Teacher education and ICT: some points for consideration from the UK

One of my sad little hobbies is collecting quotations by politicians and policymakers about the use of new technology in education. In over ten years, I have not come across any policy statement about ICT and education that is not unequivocally positive about the potential of ICT to improve educational outcomes. Moreover, this commitment has been matched by substantial financial investment in ICT in schools. The UK now has one of the lowest pupil to computers ratio in the world (estimated by BECTa recently at between one computer for every 3-4 pupils in secondary schools). However, politicians in the UK have tended to see computers as unproblematic educational miracles, and their inchoate enthusiasm for ICT has not always meshed with teachers’ ideas about the ways in which new technology might be used to improve teaching and learning in schools. Until recently, much investment focused on the provision of dedicated ICT rooms where pupils would gain ‘hands on’ experience of using Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Access etc. There is evidence to suggest that teachers wanted ICT to help them to teach their subject in more powerful, effective and engaging ways, in their ‘ordinary’ classrooms, as and when the opportunity arose. More recently, there has been a shift to investment in data projectors, interactive whiteboards and internet access in ordinary classrooms.