a social movement, we need to
think about the professional interests and goals of those who work within the
field, and those outside the field who have a stake in its success. There have been a few earlier attempts to
engage in those sort of analysis:
Travers (1973) looked at the field in term of its political
successes and failures, and concluded that most activities of educational
technologists were characterized by an astonishing naiveté as regards
the political and bureaucratic environments in which they had to try to
exist. Hooper (1969), a BBC executive, also noted that the field had
failed almost entirely to establish a continuing place for its own agenda. Of those working during the 1960s and 1970s,
only Heinich (1971) seemed to take seriously the issue of how those
in the field thought about their work vis a vis other professionals. Of the critics, Nunan (1983) was most assertive in identifying educational
technologists as a professionally self-interested lobby.
The advent of
microcomputers changed the equation considerably. Now, technology based programs moved from
being perceived by parents, teachers, and communities as expensive toys of
doubtful usefulness, to being seen increasingly as the keys to future academic,
economic and social success. One
consequence of this new interest was an increase in the number of professional
groups interested in educational technology.
Interestingly, the advantages of this new status for educational
technology did not so much accrue to existing groups such as the Association
for Educational Communication and Technology (AECT) or the Association for the
Development of Computer-Based Instructional Systems (ADCIS), but rather to new
groups such as the Institute for the Transfer of Technology to Education of the
American School Board Association, the National Education Association, groups
affiliated with such non-educational organizations as the Association for
Computing Machinery (ACM), groups based on the hardware or applications of
particular computer and software manufacturers (particularly Apple and IBM),
and numerous academics and researchers involved in the design, production, and
evaluation of software programs. There
is also a substantial set of cross connections between educational technology
and the defense industry, as outlined in detail by Noble (1989, 1991). The interests of those helping to shape the
new computer technology in the schools became clearer following publication of
a number of federal and foundation sponsored reports in the 1980s and 1990s
(e.g., Power on!, 1988).
Teachers
themselves also had a role in defining educational technology as a social
movement. A number of studies of the
early development of educational computing in schools (Hadley & Scheingold,
1993; Olson, 1988; Sandholtz, Ringstaff, & Dwyer, 1991) noted that a small number of knowledgeable
teachers in a given school typically assumed the role of
"teacher-computer-buffs," willingly becoming the source of
information and inspiration for other teachers.
It may be that some school principals and superintendents played a
similar role among their peers, describing not specific ways of introducing and
using computers in the classroom, but general strategies for acquiring the
technology, providing for teacher training, and securing funding from state and
national sources. A further indication
of the success of educational technology as a social movement is seen in the
widespread acceptance of levies and special elections in support of technology
based projects, and in the increasing incidence of participation by citizen and
corporate leaders in projects and campaigns to introduce technology into
schools.
Educational
technology and the construction of curriculum materials. Probably in no other area involving
educational technologists has there been such rancorous debate over the past
twenty years as in the definition and design of curricular materials. Textbook controversies have exploded in fields
such as social studies (Ravitch & Finn, 1987) and natural sciences (e.g., Nelkin, 1977); the content of children's television has been
endless examined (Mielke, 1990); and textbook publishers have been excoriated
for the uniformity and conceptual vacuousness of their products (Honig, 1989).
Perhaps the
strongest set of criticisms of the production of educational materials comes
from those who view that process as intensely social and political, and who
worry that others, especially professional educators, are sadly unaware of
those considerations (e.g., Apple, 1988; Apple & Smith, 1991). Some
saw "technical," non-political curriculum specification and design as
quintessentially American. In a
criticism that might have been aimed at the supposedly bias-free, technically
neutral instructional design community, Wong (1991) noted:
Technical
and pragmatic interests are also consistent with an instrumentalized curriculum
that continues to influence how American education is defined and
measured. Technical priorities are in
keeping not only with professional interests and institutional objectives, but
with historically rooted cultural expectations that emphasize utilitarian aims
over intellectual pursuits (p. 17)
Technologists
have begun to enter this arena with a more critical stance. Ellsworth and Whatley (1990) considered how educational films historically
have reflected particular social and cultural values. Spring (1992) examined the particular ways that such
materials have been consciously constructed and manipulated by various interest
groups to yield a particular image of American life. A study of Channel One by DeVaney and her
colleagues (1994) indicates the ways in which the content
selected for inclusion serves a number of different purposes and the interests
of a number of groups, not always to educational ends.
All of these
examples suggest that technologists may need to play a more active and more
consciously committed role as regards the selection of content and design of
materials. This process should not be
regarded as merely a technical or instrumental part of the process of
education, but rather as part of its essence, with intense political and social
overtones. This could come to be seen as
an integral part of the field of educational technology, but doing so would
require changes in curriculum for the preparation of educational technologists
at the graduate level.
The ideology
of educational technology as a social movement. The examples above suggest that educational
technology has had some success as a social movement, and that some of the
claims made by the field (improved student learning, more efficient
organization of schools, more rational deployment of limited resources, etc.)
are attractive not only to educators but to the public at large. Nonetheless, it is also worth considering the
ideological underpinnings of the movement, the sets of fundamental assumptions
and value positions that motivate and direct the work of educational
technologists.
There is a common
assumption among educational technologists that their view of the world is
scientific, value-neutral, and therefore easily applicable to the full array of
possible educational problems. The
technical and analytic procedures of instructional design ought to be useful in
any setting, if correctly interpreted and applied. The iterative and formative processes of
instructional development should be similarly applicable with only incidental
regard to the particulars of the situation.
The principles of design of CAI, multimedia, and other materials are
best thought of as having universal potential.
Gagné (1987) wrote about educational technology generally, for
example, that
fundamental systematic knowledge derives from
the research of cognitive psychologists who apply the methods of science to the
investigation of human learning and the conditions of instruction (p. 7).
And Rita Richey (1986), in one of the few attempts to pull
together the diverse conceptual strands that feed into the field of
instructional design, noted that
Instructional design can be defined as the
science of creating detailed specifications for the development, evaluation,
and maintenance of both large and small units of subject matter (p. 9).
The focus on science and scientific method is marked in other
definitions of educational technology and instructional design as well. The best known text in the field
(Gagné, Briggs, & Wager, 1992) discusses the systems approach to
instructional design as involving
carrying out of a number of steps beginning with
an analysis of needs and goals and ending with an evaluated system of
instruction that demonstrably succeeds in meeting accepted goals. Decisions in each of the individual steps are
based on empirical evidence, to the extent that such evidence allows. Each step leads to decisions that become
"inputs" to the next step so that the whole process is as solidly
based as is possible within the limits of human reason (p. 5).
Gilbert, a pioneer in the field of educational technology in the
1960s, supported his model for "behavioral engineering" with
formulae:
We can therefore define behavior (B), in
shorthand, as a product of both the repertory [of skills] and
environment:
B
= E · P (1978,
p. 81)
The assumption
undergirding these (and many other) definitions and models of educational
technology and its component parts, instructional design and instructional
development, is that the procedures the field uses are scientific, value
neutral, and precise. There are likely
several sources for these assumptions:
the behaviorist heritage of the field and the seeming control provided
by such approaches as programmed instruction and CAI; the newer turn to systems
theory (an approach itself rooted in the development of military systems in
World War II) to provide an overall rationale for the specification of
instructional environments; and the use of the field's approaches in settings
ranging from schools and universities to the military, corporate and industrial
training, and organizational development for large public-sector organizations.
In fact, there is
considerable disagreement as to the extent to which these seemingly
self-evident propositions of educational technology as movement are in fact
value free and universally applicable (or even desirable). Some of the most critical analysis of these ways
of thinking about problems and their solution are in fact quite old.
Lewis Mumford,
writing in 1930 about the impact of technology on society and culture, praised
the "matter of fact" and "reasonable" personality that he
saw arising in the age of the machine.
These qualities, he asserted, were necessary if human culture was not
only to assimilate the machine but also to go beyond it:
Until we have absorbed the lessons of
objectivity, impersonality, neutrality, the lessons of the mechanical realm, we
cannot go further in our development toward the more richly organic, the more
profoundly human (1962, p. 363)
For Mumford, the qualities of scientific thought, rational
solution to social problems, and objective decision making were important, but
only preliminary to a deeper engagement with more distinctively human (moral,
ethical, spiritual) questions.
Jacques Ellul, a
French sociologist writing in 1954, also considered the relationship between
technology and society. For Ellul, the
essence of "technical action" in any given field was "the search
for greater efficiency" (1964, p. 20).
In a description of how more efficient procedures might be identified
and chosen, Ellul notes that the question is one
of finding the best means in the absolute sense,
on the basis of numerical calculation.
It is then the specialist who chooses the means; he is able to carry out
the calculations that demonstrate the superiority of the means chosen over all
the others. Thus a science of means
comes into being -- a science of techniques, progressively elaborated (p. 21).
"Pedagogical techniques," Ellul suggests, make up one
aspect of the larger category of "human techniques," and the uses by
"psychotechnicians" of such technique on the formation of human
beings will come more and more to focus on the attempt to
restore man's lost unity, and patch together
that which technological advances have separated [in work, leisure, etc.]. But only one way to accomplish this ever
occurs to [psychotechnicians], and that is to use technical means... There is no other way to regroup the elements
of the human personality; the human being must be completely subjected to an
omnicompetent technique, and all his acts and thoughts must be the objects of the
human techniques (p. 411).
For Ellul,
writing in what was still largely a pre-computer era, the techniques in
question were self-standing procedures monitored principally by other human
beings. The possibility that computers
might come to play a role in that process was one that Ellul hinted at, but
could not fully foresee. In more recent
scholarship, observers from varied disciplinary backgrounds have noted the
tendency of computers (and those who develop and use them) to influence social
systems of administration and control in directions that are rarely predicted
and are probably deleterious to feelings of human self-determination, trust,
and mutual respect. The anthropologist
Shoshana Zuboff (1988), for example, found that the installation of an electronic
mail system may lead not only to more rapid sharing of information, but also to
management reactions that generate on the part of workers the sense of working
within a "panopticon of power," a work environment in which all
decisions and discussion are monitored and controlled, a condition of
transparent observability at all times.
Joseph
Weizenbaum, computer scientist at MIT and pioneer in the field of artificial
intelligence, wrote passionately about what he saw as the difficulty many of
his colleagues had in separating the scientifically feasible from the ethically
desirable. Weizenbaum (1976) was
especially dubious of teaching university students to program computers as an
end in itself:
When such students have completed their studies,
they are rather like people who have somehow become eloquent in some foreign
language, but who, when they attempt to write something in that language, find
they have literally nothing to say (p.
278).
Weizenbaum is especially skeptical of a technical attitude toward
the preparation of new computer scientists.
He worries that if those who teach such students, and see their role as
that of
a mere trainer, a mere applier of
"methods" for achieving ends determined by others, then he does his
students two disservices. First, he
invites them to become less than fully autonomous persons. He invites them to become mere followers of
other people's orders, and finally no better than the machines that might
someday replace them in that function.
Second, he robs them of the glimpse of the ideas that alone purchase for
computer science a place in the university's curriculum at all (p. 279).
Similar comments might be directed at those who would train
educational technologists to work as "value-free" creators of purely
efficient training.
Another critic of
the "value-free" nature of technology is Neil Postman, who created a
new term -- Technopoly -- to describe the dominance of technological thought in
American society. This new world view,
Postman (1992) observed,
consists of the deification of technology, which
means that the culture seeks its authorization in technology and finds its
satisfactions in technology, and takes its orders from technology. This requires the development of a new kind
of social order.... Those who feel most
comfortable in Technopoly are those who are convinced that technical progress
is humanity's supreme achievement and the instrument by which our most profound
dilemmas may be solved. They also
believe that information is an unmixed blessing, which through its continued
and uncontrolled production and dissemination offers increased freedom,
creativity, and peace of mind. The fact
that information does none of these things -- but quite the opposite -- seems
to change few opinions, for such unwavering beliefs are an inevitable product of
the structure of Technopoly (p. 71).
Other critics
also take educational technology to task for what they view as its simplistic
claim to scientific neutrality. Richard
Hooper, a pioneer in the field and longtime gadfly, commented that
Much of the problem with educational technology
lies in its attempt to ape science and scientific method.... An arts perspective may have some things to
offer educational technology at the present time. An arts perspective focuses attention on
values, where science's attention is on proof
(1990, p. 11).
Michael Apple (1991), another critic who has considered how
values, educational programs, and teaching practices interact, noted that
The more the new technology transforms the
classroom into its own image, the more a technical logic will replace critical
political and ethical understanding (p.
75).
Similar points have been made by Sloan (1985) and by
Postman's
assertion that we must
refuse to accept efficiency as the pre-eminent
goal of human relations ... not believe that science is the only system of
thought capable of producing truth ... [and] admire technological ingenuity but
do not think it represents the highest possible form of human achievement (p.
184)
necessarily sounds unusual in the present content. Educational technologists are encouraged to
see the processes they employ as beneficent, as value-free, as contributing to
improved efficiency and effectiveness.
The suggestions noted above that there may b e different value
positions, different stances toward the work of education, are a challenge, but
one that the field needs to entertain seriously if it is to develop further as
a social movement.
Success of
educational technology as a social movement. If we look at the field of educational
technology today, it has enjoyed remarkable success: legislation at both state and federal levels
includes educational technology as a focus for funded research and development;
the topics the field addresses are regularly featured in the public media in a
generally positive light; teachers, principals, and administrators actively
work to incorporate educational technology into their daily routines; citizens
pass large bond issues to fund the acquisition of hardware and software for
schools.
What explains the
relative success of educational technology at this moment as compared with two
decades ago? Several factors are likely
involved. Certainly the greater
capabilities of the hardware and software in providing for diverse, powerful
instruction are not to be discounted, and the participation of technologists in
defining the content of educational materials may be important for the
future. But there are other features of
the movement as well. Gamson (1975) discusses features of successful social
movements, and notes two that are especially relevant here.
As educational
technologists began to urge administrators to take their approaches seriously
in the 1960s and 1970s, there was often at least an implied claim that
educational technology could not merely supplement, but actually supplant
classroom teachers. In the 1980s, this
claim seems to have disappeared, and many key players (e.g., Apple Computer's
Apple Classroom of Tomorrow (ACOT) project, GTE's Classroom of the Future, and
others) sought to convince teachers that they were there not to replace them,
but to enhance their work and support them.
This is in accordance with Gamson's finding that groups willing to
coexist with the status quo had greater success than those seeking to replace
their antagonists.
A further factor
contributing to the success of the current educational technology movement may
be the restricted, yet comprehensible and promising, claims it has made. The claims of earlier decades had stressed
either the miraculous power of particular pieces of hardware (that were in fact
quite restricted in capabilities) or the value of a generalized approach
(instructional development/design) that seemed both too vague and too like what
good teachers did anyway to be trustworthy as an alternate vision. In contrast, the movement to introduce
computers to schools in the 1980s, while long on general rhetoric, in fact did
not start with large promises, but rather with an open commitment to
experimentation and some limited claims (enhanced remediation for poor
achievers, greater flexibility in classroom organization, and so on). This too is in keeping with Gamson's findings
that social movements with single or limited issues have been more successful
than those pushing for generalized goals or those with many sub-parts.
It is likely too early to say
whether educational technology will ultimately be successful as a social
movement, but the developments of the past dozen or so years are promising for
the field. There are stronger
indications of solidity and institutionalization now than previously, and the
fact the technology is increasingly seen as part of the national educational,
economic, and social discussion bodes well for the field. The increasing number of professionally
related organizations, and their contacts with other parts of the educational,
public policy, and legislative establishment are also encouraging signs. Whether institutionalization of the
movement equates easily to success of its aims, however, is another
question. Gamson notes that it has
traditionally been easier for movements to gain acceptance from authorities and
other sources of established power, than actually to achieve their stated
goals. Educational technologists must be
careful not to confuse recognition and achievement of status for their work and
their field with fulfillment of the mission they have claimed. The concerns noted above about the underlying
ideology that educational technology asserts -- value neutrality, use of a
scientific approach, pursuit of efficiency -- are also problematic, for they
suggest educational technologists may need to think still more deeply about
fundamental aspects of their work than has been the case to date.
A Note on Sociological Method
The methods typically
used in sociological research differ considerably from those usually employed
in educational studies, and particularly from those used in the field of
educational technology. Specifically,
the use of two approaches in sociology -- surveys and participant observation
-- differs sufficiently from common practice in educational research that it
makes sense for us to consider them briefly here. In the first case, survey research, there are
problems in making the inference from attitudes to probable actions that are
infrequently recognized by practitioners in education. In the second case, participant observation
and immersion in a cultural surround, the approach has particular relevance to
the sorts of issues reviewed here, yet is not often employed by researchers in
educational technology.
Surveys: From Attitudes to Actions
Survey research
is hardly a novelty for educators; it is one of the most commonly taught
methods in introductory research methods courses in education. Sociologists, who developed the method in the
last century, have refined the approach considerably, and there exist good
discussions of the process of survey construction that are likely more
sophisticated than those encountered in introductory texts in educational
research. These address nuances of such
questions as sampling technique, eliciting high response rates, and so forth
(e.g., Hyman, 1955, 1991). For
our purposes here, we include all forms of surveys--mailed questionnaires,
administered questionnaires, and in-person or telephone interviews.
An issue often
left unaddressed in discussions of the use of survey research in education,
however, is the difficulty of making the inference that if a person holds an
attitude on a particular question, that the attitude translates into a
likelihood of engaging in related kinds of action. For example, it frequently seems to be taken
for granted that, if a teacher believes that all children have a right to an
equal education, then that teacher will work to include children with
disabilities in the class, will avoid discriminating against children from
different ethnic backgrounds, and so forth.
Unfortunately,
the evidence is not particularly hopeful that people do behave in accord with
the beliefs that they articulate in response to surveys. This finding has been borne out in a number
of different fields, from environmental protection (Scott & Willits, 1994), to smoking and health (van Assema, Pieterse
& Kok, 1993), to sexual behavior (Norris & Ford, 1994), to racial prejudice (Duckitt, 1992-93). In all
these cases, there exists a generally accepted social stereotype of what
"correct" or "acceptable" attitudes are -- one is supposed
to care for the environment, refrain from smoking, use condoms during casual
sex, and respect persons of different racial and ethnic backgrounds. Many people are aware of these stereotypes
and will frame their answers on surveys in terms of them even when their
actions do not reflect those beliefs.
There is, in other words, a powerful inclination on the part of many
people to answer in terms that the respondent thinks the interviewer or survey
designer wants to hear.
This issue has
been one of constant concern to methodologists. Investigators have attempted to
use the observed discrepancies between attitude and action as a basis for
challenging people about their actions and urging them to reflect on the
differences between what they have said and what they have done. But some studies have suggested that bringing
these discrepancies to people's attention may have effects opposite to what is
intended -- that is, consistency between attitudes and behavior is reduced
still further (Holt, 1993).
Educational Attitudes and Actions
The problem of
discrepancies between attitudes and actions is especially pronounced for fields
such as those noted above, where powerful agencies have made large efforts to
shape public perceptions and, hopefully, behaviors. To what extent is it also true in education,
and how might those tendencies shape research on educational technology? Differences between attitudes and actions
among teachers have been especially problematic in such fields as special
education (Bay & Bryan, 1991) and multicultural education (Abt-Perkins &
Gomez, 1993), where changes in public values, combined with
recent legal prescriptions, have generated powerful expectations among
teachers, parents, and the public in general.
Teachers frequently feel compelled to express beliefs in conformity to
those new norms, whereas their actual behavior may still reflect unconscious
biases or unacknowledged assumptions.
Is technology
included among those fields where gaps exist between expressed attitudes and
typical actions? There are occasions
when teachers do express one thing and do another as regards the use of
technology in their classrooms (McArthur & Malouf, 1991).
Generally teachers have felt able to express ignorance and concerns
about technology -- numerous surveys have supported this (e.g., Dupagne &
Krendl, 1992; Savenye, 1992). Most
studies of teacher attitudes regarding technology, however, have asked about
general attitudes toward computers, their use in classrooms, and so on. And technology itself may be a useful
methodological tool in gathering attitudinal data: A recent study (Hancock
& Flowers, 2001) found that respondents were equally willing to
respond to anonymous or non-anonymous questionnaires in a Web-based (as
compared to traditional paper-and-pencil) environment.
As schools and
districts spend large sums on hardware, software, and in-service training
programs for teachers, the problem of attitudes and actions may become more
serious. The amounts of money involved,
combined with parental expectations, may lead to development of the kinds of
strong social norms in support of educational technology that some other fields
have already witnessed. If expectations
grow for changes in patterns of classroom and school organization, such effects
might be seen on several different levels.
Monitoring these processes could be important for educational
technologists.
Participant Observation
The research
approach known as participant observation was pioneered not so much in
sociology as in cultural anthropology, where its use became one of the
principal tools for helping to understand diverse cultures. Many of the pioneering anthropological
studies of the early years of this century by such anthropologists as Franz
Boas, Clyde Kluckhohn, and Margaret Mead used this approach, and it allowed
them to demonstrate that cultures until then viewed as "primitive" in
fact had very sophisticated world views, but ones based on radically different
assumptions about the world, causality, evidence, and so on (Berger &
Luckmann, 1966). The
approach, and the studies that it permitted anthropologists to conduct, led to
more complex understandings about cultures that were until that time mysteries
to those who came into contact with them.
The attempts of
the participant observer to both join in the activities of the group being
studied and to remain in some sense "neutral" at the same time were,
of course, critical to the success of the method. The problem remains a difficult one for those
espousing this method, but has not blocked its continued use in certain
disciplines. In sociology, an
interesting outgrowth of this approach in the 1960s was the development of
ethnomethodology, a perspective that focused on understanding the practices and
worldviews of a group under study with the intent to use these very methods in
studying the group (Garfinkel, 1967; Boden, 1990).
Ethnomethodology borrowed significant ideas from the symbolic
interactionism of G. H. Mead and also from the phenomenological work of the
Participant
Observation Studies and Educational Technology
The literature of educational
technology is replete with studies that are based on surveys and
questionnaires, and a smaller number of recent works that take a more
anthropological approach. Olsen's (1988) and Cuban's (1986, 2001) work are among the few that really seek to study teachers,
for example, from the teacher's own perspective. Shrock's (1985) study with faculty members in higher education around the
use of instructional design offers a further example. A study by Crabtree et al. (2000) used an explicitly ethnomethodological approach in
studying user behavior for the design of new library environments, and found
that it generated useful results that diverged from what might have emerged in
more traditional situations.
There could easily be more of this
work, studies that might probe teachers' thought practices as they were
actually working in classrooms, or as they were trying to interact with peers
in resolving some educational or school decision involving technology. New video-based systems should allow exchange
of much more detailed information, among more people, more rapidly. Similar work with principals and
administrators could illuminate how their work is structured and how technology
affects their activities. Also, studies
from the inside of how schools and colleges cope with major educational technology-based
restructuring efforts could be enormously valuable. What the field is
missing, and could profit from, are studies that would point out for us how and
where technology is and is not embedded into the daily routines of teachers,
and into the patterns of social interaction that characterize the school and
the community.
Toward a Sociology of Educational Technology
Organizations and Educational Technology
The foregoing
analysis suggests that there is sociological dimension to the application of
educational technology that may be as significant as its impacts in the
psychological realm. But if this is
true, as an increasing number of scholars seem to feel (see, e.g., Cuban, 1993), then we are perilously thin on knowledge of
how technology and the existing organizational structure of schools
interact. And this ignorance, in turn,
makes it difficult for us either to devise adequate research strategies to test
hypotheses or to predict in which domains the organizational impact of
technology may be most pronounced.
Nonetheless, there are enough pieces of the puzzle in place for us to
hazard some guesses.
The Micro-Organization of School Practice
Can educational
technology serve as a catalyst for the general improvement of students'
experience in classrooms -- improve student learning, assure teacher
accountability, provide accurate assessments of how students are faring vis a
vis their peers? For many in the
movement to improve school efficiency, these are key aspects of educational
technology, and a large part of the rationale for its extended use in
schools. For example, Perelman (1987,
1992) makes the vision of improved efficiency
through technology a major theme of his work.
This also is a principal feature of the growing arguments for
privatized, more efficient schools in the Edison Project and similar systems. On the other hand, enthusiasts for school
restructuring through teacher empowerment and site-based management see
technology as a tool for enhancing community and building new kinds of social
relationships among students, between students and teachers, and among
teachers, administrators, and parents.
The increased pressures for assessment and for "high-stakes"
graduation requirements may strengthen a demand for educational technology to
be applied in service of these goals, as opposed to less structured, more
creative instructional approaches.
Technologies
and the restructuring of classroom life.
The possibilities here are several, and the approaches that might be
taken are therefore likely orthogonal.
We have evidence that technology can indeed improve efficiency in some
cases, but we must not forget the problems that earlier educational
technologists encountered when they sought to make technology, rather than
teachers, the center of reform efforts (Kerr, 1989b). On the
other hand, the enthusiasts for teacher-based reform strategies must recognize
the complexities and time-consuming difficulties of these approaches, as well
as the increasing political activism by the new technology lobbies of hardware
and software producers, business interests, and parent groups concerned about
perceived problems with the school system generally and teacher recalcitrance
in particular.
Computers already
have had a significant impact on the ways in which classroom life can be
organized and conducted. Before the
advent of computers, even the teacher most dedicated to trying to provide a
variety of instructional approaches and materials was hard-pressed to make the
reality match the desire. There were
simply no easy solutions to the problem of how to organize and manage
activities for 25 or 30 students. Trying
to get teachers-in-training to think in more diverse and varied ways about
their classroom work was a perennial problem for schools and colleges of
education (see, e.g., Joyce & Weil, 1986).
Some applications
of computers -- use of large-scale Integrated Learning Systems (ILSs), for
instance -- support a changed classroom organization, but only within
relatively narrow confines (and ones linked with the status quo). Other researchers have cast their studies in
such a way that classroom management became an outcome variable. McLellan (1991), for example, discovered that
dispersed groups of students working on computers could ease, rather than
exacerbate, teachers' tasks of classroom management in relatively traditional
settings.
Other studies
have focused on the placement of computers in individual classrooms vs.
self-contained laboratories or networks of linked computers. The latter arrangements, noted Watson (1990),
are "in danger of inhibiting rather than encouraging a diversity of use
and confidence in the power of the resource" (p. 36). Others who have studied this issue seem to
agree that dispersion is more desirable than concentration in fostering diverse
use.
On a wider scale,
it has become clear that using computers can free teachers' time in ways
unimaginable only a few years ago.
Several necessary conditions must be met: teachers must have considerable training in
the use of educational technology; they must have a view of their own
professional development that extends several years into the future; there must
be support from the school or district; there must be sufficient hardware and
software; and, there should be a flexible district policy that gives teachers
the chance to develop a personal style and a feeling of individual ownership
and creativity in the crafting of personally significant individual models of
what teaching with technology looks like (see Lewis, 1990, Newman, 1990a,
1990b, 1991; Olson, 1988; Ringstaff, Sandholz, & Dwyer, 1991; Sheingold & Hadley, 1990; Wiske, 1988 for examples).
Educational
organization at the middle range: Teachers working with teachers. A further significant result of the wider
application of technology in education is a shift in the way educators
(teachers, administrators, specialists) collect and use data in support of
their work. Education has long been
criticized for being a "soft" discipline, and that has in many cases
been true. But there have been reasons:
statistical descriptions of academic achievement are not intrinsically easy to
understand, and simply educating teachers in their use has never been easy;
educational data have been seen as being more generalizable than they likely
are, but incompatible formats and dissimilar measures have limited
possibilities for sharing even those bits of information that might be useful
across locations; and educators have not been well trained in how to generate
useful data of their own and use it on a daily basis in their work.
In each of these
areas, the wider availability of computers and their linkage through networks
can make a significant difference in educational practice. Teachers learn about statistical and research
procedures more rapidly with software tools that allow data to be presented and
visualized more readily. Networks allow
sharing of information among teachers in different schools, districts, states,
or even countries; combined with the increased focus today on collaborative
research projects that involve teachers in the definition and direction of the
project, this move appears to allow educational information to be more readily
shared. And the combination of easier
training and easier sharing, together with a reemphasis on teacher education
and the development of "reflective practitioners," indicates how
teachers can become true "producers and consumers" of educational
data. There is evidence that such
changes do in fact occur, and that a more structured approach to information
sharing among teachers can develop, but only over time and with much support
(Sandholz, Ringstaff, & Dwyer, 1991). Budin (1991) notes that much of the problem
in working with teachers is that computer enthusiasts have insisted on casting
the issue as one of training, whereas it might more productively
"emphasize teaching as much as computing" (p. 24).
What remains to
be seen here is the extent to which the spread of such technologies as
electronic mail and wide access to the Internet will change school
organization. The evidence from fields
outside of education has so far not been terribly persuasive that improved
communication is necessarily equivalent to better management, improved
efficiency, or flatter organizational structures. Rather, the technology in many cases merely
seems to amplify processes and organizational cultures that already exist. It seems most likely that the strong
organizational and cultural expectations that bind schools into certain forms
will not be easily broken through the application of technology. Cuban (1993, 2001), Sheingold and Tucker (1990), and Cohen (1987) all suggest that these forms are immensely
strong, and supported by tight webs of cultural and social norms that are not
shifted easily or quickly. Thus, we may
be somewhat skeptical about the claims by enthusiasts that technology will by
itself bring about a revolution in structure or intra-school effectiveness
overnight. As recent studies suggest
(Becker & Reil, 2000; Ronnkvist,
Dexter, & Anderson, 2000), its effects are likely to be slower, and to depend on a complex
of other decisions regarding organization taken within schools and districts. Nonetheless, when appropriate sup[port
structures are present, teachers can change their ways of working, and students
can collaborate in new ways through technology.
The
macro-organization of schools and communities. A particularly salient aspect of education in
This is another
domain in which technology may serve to alter traditional patterns of school
organization. A particular example may
be found in the relationships between schools and the businesses that employ
their graduates. It is not surprising
that businesses have for years seen schools in a negative light; the cultures
and goals of the two types of institutions are significantly different. What is interesting is what technology does
to the equation. Schools are, in
industry's view, woefully undercapitalized.
It is hard for businesses to see how schools can be so
"wastefully" labor-intensive in dealing with their charges. Thus, much initial enthusiasm for joint ventures
with schools and for educational reform efforts that involve technology
appears, from the side of business, to be simply wise business practice:
replace old technology (teachers) with new (computers). This is the initial response when business
begins to work with schools.
As
industry-school partnerships grow, businesses often develop a greater
appreciation of the problems and limitations schools have to face. (The pressure for such collaboration comes
from the need on the part of industry to survive in a society that is
increasingly dominated by "majority minorities," and whose needs for
trained personnel are not adequately met by the public schools.) Classrooms, equipped with technology and with
teachers who know how to use it, appear more as "real"
workplaces. Technology provides ways of
providing better preparation for students from disadvantaged backgrounds, and
thus is a powerful support for new ways for schools and businesses to work
together.
The business
community is not a unified force by any means, but the competitiveness of
American students and American industry in world markets are an increasing
concern. As technology improves the
relationship between schools and the economy, the place of the schools in the
community becomes correspondingly strengthened.
Relationships
between schools and businesses are not the only sphere in which technology may
affect school-community relations. There
are obvious possibilities in allowing closer contacts between teachers and
parents, and among the various social service agencies that work in support of
schools. While such communication would,
in an ideal world, result in improvements to student achievement and
motivation, recent experience suggests many parents will not have the time or
inclination to use these systems, even if they are available. Ultimately, again, the issues are social and
political, rather than technical, in nature.
Conclusion: Educational Technology Is about Work
in Schools
Contrary to the
images and assumptions in most of the educational technology literature,
educational technology's primary impact on schools may not be about
improvements in learning or more efficient processing of students. What educational technology may be about is
the work done in schools: how it is defined, who does it, to what purpose, and
how that work connects with the surrounding community. Educational technology's direct effects on
instruction, while important, are probably less significant in the long run
than the ways in which teachers change their assumptions about what a classroom
looks like, feels like, and how students in it interact when technology is
added to the mix. Students' learning of
thinking skills or of factual material through multi-media programs may
ultimately be less significant than whether the new technologies encourage them
to be active or passive participants in the civic life of a democratic
society. If technology changes the ways
in which information is shared within a school, it may thus change the
distribution of power in that school, and thereby alter fundamentally how the
school does its work. And finally,
technology may change the relationships between schools and communities,
bringing them closer together.
These processes
have already started. Their outcome is
not certain, and other developments may eventually come to be seen as more
significant than some of those discussed here.
Nonetheless, it seems clear that the social impacts of both device and
process technologies are in many cases more important than the purely technical
problems that technologies are ostensibly developed to solve. As many critics note, these developments are
not always benign, and may have profound moral and ethical consequences that
are rarely examined (Hlynka and Belland, 1991). What
we need is a new, critical sociology of educational technology, one that
considers how technology affects the organization of schools, classrooms, and
districts, how it provides opportunities for social groups to change their
status, and how it interacts with other social and political movements that
also focus on the schools.
Much more is
needed. Our view of how to use
technologies is often too narrow. We
tend to see the future, as Marshall McLuhan noted, through the rear-view mirror
of familiar approaches and ideas from the past.
In order to allow the potential inherent in educational technology to
flourish, we need to shift our gaze, and try to discern what lies ahead, as
well as behind. As we do so, however, we
must not underestimate the strength of the social milieu within which
educational technology exists, or the plans that it has for how we may bring it
to bear on the problems of education. A
better-developed sociology of educational technology may help us refine that
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