Teaching and Digital Technologies Big Issues and Critical Questions

Introduction

This chapter explores the way in which a culture of educational technology-related policy and curriculum change has arguably resulted in minimal improvement in teaching and learning. Moreover, it is argued that such a culture of change has instead simply increased teacher disengagement and thereby resulted in teachers being erroneously labelled by policy actors, administrators and technology enthusiasts as ‘resistant’ to change, ‘luddites’ and ‘risk averse’. Accordingly, this chapter challenges these simplistic labels, and offers a more critical perspective of how and why teachers (dis)engage with technology.

CRITICAL QUESTIONS

The problem of technology-related change

For decades digital technologies have been heralded as great beacons of hope for new and improved teaching and learning. However, despite signii cant investment and policy initiatives, both in Australia and internationally, there has been little change in the fundamental practices or outcomes of schools, teaching or learning. For instance, over the past decade, there has been widespread installation of interactive whiteboards (IWBs) in classrooms largely supported by school-based initiatives. Also, an increasing number of one-to-one laptop and tablet programs have been supported by state and federal initiatives such as the Digital Education Revolution. These and other technology initiatives have exploded into schools but failed to revolutionise education or dramatically improve student learning.