Teaching and Digital Technologies Big Issues and Critical Questions

Introduction

This chapter challenges you to examine the often uncritical debates about the use of digital technologies in classrooms. Many of the articles written about digital technology tend to do so in unrealistic terms, providing ‘state of the art’ examples that suggest educational technology has the potential to completely transform schools for the better. For some time, discussions about educational uses of digital technologies have highlighted the potential benefits of emerging hardware and software for teachers who choose to adopt these tools as part of their classroom practice. Teachers, predominantly from developed western nations, have been seduced to take up these technologies through advertising campaigns sponsored by digital hardware and software companies, influenced by aspirational statements made by political parties and compelled to achieve standards set by teacher registration organisations. These occasions have reinforced the assumption that digital technologies have the capacity to enhance society generally and teaching and learning more specifically.

In contrast, Neil Selwyn’s (2010) critique of schools and schooling in the digital age summarises the tenor of both popular and academic perceptions of digital educational technology, stating that ‘many general discussions of the digital age tend to be informed by a notion that the development of digital technology represents a distinctively new and improved set of social arrangements in relation to preceding “pre-digital” times’ (p. 7). While commenting on the differences in pre- and post-digital social arrangements, Selwyn provides a particular insight, highlighting Woolgar’s (2002) inherent ‘implication that something new, different, and (usually) better is happening’ (p. 3). This ‘pervasive sense of leaving the past behind’ (Murdock, 2004, p. 20) is evident in the work of many researchers in the field of educational technology who are ‘driven by an underlying belief that digital technologies are – in some way – capable of improving education’ (Selwyn, 2011, p. 713). As such, a great deal of effort has been invested in researching the learning potential of new or emerging technologies with many of these research studies focusing on ‘state of the art’ or high-level uses of digital technologies in classrooms (for example, Becker, 2001; Cuban, 2001, 2004; Donald, 2002; Ertmer, 1999; Hattie, 2009; Mumtaz, 2000; Parisot, 1995; Somekh, 2008; Straub, 2009).