Although the schools are embedded in our culture and reflect its values, the technological changes that have swept through society at large have left the educational system largely unchanged. In the course of 20 years, a dramatic rift has opened between the process of teaching and learning in the schools and ways of obtaining knowledge in society at large, a rift made obvious by the fact that the process of teaching has not changed substantially, even in the past 100 years. (Strommen & Lincoln, 1992)
New Technologies, particularly Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs), have caused profound changes throughout society. A generation of children is emerging that are familiar with multidimensional, interactive media sources that provide immediate juxtaposition and association of diverse images, often originating in widely disparate cultures. They are already immersed in a multimedia 'data storm' (Moshell, 1995). Their understandings and expectations of the world are mediated through their experiences of multimedia and ICTs, and these differ widely from those of preceding generations nourished on linear technologies that separate images and concepts more widely over time, distance and culture. Educating these children using models of teaching and learning that are grounded in concepts of knowing and understanding that are linear and finite will not help them succeed in a technological, global future where multidisciplinary, holistic approaches predominate.
The intense national effort in the UK to preserve or enshrine particular curricula, methods of teaching and learning, and unified systems of schooling, and impose centralised control of these, can be seen an attempt to avoid an uncertain future where knowledge is relative and understandings flexible and fluid; where children will not learn facts but how to negotiate and re-negotiate vast warehouses of unstructured information; where the prime aim of education is the development of metacognitive strategies, and extensive memorising and the development of motor skills are no longer as highly valued.
The conflict between the traditional and the new in English secondary schools is particularly intense in the teaching and learning of Information Technology (IT). Whilst HMI and OFSTED recommend a return to whole class, didactic teaching and other teacher centred strategies that dominate traditional schooling in subjects such as Mathematics, teachers of IT can find these recommendations difficult to put into practice. Teaching and learning IT are inherently constructivist activities, and IT teachers who attempt to implement learning programmes designed from predominantly behaviourist perspectives quickly find that these are less effective. A new pedagogy is needed that is theoretically sound; that goes beyond a cookbook approach; and that guides teachers in using constructivist approaches within an education system grounded in an inimical behaviourist paradigm. Some tentative steps are taken towards this.
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IT has been gradually introduced into the curriculum of English secondary schools during the past eighteen years. In the 1995 revision of the English National Curriculum (NC), IT was identified as a discrete, mandatory subject, although prior to this it was taught as a part of the NC subject of Technology. The predecessors of IT, Information Systems and Computer Studies, were available to those few pupils who had the opportunity and choice to study them in some English secondary schools from the early 1980's. These changes of name and status reflected changes in the subject content and in attitudes towards the integration of IT throughout the curriculum.
IT is a relatively new subject and its introduction, though gradual, has been particularly problematic because:
Some of the above difficulties are due to schools' lack of staff with expertise in teaching and managing IT in secondary schools, and more effective training, planning and resource management would be likely to lead to improvements (Crawford, 1997b), however, some arise from fundamental differences between the traditional approach to schooling and those inherent in teaching and learning IT. I argue below that the traditional approach to schooling is best described from behaviourist/objectivist perspectives whereas the teaching and learning of IT is inherently constructivist, and that this is in itself a source of friction.
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On an epistemological continuum, objectivism and constructivism would represent opposite extremes. (Gergen, 1997)
(Objectivism and behaviourism are similar and supporting paradigms and these terms are generally used interchangeably. In essence, objectivism is a psychoanalytic theory of mind, and behaviourism is its equivalent in psychological learning theory.)
Behaviourist descriptions of the learning process consider only those outcomes which are overt, observable or otherwise measurable, disregarding descriptions of the development of individuals' cognitive and metacognitive strategies and other internal processes as unreliable (Black, 1995; Burns, 1980, p4; Gergen, 1997; Skinner, 1953). Learning is considered to have taken place only if there is an observable change in behaviour; learners are encouraged by rewards and inhibited by punishments.
Skinner (1953) and Crowder (1955, in Child, 1973, p114) developed programmed learning teaching systems based on behaviourist principles. Typically, these were hierarchically structured with tightly specified behavioural objectives; and incorporated provision for incremental learning gains; immediate feedback and regular reinforcement. The design of such learning programmes is highly teacher or designer centred; possible learning outcomes are restricted and learners are given little if any opportunity to develop perspectives or undertake tasks not built into the programme; and the characteristics of individual learners or the context in which learning will take place are often ignored (Brown, 1995; Moshell, 1997; Wilson, 1997).
As a result of the ascendancy of the behaviourist designer centred view of teaching and learning, school teachers are traditional regarded by their pupils as 'gods of knowledge' (Phillips, 1997) who have total mastery of the subject content they teach, and design and control all the learning that takes place within their classrooms. 'The dominant educational paradigm is didactic instruction where learning is viewed as an information transmission process' (Soloway, 1997), and teaching consists of the transfer of knowledge from teacher to pupil. Teachers develop linear sequences of tightly structured, highly focused learning materials, and assess pupils' learning in relation to the specific learning outcomes built into them (Fosnot, 1996, p9). From a behaviourist perspective, the outcomes tested during the assessment process should be only those built into the learning programme by the teacher, and no distinction should be made between identical outcomes whether these are produced by rote learning or as a result of deeper understanding (Julyan et al, 1996, p55).
This model of teaching and learning reflects objectivist assumptions that the world is external, unchanging and structured (Heylighen, 1997; Jonassen, 1997; von Glaserfeld, 1996); and that there is one world with ultimately one valid explanation of it. Consequently, learning is considered to be being told what is known about the objects in this external world and the relationships between them, and teaching is the transmission of this knowledge to passive learners (Fosnot, 1996, p205).
In contrast, constructivists believe that knowledge 'does not exist outside a person's mind' (von Glaserfeld, 1996) and believe that learning is the organisation of the individual's internal cognitions and experiences not the discovery of an external, objective reality. Learners create their own knowledge and understanding through active engagement with realistic tasks in authentic contexts using actual tools, and as there are many learners, there will be a multiplicity of understandings, though these will be moderated through social discourse. Learning is seen as the process of 'assimilation, augmentation and self reorganisation of incomplete mental structures' (Soloway, 1997), and is considered to be most effective where learners are pro-active in and control the construction of their own explanations (Davidson, 1995; Gergen, 1997; Strommen & Lincoln, 1992, p2).
Piaget (1971) believed that knowledge is both 'real' and constructed, that is, that aspects of our common biological development condition our interactions with invariant environmental structures so that our conceptual knowledge and cognitive representations of the world develop progressively through the process of equilibration. Because of these invariant features in our biological makeup and the physical world, there is a common pattern of cognitive development. On-the-whole, constructivists do not share this view expressed in Piaget's earlier work that cognitive development is determined by biological maturation, and entirely reject notions of an invariant, objective world, however, the notion of cognitive readiness or some form of intellectual predisposition is usually assumed. Piaget's description of the role of assimilation and accommodation in the process of cognitive development are recognisable as a constructivist explanation of the learning process (Fosnot, 1996, p11).
Individual constructivists also build their own understanding of constructivism itself, so that there may be as many varieties of constructivism as there are constructivists (Ernest, 1995 quoted in Gergen, 1997). Gergen distinguishes between several types of constructivism, identifying radical and social constructivism as significantly different strands. Radical constructivists give less credence to shared understandings in assessing the validity of knowledge than social constructivists who see consensus between different subjects as the 'ultimate criterion to judge knowledge' (Heylighen, 1993). Social constructivists believe that the shared cultural knowledge that is constructed through collaborative social discourse is 'as a whole larger than the sum of individual cognitions' and that it 'interacts with the individuals who are constructing it', however, radical constructivists would question the congruence of individuals' shared cultural knowledge (Fosnot, 1996, p24-27).
From the constructivist perspective, the role of the teacher and the purpose of learning materials is to facilitate active learning, during which learners construct their own holistic knowledge and understandings, rather than design tightly specified, linear teaching programmes that impose given knowledge structures on the learner (Strommen & Lincoln, 1992). Teachers cannot transfer meanings or concepts direct to passive learners but can only orientate their conceptual construction process (von Glaserfeld, 1996, p7). Learners are expected to have ownership of the learning process, experience with construction of their own knowledge, and self-awareness of the knowledge construction process (Boyle, 1997, p76; Wilson, 1997). There is an emphasis on process rather than specified outcomes, and in these circumstances, it is likely that learning outcomes will be less predictable and may vary from learner to learner.
The role of shared cultural knowledge constructed through collaborative social discourse is an essential part of social constructivism and is valued by radical constructivists as a means of testing the products of individual cognition. Consequently, some form of collaborative learning can also be expected to be a part of the constructivist experience of teaching and learning.
To summarise the argument so far, behaviourists/objectivists believe that the world is 'out there'; that there is only one 'true' world; that teaching is telling learners about this external world; and that learning occurs only when some observable behavioural change is demonstrated. In contrast, constructivists believe that knowledge is 'inside'; that there are multiple individual representations of the world which are moderated through collaborative, social engagement; that teaching is providing authentic tasks, tools and contexts to facilitate each individual's process of conceptual construction; and that real learning is always at a deeper conceptual level than mere behaviour. Evidently, behaviourism/objectivism and constructivism are indeed inimical paradigms, and are at least in contention as alternative and opposite understandings.
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The influence of behaviourism in English state secondary schools is extensive, and has affected the curriculum, teaching methods and assessment; and the evaluation of their performance is entirely driven by behaviourist understandings of what constitute reliable indicators of a successful education.
The behaviourist assumption that teachers are 'gods of knowledge' pervades the hierarchical, centralist system, and consequently, what teachers teach is prescribed in considerable detail through the NC handed down by central government. For classroom teachers this is equivalent to knowledge of the objectivists' unchanging, external world. All state schools have the same or very similar curricula, reducing the flexibility of individual schools to respond to new opportunities and challenges. This conformity is mandatory and is ensured by 'unrelenting pressure from the centre' (Skidelsky, 1997), and reinforced by the new School Standards and Framework Bill which gives 'unprecedented powers to the secretary of state to intervene across the board in the British school system' (Dorrell, S. quoted in Ward, 1997). There is increasing conformity and central control (Mortimore et al, 1997) and non-conformist schools, such as Summerhill, that challenge the mandatory impositions of the state are threatened with closure by OFSTED (Clutterbuck, 1997). It is possible that IT would not now be a part of the school curriculum had a prescriptive, monolithic NC prevented its experimental introduction in some schools during the early 1980's.
OFSTED, HMI and government encourage teachers to adopt didactic, whole class teaching methods focused on the achievement by pupils of tightly specified learning objectives assessed through immediately observable outcomes. This includes teacher-directed exposition, consolidation and review; and provision for sequential, incremental progress; positive feedback; repetition and practice; and formative assessment and remedial exercises (Cockroft, 1982). This approach to lesson planning is very similar to that used in the construction of programmed learning teaching systems based on behaviourist principles.
The success of the transfer of knowledge from teacher to pupils is usually judged by the extent to which pupils can recall this in tests and examinations as 'politicians insist on ... methods which encourage students to regurgitate their received knowledge' (Martin, 1997). These rarely explore pupils' cognition, tending to reward evidence of 'correct' answers whether or not these are memorised or arise from deeper understandings, and as a result, the separation of content from context is prevalent (Brown, 1997). Teachers are driven by 'targets, benchmarks, inspections and action plans' (Wilce, 1998), including pupil learning targets, school performance tables and other quantitative indicators that are used to measure the success or failure of schools, and this is rewarded or punished by public exposure and threats of 'special measures'. There are clear parallels here with the emphasis in the behaviourist model of learning on observable outcomes, encouraged by rewards and inhibited by punishments.
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There are general characteristics of IT that facilitate a constructivist approach (Inge, 1996) and features of teaching and learning IT in English secondary schools that make a constructivist approach the only workable methodology. These are reviewed below.
Because of the rapid and often unpredictable development of IT hardware and software, IT teachers must constantly relearn their subject skills and knowledge, and consequently have great difficulty in maintaining a thorough and comprehensive understanding of the content domain. Moreover, the multiplicity of real exemplars of particular types of software, for example, the plethora of different wordprocessors, means that knowledge of particular operational skills is often less useful to IT teachers than an understanding of the potential functionality of different types of software. In addition, pupils may have access to and better knowledge of more modern IT resources. Consequently, IT teachers cannot be 'gods of knowledge', and they will not have the oversight and understanding in depth and detail needed to design and construct behaviourist programmed learning materials or similar resources for the classroom except where the focus of these is very narrow.
In general, IT teachers have difficulty maintaining the focus of pupils' work, and those who adopt didactic, whole class, teacher centred approaches to teaching IT often have difficulty keeping pupils' attention. Even though pupils may be highly motivated they can be disinclined to sit and listen to the teacher or to wait for other pupils to complete their work as the teacher takes the whole class step-by-step through operational procedures. In addition, IT teachers are less able to restrict pupils' access to only those learning resources and activities that are particularly relevant to the set task. Pupils using IT resources usually have access to the full range of software available and the wide range of features within each piece of software that are provided to meet the diverse needs of many different professional users. As a result, pupils may inadvertently or otherwise use different pieces of software or features of the software that are not relevant to their work, and become distracted or irretrievably stuck. Where learning materials based on traditional systematic instructional design are used, learners tend to deviate from the given sequence or abandon it entirely, preferring to try and make sense of the situation rather than following a series of rigid steps (Boyle, 1997, p13).
Learners apparently prefer to attempt to construct their own understandings and seem to want 'meaningful interaction with real tasks rather than formal drill and instruction' (Boyle, 1997, p13). This is possible because the software tools used by learners are frequently similar and often identical to those actually used in commerce and industry, for example, in English secondary schools pupils often have access to Microsoft Windows and the Microsoft Office suite comprising of Word, Excel, Access, etc. This meets the constructivist requirement that actual tools should be used by learners.
Because IT teachers cannot be 'gods of knowledge' and must anticipate that pupils' attention and focus will wander then they must be prepared to encounter in the classroom areas of their subject content domain that they do not know or fully understand (McKenzie, 1997). Consequently, they must expect to learn at the same time as pupils and to take the lead in learning with them. If pupils follow routes that teachers have not anticipated, teachers will at times accompany them, that is, teachers and pupils will learn together. Furthermore, as there is often insufficient hardware for each pupil to have the sole use of a computer (Goldstein, 1997), pupils are likely to work in small groups of two or three. In such circumstance, pupils will almost always help each other and check learning outcomes with each other, and if these are different some exploratory discussion is inevitable. Pupils are likely to investigate and develop not only their own ideas but the ideas of other group members (Phillips, 1997). Evidently, learning IT is almost always likely to involve an element of collaborative learning, and at a minimum this will be teachers learning with pupils.
To summarise, the only workable method of teaching and learning IT in English secondary schools is constructivist because teachers cannot be 'gods of knowledge' as the content domain and the technology change too rapidly, and pupils may have better knowledge of these than teachers. This prevents detailed systematic planning of the learning process even if this was desirable, and where this is attempted learners appear to reject didactic approaches in favour of engagement with real tasks. Pupils are able to adopt this approach as the actual tools used in authentic contexts are available for pupils' use in the classroom. In addition, there is always an element of collaborative learning.
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What is the impact of using constructivist approaches to teaching and learning in the classroom on an education system which is built on behaviourist principles? It has been suggested that behaviourism/objectivism and constructivism are inimical paradigms, and that the English state school system is heavily influenced by behaviourist understandings, whereas there are general characteristics of IT and aspects of teaching and learning IT that are inherently constructivist. As a result, some dislocation should be expected, and there may be friction. Characteristics of this dislocation and the resulting friction are:
The challenge is to resolve the disharmony between the dominant behaviourist approach to education within the English state school system, and constructivist approaches to teaching and learning IT. Is this possible? It has been argued that theoretically there is fundamental, unavoidable conflict between two paradigms which lead to radically different approaches to teaching and learning. However, IT is taught in schools as a subject, and schools are organised into subject based departments, so teachers must find pragmatic ways of resolving of these conflicts. Unfortunately, this area is not well understood or researched and there are no guaranteed, off-the-shelf solutions available. There is a 'systemic lack of awareness of the appropriate uses of technology' and this is a major impediment to defining new pedagogical practices (Strommen & Lincoln, 1992).
Obvious maladaptive responses to new technologies are to oppose them; to ignore or avoid them; or to think up ways of using them that require little or no adjustment to current practice. The first has a history reaching back to the Luddites and no doubt beyond. The second is observable from time-to-time, for example, the author has known computers that have been delivered to secondary schools remain unpacked and unused for a year or more because the teachers who were to use them did not welcome them. Such anecdotal tales are not unusual. Monaghan believes that the purpose of recent revisions to A-level Mathematics syllabuses is to ensure that the use of graphic calculators is avoided (Monaghan, 1997). The third response demonstrates a lack of integration of IT into studies of other subjects, and this too is not an uncommon practice. A common example of this is the use of a wordprocessor merely to produce a neat printout rather than using it as a tool to assemble and mould written work. Such responses at best 'relegate technology to a secondary, supplemental role that fails to capitalise on its most potent strengths' (Strommen & Lincoln, 1992) and are illustrative of the use of new technology as a crutch rather than a tool (Philips, 1997).
Sellinger (1997) in an article entitled 'Defining a pedagogy for IT', asks 'What does it mean to teach IT? In answering this and other questions, Sellinger takes a 'cookbook' approach, offering 'recipes' for classroom practice, for example, rules are proposed to encourage pupils to develop their cognitive and metacognitive strategies which include:
These recommendations seem reasonable on-the-whole and are recognisably constructivist. However, statements about the comparative value of peer support and teacher support are unsound unless based on unequivocal research evidence. Social constructivists might well consider peer support to be as valuable as teacher support though those who agree with Vygotsky that scaffolding can extend concept development might disagree. Sellinger recognises that ways of developing pupils' cognitive and metacognitive strategies 'need to be formalised and are not currently situated within the IT community of practice'. However, there is no attempt to develop a unified explanation grounded in learning theory and research, although this is perhaps an unreasonable expectation in a short, brainstorming article. More seriously, there is no recognition of the need to describe practical means of restraining intrusions from the prevailing behaviourist system of schooling. For example, it is unlikely that it would be acceptable within the current system of schooling for the locus of control to move away from the teacher if what is meant is control of pupils' behaviour in the classroom; it may be more acceptable for the strict control of learning outcomes to move away from the teacher. In this case, making it clear what is to be controlled by the teacher and what is not may help teachers who use constructivist learning strategies defend their use.
One promising approach to developing constructivist approaches within a behaviourist system is that of minimalism. Observation of people using learning materials based on the principles of traditional systematic instructional design indicated that these materials were not effective as users abandoned them and instead tried to make sense of what they were learning through task engagement. As a result, Carroll (in Boyle, 1997, p102) developed the minimalist approach to the construction of learning materials which seeks to minimise the impact of 'intrusive instructional materials' and support the natural strategies of learners. Minimalist principles were derived for the design of learning materials, and these are (from Boyle, 1997, pp13-14 & p103):
These principles are apparently constructivist but recognise the need for development within the containing structures of systematic instructional design, however, the rigidity and intrusiveness of the traditional approach is minimised. In this case, the domain considered was mainly text based learning material for IT skills and this is not the entire classroom or school context, even so, this notion of accommodating constructivist approaches within minimised behaviourist structures may well be helpful.
It would seem that IT teachers may be well advised to take a pragmatic, minimalist approach and develop constructivist approaches to teaching and learning only within their classrooms and their subject. The utility of this approach is evident if it is considered what a national system of schooling would look like if the constructivist paradigm prevailed. It is possible that it would look quite different, for example, it is unlikely that the subdivision of the curriculum into subjects and the associated organisation of schools into subject departments would be maintained as this does not fit with the conception of holistic knowledge driven by learner enquiry which is unlikely to recognise subject boundaries. To some extent this breaking down of subject boundaries was recognised by early attempts to teach IT entirely across the curriculum and not as a subject in its own right. In addition, age related cognitive maturation might be considered inappropriate and the progression of cohorts of pupils through schools in year groups abandoned. However, whilst a school such as Summerhill may well be effective in 'redefining notions of what constitutes education and learning' in these ways (Clutterbuck, 1997), it is a small school and it is not clear whether a national system of schooling could function effectively without more hierarchical, systematic organisation into subject and year groupings. Perhaps it could, but there are no reliable precedents. Indeed, it is not clear that a theoretically pure constructivist approach to education would necessarily incorporate schools or any other type of educational institute offering formal courses as these move the focus of control away from the individual learner.
It is arguable that constructivist cognitive activity is an unavoidable precursor to deeper understanding and is inherent in all concept development. This suggests that constructivist approaches should be effective in all teaching and learning, and some work has been done in developing these within teachers' classrooms in Mathematics, Science, Computing, Language, and the Arts (Fosnot, 1997; Philips, 1997; Soloway, 1997), but this is often carried out by educationalists who are evangelists for a 'paradigm shift in education' in favour of constructivism (Fosnot, p216). However, it has been argued here that whether or not constructivism offers better descriptions of the process of teaching and learning in general than behaviourism/objectivism, the only workable way of teaching IT is constructivist, and within the English secondary school system probably minimalist.
Whilst rejecting a cookbook approach in defining a new pedagogy for teaching and learning IT in English secondary schools, this approach may be helpful in the short term. Some suggestions for teachers who wish to take a constructivist approach are (synthesised from Brooks, J. G. and Brooks, M. G., 1993; Brown, 1997; Boyle, 1997; McKenzie, 1997; Murphy, 1997; Phillips, 1997; Sellinger, 1997; Strommen & Lincoln, 1992; Wilson, 1997):
These recommendation may well be helpful, and although some case studies have been done, there is a need for more extensive study of their effectiveness in practice. It is not yet clear which recommendations are essential or merely desirable, and it is not always clear what choices there are in putting them into practice. There are suggestions that constructivist approaches do not work for all pupils, for example, it may well be that socially moderated understandings accepted from the wider culture appear to pupils as little different from facts about the external world that they must memorise; learners may become disorientated or lose the focus of their cognition and drift apparently aimlessly; 'it is unlikely that all learners are equally suited to performing their own sequencing, pacing and direction'; and less experience learners may be more at risk than advanced learners (Davidson, 1995). There is an obvious need for better descriptions of a new pedagogy for teaching and learning IT that is well grounded in theory and research to help teachers in English state secondary schools adopt more appropriate strategies in the classroom.
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Teaching IT in English secondary schools is problematic. More effective training, planning and resource management might lead to improvements, however, some difficulties arise because of fundamental differences between the behaviourist paradigm that has extensively influenced all aspects of the English state secondary school system and the teaching and learning of IT. There are general characteristics of IT, and features of teaching and learning IT in English secondary schools that make a constructivist approach the only workable methodology. A new pedagogy is needed that is theoretically sound and that guides teachers in using constructivist approaches within an education system grounded in an inimical behaviourist paradigm. This paper attempts tentative steps towards a theoretical understanding of the problems and examines some of the issues that will need to be resolved. For the present, IT teachers may be well advised to take a pragmatic, minimalist approach and develop constructivist strategies to teaching and learning IT only within their classrooms and their subject. Whilst rejecting a cookbook approach to defining a new pedagogy for teaching and learning IT in English secondary schools, a synthesis of current understandings is attempted as this may be helpful in the short term.
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