The Impact of Technology: Value-added classroom practice [1.3 MB PDF, 95 pages], by Charles Crook, Colin Harrison, Lee Farrington-Flint, Carmen Tomás, and Jean Underwood was published recently on the Becta web site. The report is one of those useful and interesting attempts to get behind the normal generalisations, and to examine what teachers do, what works, and why.
Here is an excerpt from the executive summary.
The study reports an analysis of 85 lesson logs, in which teachers recorded their use of space, digital technology and student outcomes in relation to student engagement and learning. The teachers who filled in the logs, as well as their schools’ senior managers, were interviewed as part of a ‘deep audit’ of ICT provision conducted over two days. One-hour follow-up interviews with the teachers were carried out after the teachers’ log activity. The aim of this was to obtain a broader contextualisation of their teaching. The learning practices that we identified as mediating ICT for learning are presented as a taxonomy. This taxonomy is used to classify the lesson activity reported in the logs. We argue that ICT has reconfigured classroom practice in the project schools in important ways. Among these, we would highlight the following consequences:
- ICT makes possible new forms of classroom practice. This is apparent in three particular respects: (1) the reconfiguration of space such that new patterns of mobility, flexible working and activity management can occur, (2) new ways in which class activities can be triggered, orchestrated and monitored, (3) new experiences associated with the virtualisation of established and routine practices – such as using multiple documents in parallel or manipulating spatial representations.
- ICT creates the possibility of a wide variety of learning practices. Overarching this variety are three central activities which are significantly enriched by the increasingly ubiquitous availability of technologies: (1) exposition which is animated by the opportunity to invoke rich shared images, video and plans, (2) independent research which is extended by the availability of internet search opportunities, and (3) construction which is made possible by ready-to-hand ICT-based tools.
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