Abstract
Governments around the world are investing heavily in computers for students to use at school, including countries as varied as Australia, Libya, Portugal, and Uruguay. Secondary schools in the United States and the United Kingdom have installed millions of computers, reaching a ratio of about four students per computer.
This is the context in which Cedric Cullingford and Nusrat Haq’s book is published. The topic of the book is important in light of the tens (perhaps hundreds) of billions of dollars spent to install and support technology in schools, as well as the need recognized in almost every nation to improve education. The authors primarily explore the question: What was the overall experience of ICT for secondary school students, in particular in relation to the rest of their experience (p. 27)? (Because the book comes from the University of Huddersfield in England the authors often refer to computers, the Internet, and other digital tools as information and communications technology, or ICT, which is the term commonly used in the United Kingdom and European Union.)
The data come from six secondary schools in England. Without much explanation (such as a comparison of England’s national demographics with that of the six schools), the authors declare that, “These six schools, then, can be deemed to be typical of the country as a whole (p. 25).” Perhaps the second author’s Ph.D. thesis, on which the book is largely based, contains more detailed information. In any case, the data on which the work is based include observations in the six schools, responses to surveys by 310 students, and 29 semi-structured interviews.
The book’s major theme is the contrast between students’ uses of computers at home and at school. At home, “the computer is associated with pleasure, both private and shared” (p. 38). Students spend many hours on their home computers (90 percent of the students used a computer at home), nearly all of it for tasks of their own choosing, including playing computer games, communicating with friends, and listening to music. At home students are less concerned than at school whether they are on “approved” websites or whether adults are monitoring what they do. “It’s more private” one student wrote. Students’ home computers are often newer and of higher quality than the ones they use at school.
Students have positive feelings about using computers and say that the devices are time savers. They understand that computers are important, flexible tools. However, according to the authors, students do not clearly understand the value of using computers at school. One girl said, “It could be important because more things are becoming an electronic, whatever.” Another student said that computers are important “to get a good job, because most of the jobs now are to do with computers. If you don’t know how to use computers, you might not get the job you want” (p. 44).
The schools devoted 90 minutes each week to teaching students about ICT; in addition, ICT was incorporated into teaching and learning of other school subjects—but less than one might expect. Only 20 percent of students reported using computers in science classes, for example. The remarkably heavy investment of time to teach ICT seems a clear distinction between British and American schools, because in the latter there is typically no such requirement.
Cullingford and Haq report that “nothing could contrast with [students’ experiences at home] more clearly than the experience of school” (p. 38). At school, computer use is rationed and students often have to share computers. Students perceive little that is playful about using computers in school. Their work with computers is frequently assessed and, according to the authors’ data, much of the required work is rote in nature.
With such findings this book presents a credible—but unsurprising and already well documented—case that computers have not yet dramatically or quickly improved education. For those who do not know much about computers in schools, this is useful information.
The more important direction of the authors’ thinking, however, is less well developed. Students report that school is boring and Cullingford and Haq believe that requirements of the UK’s National Curriculum are a significant part of the problem, emphasizing as they do coverage of material at the expense of engagement, individualization, and compelling purposes for learning. The authors complain that schools are “essentially the same as they were 100 years ago” (p. 97) and believe that ICT now permits “a new way of working, in places unlike the present models of schools” (p. 116).
The last phrase is, literally, the end of the authors’ argument. By focusing on typical schools, the authors document schools as they are—indeed, as they have been for decades. Unfortunately, we must look at atypical schools to see the future. In Maine, for example, every middle school student has had a laptop computer since 2001. In Oregon and Virginia, to name only two states, millions of tests have been administered using computers, allowing the possibility that students can be assessed as they are taught, by using a word processor, a spreadsheet, a computer model, or other digital object. At High Tech High in San Diego, at the Denver School of Science and Technology, or in other schools, one can see new patterns of teaching and learning that routinely take advantage of digital tools. Hundreds of thousands of students in the United States, most of them in public schools, now take at least one course through a “virtual” (online) high school, and 44 states support such new institutions.
The fact is that new ways of engaging students in learning, using ICT in schools, are emerging. Many believe, and the authors will agree, that the reinvention of school, including better uses of ICT, comes none too soon.