A Qualitative Analysis of the Uses of

The Introduction of ICT into Primary and Secondary Schools: A Comparative Report from Six European Countries As part of the EMILE PROJECT A Qualitative Analysis of the Uses of Information and Communication Technology in European Primary and Secondary Schools Mary Simpson University of Edinburgh Mary.simpson@ ed.ac.uk Fran Payne University of Aberdeen f.m.payne@abdn.ac.uk November 2002 “Average schools are hardly ever highlighted. The frontrunners of computer technology can present a frightful, never attainable idol more than a model to evaluate and eventually follow. EMILE schools show the present reality and future of ICT in education – not very promising yet, but not sentenced to doom either. Using ICT in education is not an easy option, by far not a path well travelled, but an adventure worth undertaking. (National Report, Hungary) THE CONTENTS I. II. SECTION 1 Overview and Summary of Findings SECTION 2 Comparative accounts A. National contexts: the National Systems of Education and their strategies for introducing ICT into schools 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. B. France Greece Hungary Italy Norway 4 9 Effects on schools of outside pressure to use ICT (Serge Pouts-Lajus) Locating computers in the schools (Serge Pouts-Lajus) 17 23 C. D. Professional development for teachers in the educational use of ICT 30 Appendix 1 The EMILE research team and earlier Scottish reports Appendix 2 A typology for European educational systems Appendix 3 Two sample curriculum outlines EMILE Comparative Report SECTION 1 INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY OF FINDINGS Introduction The EMILE Project was undertaken by a team of academics and independent researchers from six different countries: France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Norway and Scotland, working together under the leadership of Serge Pouts-Lajus, using a common methodology (see appendix 1). The aim was to observe the ways in which information and communications technology is being introduced and used in primary and secondary schools in order to undertake an intercultural analysis. The methodology was based on a case study approach, the focus in each country being on „typical‟ schools from each country with respect to size and organisation, a key factor being that the schools were not selected on the basis of exceptional use of ICT. In all, twenty-four schools were studied. From each country the participating group of researchers was required to produce a National Report outlining key features of their educational system and national strategies for the introduction of ICT, and the details of the case study work in their schools (report no. 1, Appendix 1). In addition, each country subsequently undertook to write up aspects of the key common features that emerged from the early part of the study as being of importance. The issues included: the location and distribution of the computers within the school; the means by which teachers get useful and reliable information about ICT; ICT as a territory of power; ICT and learning – an object of learning or a tool for learning?; and the net generation. The collation of all the Scottish data under these headings is available in report number 2 in Appendix 1. A shorter version of this report was produced and distributed to all teachers in the participating schools (report no. 3). The final report for the project is due in the spring of 2003 and will comprise contributions from each country summarising different intercultural aspects of the data. This current report has been prepared by the Scottish team to provide SEED with an overview of the cross cultural information available to date, and extends the information already provided by the earlier reports. In section 1 we present a summary and overview of findings. In the first comparative account (A) we have summarised key aspects of the national strategies for introducing ICT in the other five participating countries. In the next two parts of the report (B and C), Serge Pouts-Lajus provides a collation of the cross national information on two of the emergent issues: the location of computers in classrooms and the pressures on teachers to use ICT. In the final part (D), the Scottish researchers have collated summaries of the different approaches to the professional development of teachers. These four short reports comprise this document. A summary of a typology of European educational systems has been provided by Pouts-Lajus and is presented in Appendix 2; an example of a school plan and a national curriculum, from Norway and Hungary respectively, are presented in Appendix 3. Further cross-cultural comparisons due to be produced by the other countries are not yet available. Summary of Findings A. The National Contexts All the European nations have recognised ICT not only as a vital contributor to the wealth generating power in their economies, but also as a potential means of modernising educational practices. In the administration systems the gains for the systems are clear – local and national statistics can be efficiently collected and collated. As is illustrated by an example from Hungary, even the daily marks of pupils can now be automatically registered on their parent‟s mobile phone using the facilities 1 EMILE Comparative Report afforded by a Ministry of Education web site. School staff can be forced to use the electronic administrative systems if the alternative means to their professional ends are blocked – again in Hungary, schools can now only order their books through the web-site of the Ministry. In contrast, in France local autonomy with respect to ICT is such that central data collection e.g. on the numbers of computers in primary schools has not been achieved. Changing the more intimate instructional interactions between teachers and young people has always proved difficult. All the national strategies, whatever the extent of their centralisation or decentralisation, have incorporated strategies directed towards the provision of access to hardware, training in the use of the technology, and the development of support – either technical, professional or in the form of software and curriculum materials. However, while all the national plans appear unimpeachably sensible and rational, as they extended from their central point towards the periphery of the individual school, teacher and classroom, they became diverted by the messiness of reality. Schools are complex social communities, and every plan has to ensure that there is coordination of timeliness in terms of the hardware, training and software. In France, the national government, having learned from a previous initiative that a strong central steer was counterproductive, has devolved responsibility for ICT development to more local municipalities and departments. The result has been fairly large diversities in teacher training provision, but with generally most attention having been given to secondaries, where fairly good pupil:computer ratios have been achieved. Home computer use does not seem to have reached the same high levels among teachers and pupils as in Scotland. The researcher from France looked forward to some of the problems being partially solved by the prospective retirement over the next ten years of 50% of the teachers. We did not find, however, in any of the EMILE schools a very strong link between age and effective/innovative use of ICT among teachers. While it could perhaps be demonstrated that new entrants to the profession have generally acquired basic ICT skills, their confidence and experience in pedagogy is not robust enough for ICT to be more of a central feature of their teaching than that of older, more experienced colleagues. In Greece the introduction of computers has proceeded through the Odysseia project which had the purpose of developing the necessary critical mass of school communities that would integrate ICT into teaching as an everyday tool, and in parallel provide valuable experience for further dissemination. A standard pack of equipment is being issued to all schools and teacher training initiated in order to encourage the use of the technology to deliver a national curriculum. Hungary has recently undergone a political and social revolution. ICT use in schools is seen as both liberating and threatening. „Telecottages‟, publicly available spaces with computers and internet connections are being developed to promote use in rural areas. In the centres of population, computer use in schools is developing apace, supported by a web site set up by the Ministry. This provides not only curriculum materials developed for different subjects, but is the locus of a growing administrative network for the coordination of information on schools, teachers and pupils. One of the main training agencies is the Association of ICT Teachers. The facilities and services which have been developed are mainly for the support of secondary teachers. Italy attempted to introduce ICT though a fairly standardised provision of equipment and training, the latter based on a cascade model (the Programme for Development of Educational Technologies). The aim of the programme was to promote the use of multimedia and telematic tools used by teachers and pupils; to improve the effectiveness and organisation of learning and teaching methods; and to improve the professional skills of teachers in ICT in order for the technologies to be used effectively as a tool in daily duties. Despite these initiatives, there are many teachers who remain untrained, or unwilling to use the equipment as there are in all the other participating countries. Some skilled in home use did not use computers in their professional setting. 2 EMILE Comparative Report Norway ICT is seen as an important investment area for Norwegian school authorities. To ensure that pupils are offered equivalent facilities for learning and development, the law lays down requirements that must be met by the owner of the school as provider of the educational facilities. The municipalities are free to provide facilities in excess of those prescribed by law and to define a higher level of ambition for the local schools. Variations in the investments made by municipalities in school resources depend on: income, structural factors and priorities. Together these have resulted in very different levels of equipment and use of ICT in Norwegian schools. A main plank in their national development programme is support for specific R&D initiatives in schools. In 2002 there were more than 700 R&D projects ongoing which means that the numbers presented in national statistics cover huge differences in the experiences and practices within schools. B. The Effects on Schools of Outside Pressures to Use ICT It appears that in all the participating countries the pressures on teachers to use ICT in their classrooms stemmed less from the desire of the profession to improve the way in which their institutions operate, or from pedagogic considerations, than from the influence of pressures from outside the schools. The pressures were evident from:  Parents and pupils: these pressures came from representative parents associations in most of the countries, with more direct individual pressure in Norway and Scotland where parents have most individual interaction with the teachers in a school. In Hungary, the introduction of parental choice of schools, particularly in the cities, is anticipated to be a potential force for ICT adoption in the future.  Pressure from administrations: the pressures exerted from local or regional administrations, normally responding to a national plan or policy, appear to be universal, systematic and strong. They are particularly focussed on the equipping of schools, teacher training programmes, and the development of educational applications. In the most highly centralised systems, (France, Greece, Italy) schools often had more autonomy than those less decentralised (Norway, Scotland) in which the local administration was closer to the school. While the degree of autonomy of school principals varied, the autonomy of individual teachers was absolute within their practice.  Pressure from politics: the main political pressures came upon schools through the national ICT policies set out by Ministers of Education. The content of the messages all relate to global objectives in connection with the modernisation of the educational system, and bringing the population into the information age for the common good of the economy. The actions relate to the provision of resources for hardware and training. The political mission is not shared by all the teaching force, and the technical and pedagogical difficulties encountered once the political agenda has shifted its focus adds to the diversity of practice and the falling off of enthusiasm even of many teachers who were initially enthusiastic.  Pressures from lobbies: the lobbies are those organisations with vested interests which take part in the public debate on the pros and cons of using ICT in schools: computer firms, telecommunications operators, parents associations, political parties, teacher unions, and researchers. It was a view in the EMILE team that researchers, merely by investigating the use of ICT were exerting pressures on those who took part in our study. The wider European research community generally suggests that efficient use of ICT presupposes a radical reappraisal of the teaching methods currently used in schools. The arguments dissenting to those advanced by the lobbies find expression in every staffroom. The point at which external pressures seem to impact on the school is at the level of the principal. Teachers in all the countries exercised the substantial degrees of freedom they were afforded to choose the degree of their engagement with ICT, based on personal choice, their taste for technology, their 3 EMILE Comparative Report skills and aptitudes and/or their convictions relating to the teaching effectiveness of such technology. The influence of the bureaucratic and administrative systems within education is relatively weak with respect to the activities of the teachers in the classroom. This was particularly true in the Mediterranean countries – France, Greece and Italy. C. Locating Computers in the School The observations confirmed that the location and arrangement of computers was closely related to how they were used. The reasons for computers being located and configured in particular ways varied. In some contexts, schools and teachers had little say – in some national or regional plans technological or economic considerations had dictated standard equipment for standard computer laboratories resulting in a configuration that was the same for all. However, when teachers did have freedom to decide, the decisions tended to be taken on the personal preference of the most enthusiastic teachers – not always beneficial to novice colleagues. In primary schools the computers tended to be located in laboratories (Greece, Italy and Hungary), with elsewhere having some laboratories, but also placements in classrooms up to a maximum of four (Norway, France and Scotland). In most cases the placement in laboratories was related to administrative decisions with respect to economic factors – sharing of peripherals, Internet access etc. However, pressures are being applied on teachers (from inspectors and researchers) to change their pedagogical practices from formal teaching of ICT towards the more integrated use of ICT as a tool in all learning. There was more variety in the locations of computers in secondary schools, with the placement in classrooms being very infrequent. Small numbers are found in teachers‟ bases or rooms; others for pedagogical uses are placed in labs (accessed by all teachers) or specialist computer labs (accessed for ICT teaching), and libraries. In the libraries more free access to pupils was allowed than elsewhere. (Location and Pedagogy in Scotland is dealt with in greater detail in Simpson and Payne, 2002) D. Continuing Professional Development for Teachers in the Educational Use of ICT The uses to which teachers will apply computers in their professional lives will depend on the extent to which they are confident in their ICT knowledge and skills and in the extent to which they have developed valued pedagogical uses for the technology. In this section we look at one of the main influences on this, the contexts which teachers are offered in which to learn and acquire information and develop their skills in ICT uses within the classroom. 1. Formal training programmes a) Centrally planned provision of staff development With the exception of France and Hungary where the responsibility for training was most devolved, there had been strategies on the part of Governments to offer widespread training extensively across the whole teaching workforce. For example in Italy, the Multilab training sessions were organised by the Ministry of Education initially in a pilot project in 1996 for secondary teachers and undertaken by a team of government professionals who acted according to a series of scheduled plans and activities. The teachers who volunteered or were selected to participate in the Multilab training sessions were trained on the general principles of ICT, how to use ICT and web authoring software and how to devise interesting teaching sessions with ICT for different subjects. Teachers were also trained to become Multilab- 4 EMILE Comparative Report tutors and to teach further ICT sessions to a limited number of their colleagues once they returned to their main teaching activities in school. b) Flexible courses for teachers Formal training programmes are offered either as part of professionally organised courses (Association of ICT Teachers, Hungary) or in the form of courses by diverse providers approved by the Government (Scotland). Some courses have to be undertaken mainly in the teachers‟ own time, and/or as part of a requirement for staff to undertake specified amounts of professional development over a specified period (Hungary, Norway). 2. Peer tutoring Formal and informal use is made of knowledgeable teachers to train and/or support colleagues pedagogically and technically. In almost every country, staff with some expertise are given a formal or informal remit to undertake training of their colleagues (ICT teachers, Norway; ICT coordinators, Masterclass, Scotland; Mintel trainers, Italy). 3. The provision of dedicated ICT aides who are not teachers. For example, in Norway if civil workers (people refusing to undertake military service) are found to have ICT skills they are used for technical support in schools; in France, aide-educateurs are young people between 25 and 30 who, since 1997, are able to be employed within the schools as a means of reducing youth unemployment. Funded partly by the government and partly by the individual school, they have been particularly welcomed by teachers in the area of ICT. 4. Professional learning communities of teachers – either within schools, (Scotland, Norway), or within subject areas (Hungary, France) as on line communities. The extent to which there was a positive professional attitude towards learning communally along with colleagues in the school varied. It appeared to be at its lowest level in France, and although there was clearly more general ICT activity in schools in which an enthusiastic staff member supported and encouraged others, there was no instance of a whole school staff acting in a collegial and concerted way to plan a whole school experience for pupils based on the integration of ICT with teaching and learning. In every country the emergence of on-line communities was evident, but engagement with the associated sites was as yet at a fairly low level. Successful sites had been developed by interest groups in France; in Hungary the ministry had provided a national focus for materials and exchange. Teachers often work in relative isolation, either physically because of the closed classroom door, or because of distances from subject colleagues, or culturally because of the autonomous nature of the teaching profession. On-line communities offer an attractive opportunity to engage in wider experiences and debate without moving from the comfort zone of home territory and facing unmanageable confrontation with different ways of thinking. Secondary teachers in particular seemed to experience immediate professional benefits from sharing subject related information. The advent of ICT has severely challenged the professional development strategies within educational systems by requiring fast learning of novel skills and practices. If teachers see themselves as serving only the requirements put upon them from elsewhere in the system, they will be, like many pupils, rather reluctant learners. There was evidence of this in every country. In Scotland there is a new policy within the system, to give schools and teachers more responsibility for the management of the schools and the decision taking once undertaken centrally. If teachers are to become mature as a profession, there is an urgent need for them to generate secure strategies for their own professional learning – ICT is the test bed for this. 5 EMILE Comparative Report SECTION 2 COMPARATIVE ACCOUNTS A. THE NATIONAL CONTEXTS Although computers had been available in secondary schools in many countries during the 1970s and 80s – mainly for „Computing Studies‟, all the countries involved in the EMILE project reported on the formulation of a national plan „intended to bring all the schools into the information society‟ dating from the mid 1990s. All these plans incorporated some degree of central or local government planning and directives but also a high degree of local teacher/school autonomy. In this first section we outline some of the key aspects of each of the educational systems with particular reference to the planning of the introduction of ICT into schools and the centralisation/devolution of management and decision taking. France The French educational system has a reputation for being strongly centralised. The reputation is not entirely justified, as there have been significant steps taken in the direction of decentralisation since 1982. While personnel management and the defining of the curriculum do remain the responsibility of the Ministry, all other aspects relating to the organisation and financing of educational institutions are now dealt with by local authorities at the regional, departmental, or municipal level. In particular, most decisions concerning teacher training and equipping schools with computers are made at a more local level: municipalities for nursery and primary schools, departments for the collèges (secondary schools for ages 11-14), and regions for the lycées (secondary schools for ages 15-17 preparing pupils for the baccalaureate exam). The French government limits itself to setting the primary objectives, motivating and assisting the players in the field, and ensuring that equal conditions prevail all over French territory. Nevertheless, even thus decentralised, the system is organised in such a way that individual schools have very little budgetary or organisational autonomy. A plan (the IPT plan) to equip all schools systematically from nursery schools to universities and to include a computer communication component based on the Minitel system was launched in the mid1980s and fiercely resisted by teachers. The strong central directives and requirements were regarded as being part of the problem, and the subsequent 1997 plan to introduce modern forms of ICT was intended to develop around a two-fold process: the Government would get the movement started and give its support in rallying talks, but respect the movement‟s own subsequent logic and rhythm, handing over to the local administrations to keep the momentum going. Under this plan, the local authorities are currently responsible for developing strategies to equip schools. Some are adopting a system of systematic endowment, with the risk of committing the same mistakes as the IPT Plan and running counter to poorly prepared teachers; others are more concerned about fulfilling the demands and needs of each school on a per-case basis. There are no reliable statistics for how well primary schools are equipped, since the computer situation varies considerably from school to school and the Education Ministry has trouble obtaining the statistics (another sign that the decision-making process is becoming decentralised). By 2000, the Colleges had a ratio of 1 per 14.5 pupils, the Lycees (gen. ed.) 1 : 6.4; and Lycees (tech/voc) 1 : 4.8. Over 90% of these schools had internet access to some degree. The amount of equipment in French schools has increased very rapidly over the past two school years (in 2000, 56% of PCs in the collèges were less than a year old). This tendency will spread, as French culture is very sensitive to the principle of equality. In 2001, an estimated 75% of teachers were equipped with PCs and Internet connections at home, which is a strong indication that the overall educational system has been more or less won over to the educational potential of information and 6 EMILE Comparative Report communications technology (ICT). There are still unsolved issues, however, such as teacher training; equipment maintenance; inequality among pupils due to under-equipped families (only 20% of families with Internet connections); and the practical and academic problems linked with integrating ICT into class routines, among others. It is anticipated that some of these problems will be solved partially by the turnover in the teaching profession: 50% of practising teachers will be retiring over the next ten years. Greece The Greek Educational system resembles that in Scotland in the extent to which it is highly centralised and hierarchical. The administration of the primary schools, for example is undertaken by the Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs, the Directorates of Education (Prefecture), the Education Office (Province ), and the School (Principal, Vice-principal and Teacher‟s Association). „Successive efforts from the Ministry of Education to reform the education system have not produced considerable results since they have mainly addressed the system of university entrance examinations. The recently undertaken introduction of ICT as a teaching tool in the schools has been considered by the Ministry of Education and all the members of the educational community as an opportunity lever for radical change of the educational system, but has not yet produced such results.’ (National Report, Greece) In the late 80s „Information Technology in the form of computer science was introduced into the secondary education national curriculum as a separate school subject with the purpose of familiarising all students with technology and computer applications. Computer labs were gradually constructed in almost all secondary schools and Information Technology was taught by specialist teachers. The introduction of ICT started with a small number of pilot projects, and now is extending ICT to all schools through the provision of hardware and inservice based on the specific uses of ICT in teaching within subjects. In the mid 90s, the Ministry for Education launched the project Odysseia, (Odysseia www.odysseia.cti.gr) with the purpose of integrating ICT into the school curricula. The aim of this project was to develop the necessary critical mass of school communities that would integrate technologies into teaching as an everyday tool, and in parallel, to provide valuable experience for further dissemination. The purpose of the computer use in schools within this framework was to encourage exploratory and cooperative learning, as well as the development of communication skills of students. Initially, 270 (5%) of schools participated, thus gaining access to hardware, maintenance and technical support, the development of networks and the developing software. More recently, a larger scale project has been launched, in which targets have been set for the provision of hardware in all schools which apply for inclusion in the initiative. The aim is to provide all kindergarten and primary schools with a server, 1 to 8 computers (depending on size), a printer, a scanner, a web camera, a digital camera and a data display. Secondary school labs will be equipped with one server, and 10 to 12 workstations and equipment similar to that of the primaries. Inservice training for 76,000 teachers is planned in parallel with this extension of hardware, based on the National Curriculum in which ICT is designated as a teaching tool in every school subject. 7 EMILE Comparative Report Hungary Hungary (pop. 10.2 million ) has undergone a significant political and social revolution over the past 10 years and it is striking the extent to which change and innovation has been welcomed and embraced in everyday life. The changes in the political and economic ideology have caused profound changes in the Hungarian education system since 1995. The increased polarisation in the economic prosperity of individuals has resulted in the increased prestige of education – knowledge and high qualifications are now valued more highly than previously by the labour market and hence by society in general. Reconstruction of the economy requires a flexible workforce, and as a result, the major focus of education has changed with ICT seen as offering new opportunities, but at the same time as threatening to traditional institutional structures. Vertically, the hierarchy of management of the educational system is fairly typical – there is a national, a regional, a local and a school level of administration. The run up to application for EC membership has increased interaction between three Ministries: of Education, Culture and Economy. At the regional and local levels there is no separate administration for education, it is integrated into the general system of public administration. „Local governments are many, their average size is small‟ (National Report, Hungary). General opinion polls indicate a strong support for special programmes for talented students, extra care for the disadvantaged and spending more on student welfare. Objectives internal to the system e.g. improving remuneration of teachers, developing new textbooks and curricula, building new schools, are low on the public‟s priority list. However, one internal objective is widely supported – opinion polls show huge support for equipping schools with ICT. In the schools there has been a steady move from the technology–centred approach in the 1970/80s (compulsory computing curriculum in secondary schools with a focus on programming) to a teaching/learning centred approach (intelligent user skills training). Information Technology is now a compulsory discipline for pupils ages 12-14 (primary grades) and age 15 (secondary). The introduction of modern computers was promoted by the Schoolnet Office of the Hungarian Ministry for Education between 1995/97 with funding from the World Bank and PHARE (The Socrates Project of the EU) and the Soros Foundation. In 1999 there was a significant government initiative to connect all secondary schools (N=700) and 30% of primary schools (N=400) with Internet connections. Schools which are members of the Schoolnet receive free 24 hour Internet connection (mainly ISDN), a computer laboratory with up to 20 PCs and a server, a software and printed manual package called Internet Starter‟s Kit. The Schoolnet office employs a large group of subject specialists part time who create a weekly updated, authentic content-rich web site, which is increasingly popular with secondary teachers. However, the Hungarian Schoolnet is not geared towards the interests and needs of primary schools and teachers. One example of an initiative that affects community life but is also extremely beneficial for the spread of ICT in schools is the development of telecottages. These are publicly available spaces furnished with Internet-connected computers and support personnel, a facility also called "telecentres" or "civil house" in other countries. In small settlements far away from administrative and cultural centres, these telecottages are considered vital: they make basic services easier accessible and provide locally relevant information screening and filtering Internet-based information. These databases and communication channels are seen as increasingly important for teachers and students who do not benefit from local libraries, museums, and science centers or grants information agencies. "These telecottages could become the far-reaching arm of the central government that would give rather than take away." (Gyozo Kovács quoted by Bihari and Bólyai, 2000, p. 12). In Hungary, the movement was launched in 1993 with one "pioneer" institution opened in the village of Csákberény on private initiative. The movement 8 EMILE Comparative Report rapidly spread and by the summer of 1999 100 telecottages were in operation. According to their association, the number of them will be doubled by 2000. Within five years, 500-800 telecottages are planned to be opened with about 1500 satellite offices. These units will remain independent and owned by local NGO-s who assure that the needs of the community are duly served. Accessibility, validity of content and monitoring of results and needs are identified as key concepts of the national policy. The undernoted summarises some of the key features of the Hungarian implementation programme. Several Hungarian institutions of higher education and research have participated in the major European research and innovation project, IST (Information Society Technologies - A Programme of Research, Technological Development and Demonstration under the 5 th Framework Programme. http://www.cordis.lu/ist). A special emphasis was placed on computerising vocational education. (Results are summarised in English at www.minerva.hu/leonardo) Computerization of school adminsitration and data flow between the Ministry of Education, regional and local school authorities and schools was introduced as an experiment in September 2000 and is now a standard data collection method. An interesting new service offers parents a unique information service to keep track of their children‟s marks (www.suli.info.hu) SMS (mobile phone) messages are sent once per day to subscribing parents through the digital marking book of the school which teachers must keep daily up to date with marks ranging from 1 for insufficient through to 5 for excellent performance. The school database, which also serves as „an excellent quality monitoring tool for head teachers and supervisors’ is kept by the school clerk. The ordering of school books can now only be done electronically, and despite initial resistance and confusion, schools have learned to operate the system. The Hungarian Schoolnet website (www.sulinet.hu) is currently being remodelled to act as an educational portal as well as information agency. Basic ICT skills are taught at all Hungarian institutions of higher education. It is planned to include ECDL in the graduation requirements from 2003. Regulations for compulsory ICT skills examinations are likely to be the same as compulsory language examination requirements already in place: a basic level exam for college and a medium level exam for university graduates is required for obtaining a degree. Teaching and research centers for educational technology and ICT are currently being established. The UNESCO Chair for ICT in Education, funded at Eotvos University, acts as a catalyst for the introduction of computer culture in teacher training. (http://www.edutech.elte.hu) Testing of ICT-based teaching and examination packages, multimedia teaching aids and teacher (re)training programs - based on results of the Hungarian team of the OECD project, "ICT and the Quality of Learning". (http://bert.eds.udel.edu/oecd) is continually undertaken by the Association of ICT Teachers (Hungarian abbreviation: ISZE) Increased support for school libraries to act as knowledge centres through regular grants for hardware and software through grants and training programmes. - - - - - All these objectives are important but not sufficient – the EMILE case studies revealed that there are still many problems that need to be addressed. For example, the level of computer access is considered the reason that a decade of ICT promotion has left a proportion of teachers unmoved. About 70% who attend inservice training courses only do the basic module – a 30 lesson (45 mins.) course which deals with only basic skills. 9 EMILE Comparative Report Italy/Sardinia At the time of the observation and writing for the EMILE research project the Italian education system had undergone administrative devolution of the school system that now depends on each region for partial administration of their financial resources. Schools have acquired budgetary and organisational autonomy but only if they comply with certain numerical parameters (i.e. they must have minimum 600 to maximum 900 pupils). Although the curriculum still remains under the responsibility of the Ministry of Education schools have acquired a certain degree of flexibility in the re-organisation of their curricular plans with educational activities that go beyond the national curriculum. However, the management of the employment and training of teachers still remains centralised as well as the provision of computers and technical equipment to schools. This obstructs the flexibility gained with new educational activities and constitutes a great obstacle to headmasters' willingness to improve the working structure of their school. Initially Computer Science was introduced in Technical Schools as an option in 1967. In the '80s the teaching of Computer Science in mathematics and physics was also introduced in other secondary schools on an experimental basis through the National Plan for Computer Science. The National Plan comprised the implementation of computer labs in most secondary schools. The situation in preschools, primary and middle schools was a little bit different. It varied greatly because the investments were scarce, less systematic and largely dependent on local resources. During the mid-90s the use of ICT in all schools at all levels was finally introduced through a National Plan elaborated by the Ministry of Education. In 1996 through the MULTILAB pilot project the Programme for the Development of Educational Technologies (PSTD) was launched and this provided 141 schools throughout Italy with ICT, although it was mainly schools in provincial capitals and some larger cities which participated. In 1997 the Programme was extended to all Italian schools. ICT became the main focus also of a plan of education reform and renovation of Italian schools including the provision of advanced technological equipment. Following an agreement with RAI, the national television network, about 6000 schools received a digital satellite dish which allowed teachers to keep informed and updated with training courses organised by the Ministry of Education as well as educational projects on ICT. Information, telematic and television technologies were distributed and used at different levels. A major problem encountered during the phase of technological equipment of Italian schools had been the arrangement of, and access to multimedia equipment of schools. In this respect, different solutions have been suggested, among which: a) multimedia labs for all students in a class; b) classrooms equipped with a few multimedia workstations to allow team work; c) classrooms equipped with only one multimedia workstation to allow media-assisted classes; d) the implementation of service centres. The aims of the PSTD programme had been to: a) promote the use of multimedia and telematic tools in various working environments among students and teachers; b) improve the effectiveness and organisation of learning and teaching methods; c) improve the professional skills of teachers in using new technologies in order to have access to tools and services for their daily work. When the Programme reached its completion in the year 2000, the situation with respect to computer equipment of Italian schools was as follows. In relation to multimedia workstations in schools there was a ratio of approximately 1 computer to 30 students in less equipped schools and a ratio of 1 computer to 10 students in schools that were better equipped. At a national level there were approximately 250,000 multimedia workstations. With regard to Internet connection, all Technical and Vocational schools had Internet connection, while 90% of Lycees and 75% of elementary and lower secondary schools (i.e. middle schools) were about to have it implemented. Courses on basic computer 10 EMILE Comparative Report literacy had been organised in over 13,000 schools and approximately 450,000 teachers have been trained Following the European Plan (the European Action Plan for the Information Technology Society) that was adopted by the European Commission on May 24, 2000 and by the EU Council of Ministers on June 20, 2000, the Italian Plan for the Information technology Society envisaged the creation of 500,000 new fixed or mobile workstations over the next three years. Starting from 2001, each year all the equipment will undergo routine maintenance and upgrading while 25% of machines will be replaced. In addition, the cabling of schools has become a major goal. The aim is to create school networks with an adequate number of access points, equip each school with the necessary devices for the school network and for accessing external networks and supply ISDN connections. Despite these initiatives there are many teachers who remain untrained, or unwilling to use the available equipment. For example, in the EMILE schools, the teachers who were not trained during the Multilab sessions and those who did not have computer skills were very skeptical about the utility of the Internet. From the interviews it appeared that their main justification for not using ICT was that they did not believe in the pedagogical validity of ICT and thought that ICT were part of a bigger plan intended to „commoditise‟ education and plunge schools into the technology market. Some of the teachers who criticised the organisation of the Multilab project had their own computers at home and were quite computer skilled. One teacher, for example, was even enrolled on an online university course on information technologies in education. Some other teachers really lacked computer skills and openly declared that they felt quite frustrated that they could not receive free access to ICT knowledge and training and that they had to pay for private courses to do so. Norway Norway is a highly developed society with one of the highest levels of education in Europe. Education for all is a basic precept of Norwegian educational policy. All residents have an equal right, in a lifelong learning perspective, to education, regardless of where they live, social and cultural background and possible special needs. The Norwegian parliament (the Storting) and the Government define the goals and decide the budgetary frameworks for education. The Ministry of Education, Research and Church Affairs is Norway‟s highest public administrative agency for educational matters, and is responsible for implementing national educational policy. A common standard is ensured through legislation and through national curricula. In each of the 18 counties, a branch of the National Education Office represents the central government at the regional level. In recent years considerable responsibility and decision-making authority has been delegated from the central government to municipalities and county authorities. Individual municipalities are responsible for running primary and lower secondary schools, while county authorities have responsibility for upper secondary schools. Within the framework of statutes and national curricula, municipalities, schools and teachers are able to decide what learning materials to use and what teaching methods to adopt. Each school has a head teacher as well as various boards and committees. As a result of Norway‟s scattered population, forty per cent of primary and lower secondary schools are so small that children of different ages are taught in the same classroom. Primary and lower secondary levels are often combined in the same school. Upper secondary education embraces all courses leading to educational qualifications above the lower secondary level and below the level of higher education. Since the reform in 1994, everyone between the ages of 16 and 19 has had a statutory right to three years‟ upper secondary education leading either to higher education or to vocational qualifications or partial qualifications. 11 EMILE Comparative Report The Ministry established a national development centre in 2000 to coordinate development and evaluation activities for primary and secondary education. The centre is responsibly for tasks carried out by the National Centre for Educational Resources, the National Examination Board and parts of the Ministry of Education, Research and Church Affairs. ICT is seen as an important investment area for Norwegian school authorities, and is seen both as a pedagogical tool and as a means of enhancing the development of expertise, collaboration, co-ordination of activities, internationalisation and the retrieval of information. A nationwide plan was drawn up in 1996 for ICT equipment and supplementary courses for teachers in primary and secondary education. In 2000, a new ICT plan was made to follow up this work. Within the Norwegian school system, municipalities, schools and teachers are able to decide what learning materials to use and what teaching methods to adopt within the framework of statutes and national curricula. To ensure that pupils are offered equivalent facilities for learning and development, the law lays down requirements that must be met by the owner of the school as provider of the educational facilities. The municipalities are free to provide facilities in excess of those prescribed by law and to define a higher level of ambition for the local school. There are three primary causes of the variations in the investments made by municipalities in school resources: income, structural factors and priorities. These factors together have resulted in very different levels of equipment and use of ICT in Norwegian schools. The Ministry of Education has also established an institute for ICT and education (ITU), to strengthen R&D in the pedagogical use of ICT in education. The Ministry of Education has also given direct financial support to local schools that are developing new ways of improving educational methods, including ICT. In 2002 there were more than 700 R&D projects going on in Norwegian schools. The teacher training colleges, universities and other higher educational institutions have also initiated different R&D projects on the use of ICT as a pedagogical tool and as a means for different objectives. This means that the numbers presented in national statistics cover huge differences in the experiences and practices within schools. The availability of ICT equipment has been increasing from 30 students per computer in primary schools in 1995 to 13 in 1999. In lower secondary school from 20 students in 1995 to 9 students in 1999, and in upper secondary school from 8 students per computer to 4 in 1999. According to SITES (1999), the highest number of students per computer in a Norwegian county at primary level was 19, and the lowest 10 at the turn of the century. The differences between the counties give an illustration of the variations in the investments made by municipalities in schools. However, the ratios illustrate that the authorities typically prioritise secondary and upper secondary schools in their investment plans. Central Government priorities for the future have been set out in the ICT Action plan 2000-2003. This plan focuses on pedagogical facilitation, ICT as a subject and ICT integrated in other subjects, development of teacher competence, research and development, organisation, infrastructure and cooperation. The learner is seen as the subject, and the goal is to develop and exploit ICT in teaching resources and the learning environment in order to create the best learning situation for the learner. In 2001-2002, all lower secondary schools in Norway were given an additional 10,000 n.kr. to use for their Internet connection fee. According to the ICT action plan national statistics indicate that computer equipment is usually kept in the classroom at primary level, while at lower secondary and upper secondary levels there are specific computer rooms. In order to qualify teachers for the use of ICT in education, there have been an increasing number of flexible study arrangements such as distance education, internet-based studying, decentralised studying and part-time studying. The development of such programs has had financial support from the Ministry of Education. As an illustration of one local arrangement, under the school net system, the 140 schools in Oslo are divided into ten zones. The ICT responsible teachers in each of these zones meet four times per year 12 EMILE Comparative Report with the municipal ICT expert to discuss common problems and give advice to the central authority on policy – e.g. about courses the teachers need, and suggestions they may wish to make about new priorities in the action plan for the municipal ICT plans and goals. The central ICT staff should help the schools with buying equipment, but this turns out to be more expensive than if the school can buy this directly themselves. The schools have some foreign language students from another other school section. This is part of an Inner city action plan with its own budget and money. Some of the money follows the students when they are moved to other schools, and a part of this is used to fund ICT equipment and teacher resources for this group of students. The school director of Oslo has established the city school net system and an ICT-center with a staff that is meant to serve all schools through the Intranet. The central staff group is supposed to service a helpdesk for the 140 schools. According to the local ICT staff, the centralised helpdesk support does not function very well for their schools. The e-mail system for the students and the teachers broke down in August, and the system was still not working in October. The ICT staff at one school says that “The City school net is not planned with the staff capacity to meet the needs for helpdesk support. Compared to the private sector, the schools have way too low a capacity for the ICT support we need”. The ICT person responsible is doing most of the work, and prioritises the most complicated problems. One problem is that the school net has no filter, and no desktop protection program. This means that all the students can find whatever they have a mind to find on the Internet. They can also change the main pages on the computers and this leads to many hours of “clearing up” every day for the ICT responsible teachers. A factor raised by the Norwegian contributors was the extremely low level of teachers‟ home computer use. The costs of computers in comparison with teachers‟ salaries prohibited general purchase, and the diversity of access in schools made access one of the key factors limiting the advance of professional use. 13 EMILE Comparative Report B. The Effects on Schools of Outside Pressure to Use ICT Serge Pouts-Lajus (OTE, France) Today, we can consider that in all European Union countries, virtually every secondary school and most primary schools are equipped with personal computers (PCs) that are used for pedagogical purposes and are accessible to pupils. Some of these PCs are connected to the Internet. It is easy to monitor the advance of this wave of equipment from year to year through the statistics produced by EU member states and the relevant regional authorities. Some of the data is compiled by the European Commission. Our purpose here is to analyse the diffusion process from a qualitative point of view only, and to identify the main causes of it. The universalization of new information and communications technologies (ICT) in schools is an expression of more than just the desire of teaching professionals to improve the way their institutions operate. It is not just a result of the determination of players within the education systems, nor is it substantiated by pedagogic considerations alone. The observations made within the framework of the EMILE Project confirm a hypothesis that has already been put forward and that will surprise no one: the greatest pressure brought to bear on schools and the players within comes from factors outside the scholastic environment. The phenomenon is so widespread that it seemed necessary for us to start our analysis there, by asking three questions: What kind of pressure (form and content) from the outside is exerted on schools to prompt them to acquire ICT equipment and develop the teaching potential of ICT? What are the direct and indirect effects of such outside pressure on the behaviour of the players involved (administrators, teachers, and pupils)? Beyond the fact that such outside pressure seems to occur to approximately the same extent everywhere in the EU, what individual differences may be observed with respect to the pressure "content" and the form it takes, or to the way teaching staffs react to it? The outside pressure on schools is open, strong, and continuous. It has four main sources: Parents and pupils the regional and national school administrations (these may be considered as outside sources for our purposes, since we are concerned with the schools themselves, and even more specifically, with the classes), political authorities at the local, national, or European levels, and a miscellaneous collection of variously motivated groups that we will call "the lobbies". We will describe these pressures successively in terms of form and content from a general viewpoint and go on to clarify existing variations as a function of the specific context observed. We will then show that there are also pressures from within the schools to use ICT. School directors, teachers, and pupils can often be advocates for the use of ICT to varying degrees, although their motivations should not be confused with those of outside players. In principle, teachers should only give in to outside pressure if they themselves are convinced of the educational utility of ICT and feel capable of passing along the benefits to their pupils. However, along with the other players in schools, they are the main targets for outside pressure and they are the first to feel the effects so, in one way or another, their attitude to ICT can be a reaction to outside pressure even as it reflects their personal convictions. 14 EMILE Comparative Report Pressure from parents and pupils In all EU member countries, parents can obtain appointments with teachers or school director upon request. Sometimes group meetings are organised. Either way, parents can make their demands or complaints and express their wishes on all sorts of subjects, in particular in the area of ICT. They can request more equipment and more types of use, for example, when they feel that these are insufficient. Logic would dictate that such requests would come from parents who, lacking such equipment for their families, worry that their children might be deprived of learning what are considered to be essential skills. It would also dictate that they would be addressed to teachers who don't use the equipment and to ill-equipped schools. But reality, such as we observed it, does not obey clockwork logic. In general, parents intervene very little in the area of ICT on an individual basis. The families with more justification for doing so also belong to the lower sociocultural categories, where children's schoolwork is less supervised and there are fewer contacts with the schools. As for the others, ICT is rarely a priority for them. So, parental pressure for using ICT is rarely brought to bear on an individual basis. This is worth stressing, because it is what differentiates Europe and the United States where parents, either individually or collectively, exert a sometimes considerable influence in the school. We saw this a few years ago during the Net Days initiative, with parents themselves taking charge of installing computer equipment in their children's schools. In Europe, the schooling establishment is less permeable to outside influence - given a few qualifications that will be explained further down. In European countries, parental pressure with respect to ICT is manifested especially through the representative parent associations at a local or national level. In countries such as France, Italy, and Greece, not very many families have computer equipment, so associations push for more equipment in schools, computer training for teachers, and introductory classes for the pupils. In countries such as Scotland and Norway, where more families and schools are equipped, parents' associations push for the same, but with an emphasis on quality use. How these demands are taken into consideration depends on local conditions and how good a relationship parents have with teachers in the school. This will of course depend on the people involved and on their ability to negotiate and work together, but also on tradition and the role assigned to parents by the teaching establishment. In France, for example, the relationship between the school and parents is traditionally a difficult one; according to the principles of state education in France, school should "emancipate" pupils from their parents, intellectually and morally speaking. As French philosopher Alain (Emile Chartier) said, "The purpose of school is to liberate children from their parents." French tradition leaves very little room for cooperation between parents and school. It protects teachers from individual and group parental pressure, particularly where ICT is concerned. The situation is different in countries like Norway or (especially) Scotland, where parents have a steadier and more peaceful relationship with the school. At Norwegian primary school NP1, one family has put its computer equipment at the disposal of a group of pupils for doing assignments that required powerful hardware; at primary school NP2, they are considering giving parents access to the computer room; and at secondary school NS2, some computers have been donated by the parents of pupils. All four Scottish schools we observed have a good relationship with parents. Secondary school ES1, for example, is very open to the outside, and to parents in particular, who can use the available computer equipment by arrangement (cybercafé). It's worth noting, though, that in Scotland as well as all the other countries, most teachers are not ready to accept systematic communication with parents by e-mail. An additional pressure on the schools comes from the students themselves. Young people are aware that the technology has great power and will have significant presence in their future lives. In every country the sales of ever more sophisticated domestic equipment to households with young members 15 EMILE Comparative Report indicate they are significant drivers of its general use. This has been described as a strategy for acquiring „cultural capital‟, i.e. children learning to use computers in the home with the intention of acquiring expertise which is valued in relation to its relevance for future life and employment. Just as the ICT has entered the professional world of teachers in which a culture already exists, which is somewhat resistant to and confused by its intrusion, so too the technology enters an already existing social culture of students, where its reception is rather different. Recent studies have focussed on the „techno-popular culture‟ of young people, and in particular the ways in which the modern computer has been appropriated into the already existing complex social worlds of the young. In these worlds the acquisition of computer expertise as „social currency‟ is an activity in which some sub-groups – usually male - invest significant time and energy. This aspect of the enthusiastic appropriation of technology by young people has little resonance with the formal uses of ICT in schools, where the teachers‟ purposes and aims in acquiring skills and in teaching their pupils these skills are so very different. In every country we found examples of enthusiastic pupils who knew more about the uses of technology than their teachers. Pressure from administrations Unlike parental pressure, which is variable and divided, pressure from the administrations that manage education systems for schools appears to be universal, systematic, and strong. It shows up in all EU countries in three main forms: the equipping of schools; teacher training programmes; and the development of educational applications. For any one of these three forms, the administration in charge (national or regional) is likely to intervene in the form of recommendations to school directors and teachers. Our interviews with both are concordant. Most administrative recommendations are conditional with respect to availability, the school level, and the material means that are necessary for implementation. The content and form of these recommendations depend heavily on the general organisation of education systems, so they vary considerably from one country to another. The form the recommendation takes and the effect of the administrative pressure on schools depend on a number of things. Based on our observations, the most important ones are as follows: the overall structure of the education system (national vs. regional); the organisation around the specific ICT strategy in terms of equipment, teacher training, and usage, and how responsibility is shared among the different levels of the hierarchy; how autonomous the schools are in the areas that matter for ICT: investment, teacher recruiting and training, recruiting specialised staff, etc.; and how autonomous teachers are with respect to teaching methods. Rather paradoxically, in countries with a centralised national education system, such as France, Greece, or Italy, the administrative pressure on schools can appear weaker than in a more decentralised country like Norway. There, the administrative authority is very close to the schools and can also be more restrictive. For our purposes, we need to pay particular attention to possible discrepancies between the overall organisation of the education system and the way ICT usage is organised. In a centralised system like France, for example, the strategy for acquiring computer equipment and providing computer training for teachers is dealt with at a regional level (the Academies). The content of the national and regional strategies, depending on whether they are more systematic (same treatment for all schools and all teachers in Scotland) or more experimental (support for pilot schools or regions in Hungary), is an important factor in how the administration responds and applies its pressure on the schools. 16 EMILE Comparative Report School directors play an intermediary role here: the administration depends on school directors to present its ICT strategy and put it into application. This is why the school autonomy parameter is so important, because it is what determines the director's freedom of action. Of the six countries visited, Scotland appears to be the one where school directors have the most autonomy and France, where they have the least. In the first case, the director receives the administrative pressure, reformulates it, and passes it on the teachers; in the second, the director merely communicates the directives received from administrative superiors. In Scottish schools, there are levels of authority (Headteacher, Deputy Headteacher, ICT Coordinator, Principal Teacher, Teacher) that are used by the executive office as instruments for management, in particular for ICT matters. These do not exist in French schools, where the director is alone with little authority over the teaching staff. Of course, just how autonomous the teachers are depends on regulations in the individual country. There is no EU country where the teachers may be forced to take computer training and use ICT. On the other hand, plans are being studied for requiring future teachers to have a certificate in the subject, such as the ECDL (European Computer Driving License). In France, they are introducing a certificate of qualification (the B2I, Brevet Informatique Internet) that pupils will be required to take in primary school, which might be considered as indirect pressure to induce teachers to use ICT. The degree of teacher professionalisation and autonomy is also an important parameter. In countries like Scotland and France, where teachers are recruited at high qualification levels, their autonomy appears to be greater than in Italy or Greece, although Scottish directors have much greater authority than French ones. The accounts given by French teachers (see in particular those from the FS1 and FS2 collèges) are very indicative of the equivocality of the administrative pressure they are subjected to. Strict orders concerning usage are passed along to all administrative levels; before complying, however, the teachers are careful to point out that they are the ones in control over the teaching methods they use. Pressure from politics Just as in most developed countries, national policy has been in favour of ICT in the school for many years in each of the six countries observed. The main lines of the policy are decided at the government level, made public by the Education Minister, and implemented by the central administration; the practical effects of the policy are felt at the school level. Official statements and public debates do have the effect of putting pressure on the players in the education system, however, and sometimes considerably. National ICT policies include the standard components: equipping schools with computers and Internet access; training teachers and encouraging utilisation; occasionally supporting the production of multimedia content. In some countries (France, Norway, and Scotland in our sampling), ICT policy is also expressed through independent regional policies, especially where equipping schools is concerned. In France and Norway, decisions on spending and choosing equipment are made by the local political authorities. The Besançon and Oslo municipalities, for example, have both instated systematic policies for equipping schools that appear to be very restrictive for the teaching teams who must comply with them. As the centre for making decisions gets closer to the place where these are applied, their efficiency increases, along with the pressure exerted by the local authorities on the players in the schools. The content in the messages conveyed by political authorities at both national and regional levels often refers to global objectives in connection with modernising education and bringing the population into the information society. Purely pedagogical considerations usually are secondary. This tendency is even exaggerated in statements issued by the European Commission to promote e-learning, since the 17 EMILE Comparative Report Commission is not directly confronted with the implementation of its own directives. When they reach the schools, these political orientations give rise to controversial debates. The teachers find that the political authorities have given them the responsibility for a mission that only some of them fully subscribe to. Others either consider the mission to be unjustified, or feel incapable of taking it on, or that that they have not been given the necessary means to accomplish it. Underneath these debates lies a tension that we perceived many times during our observations. In the schools, some teachers use ICT and others do not; in the staff rooms, contradictory opinions on the subject meet head on. One example can be found in the studies presented in monographs on schools in Sardinia. One teacher in charge of a computer room at school IP1 complained that, after launching its programme (Multilab) in a blaze of publicity, the government ceased intervening in the area of ICT, thereby - in his opinion encouraging some teachers to drop out. The teacher-training component also received criticism. Many teachers also declared they were not convinced that Internet has any educational benefits and were concerned about the content children might find there. During our investigation, the government in Italy changed and projects initiated by the preceding team were re-evaluated, with consequences on the funds granted to schools for ICT. The incertitude has obviously fed the anxiety of some teachers and partially explains the observable tendency in all four schools towards a drop in interest for ICT. This was felt as much with highly motivated teachers (IS1) as with the others. Pressure from lobbies By “lobbies”, we mean the different organisations that take part in the public debate on the pros and cons of using ICT in schools. Some of these are computer firms, telecommunications operators, parent associations, political parties, teacher unions, and researchers. We'll start with a few words on the last group: educational research scientists who work in the area of ICT usage do, without a doubt, exert pressure on teachers. A convincing example is the case of the EMILE Project, whose researcher/observers definitely bothered some of the teachers in the schools that were visited, just by being there and attaching so much importance to the fact of using or not using ICT! More generally, the research community in Europe and elsewhere tend to develop arguments that place sometimes heavy responsibility on teachers - for example, when they suggest that efficient use of ICT presupposes a radical reassessment of the teaching methods that are generally practised in schools. This type of analysis is often echoed by the representatives from other lobbies, in particular computer firms, and even by political authorities, e.g., within the European Commission. Among the lobbies, we need to distinguish between the economic agents who defend specific interests with no direct bearing on education, and groups whose action takes place at the level of public debate even if the two categories do overlap. Non-economic lobbies that voice their opinions on ICT outside the school do not always share positions. Some - even if they are in the minority - are against the computerisation of schools and the teaching practices and tendency for commercialising education that they believe go along with it. Teacher unions, political parties, opinion groups, and certain news media echo these arguments. We have observed in the field that teachers who hesitate over training and getting involved in ICT are not impervious to such arguments, and even find justification for their doubts. Most of the monographs on observations contain many examples of teachers who are quick to express their doubts as to the purely didactic advantages of ICT, independently of their own use for back-office or personal purposes. 18 EMILE Comparative Report Conclusion For the most part, the outside pressures on schools work more to encourage the use of ICT than the contrary. They constitute forces that converge, as one might expect, to produce significant effects. And this is the case if you consider the highly visible effects such as the equipping of schools. Our monographs portray a general situation that is verified by statistic studies: a substantial increase, in quantity and quality, of the computer equipment to be found in European schools. As for teacher training and the development of usage, the overall situation is patchier and more difficult to assess. Observations indicate that school directors generally shoulder their administrative responsibilities and do what they can to improve the conditions for utilisation. Teachers, however, seem to take full advantage of the degree of freedom they are given by choosing to use ICT or not - based on personal choice, their taste for technology, their aptitude for computer literacy, and/or their convictions relative to the teaching effectiveness of such technology. The result is that these significant pressures, exerted on all the players in schools, appear to have a relatively limited effect on the teachers themselves. This observation is even more worthy of note, given that outside pressures in favour of ICT often are passed on to the teaching staff by individual teachers who are interested in and even enthusiastic about ICT. These teachers accept responsibility for managing the equipment and actively try to convince their colleagues to use ICT. Nevertheless, the presence of these go-betweens in the schools does not seem to sway the overall tendency; we have even noted to the contrary that in some cases they have a reverse demotivating effect. In order to understand the reasons that hold back the development of usage, we need to take a look at the organisation of schools. A school is an organisation where two different regimes co-exist: 1) the rational and bureaucratic administrative regime that leans heavily on structures outside the school, especially the local and national administrations and political authorities; and 2) the face-to-face teaching experience between teacher and pupils in the classroom, which is a more closed regime with a lower level of imposed rationality. Even if these two regimes are necessarily in permanent interaction, the power of the first one over the second is fairly limited in practice. Most teachers are free to choose their work methods and instruments. While the use of ICT is strongly encouraged by the school management and the go-betweens for outside authorities, it is never forced on anyone, although it often turns out to be a driver in itself in that direction. Teachers, who are at the end of the educational chain, do have a certain say with regard to the recommendations they receive, when these exceed the agreement that binds them to their employer. Such agreements are mostly concerned with the observance of official teaching programmes and of the rules of conduct for teacher-pupil relations. This general observation needs to be qualified, however. In the Mediterranean countries (France, Italy, and Greece), teachers are more independent than in Scotland or Norway, where the internal management in schools weighs more heavily and where teachers in the same school tend to work more together. Such collaborative efforts require that they submit to a common discipline, in particular in the choice of teaching tools, and thereby wind up limiting their leeway. 19 EMILE Comparative Report C Locating Computers in the School Serge Pouts-Lajus (OTE) It may seem that the most trivial issue facing schools in connection with Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is locating the computers. It is the one that affects usage the most, however, which is why we considered it worthy of being treated thoroughly. We will deal with it from four different aspects: the location chosen for the computers (classroom, computer lab, library, cyber café); the specific arrangements for each location; the reasons behind each choice of location; and the effects of the different locations and arrangements, in particular on usage. For each one, we will provide examples and attempt to identify the context-sensitive factors that appear to shed the most light. The most important context-sensitive factor is school level. Placing the computers is not approached in the same way in primary schools and secondary schools. At the primary level, a group of pupils, a teacher, and a classroom are linked exclusively for a whole school year. At the secondary level, the organization is more complex. Teachers are specialized in one or two disciplines and teach to different groups of pupils. In some cases (Scotland), each teacher has an individual classroom where s/he receives different groups of pupils; in others (Sardinia) each classroom is assigned to a group of pupils and the teachers move around; in still others (France), teachers and pupils move around to classrooms that are not assigned to anyone in particular. The mobility of the players, the short duration of teaching sessions (50 minutes for a regular class in secondary school), the size of the school, and the degree of autonomy given to pupils are the main factors that determine the separate treatment of the two contexts, at least to begin with. Primary schools: Computer lab vs. classroom computers In primary schools, the optimum number of pupils per computer is considered to be about six. For a school with five classes and 120 pupils, this means a computer population of about twenty workstations. There are two solutions when it comes to placing the workstations: either keep the computers in a single room that becomes the school‟s computer lab, or distribute them equitably among all classrooms. In the latter case, the number of computers per classroom is limited by the size of the rooms. During our observations, we found that the maximum number of computers in a classroom was four. The choices made by the primary schools we observed can be summarized as follows: in Scotland, there were few computer labs - the computers were mainly in classrooms; in Norway, there were computer labs, but some teachers also had a computer in their classroom on a voluntary basis; in Greece, Italy and Hungary, there were computer labs and no computers in classrooms; and in France, there were computers in all classrooms and also shared computer labs. In Scotland, 93% of primary classrooms were equipped with at least one computer in 2001. In both schools we observed, some teachers had taken the initiative in acquiring computers before 1997, often 20 EMILE Comparative Report by asking for support from parents. National policies for acquiring computer equipment came later, and often involved merely providing additional equipment, for example by replacing old PCs with more recent models. As a general rule, the classroom in Scotland is where the teachers get their work done, including outside class hours. Therefore, the classroom computer is used by the teacher for back-office tasks, and over 80% use their home computers for school work. The use in classrooms by pupils varies from teacher to teacher Although the two cases observed in Scotland are representative of the overall situation in that country with respect to placing computers in schools, the same cannot be said of the two cases observed at Besançon in France. There, the “computer lab plus classroom PC” scenario is exceptional and can be explained by specific technological conditions (see the FP1 monograph for more details). As a general rule, only one of the two solutions prevails. In the four other countries, the presence of a computer lab is explained in every case by an administrative policy decision. These may be at the national level, for example in Greece (the Odysseia project) and Italy (the Multilab project), or local, such as in Norway and Hungary. In general, school libraries are not equipped with computers, with the exception of Scotland and the Norwegian school, NP1, where the library also serves as a public library for parents and has a PC with Internet access. For the “computer lab vs. computers at the back of the classroom” alternative, the (local and national) administrative authorities tended to favour the computer lab solution. The reasons behind this choice are mostly practical. Grouping the PCs has many technical and economic advantages when it comes to Internet access, peripheral sharing, acquiring software licences, etc. There are also organizational advantages, such as genericity, easy maintenance and supervision of pupil activity, limiting cabling to a single room and, especially, the possibility for having a whole class work on the computer. Teachers are often in favour of this solution, since it disturbs their usual classroom management practices the least. (It is possible not to disturb them at all, from the teacher‟s point of view, to judge by some schools where a majority of teachers never do get around to taking their pupils to the computer lab!) For all these reasons, the computer lab solution is probably the one most used in Europe, at least in schools with more than 100 pupils. It is not certain that the solution has a long future in front of it, however, because there are a number of arguments (notably pedagogic ones) in favour of the classroom PC solution. This solution also has many partisans, starting with the teachers who decide on their own to integrate computers into their daily class routine methodically but flexibly, when and if the need is felt. Studies that are complementary to the EMILE Project have also indicated that the recommendations school inspectors make based on educational science research are in agreement here: PCs in the classroom allow more profitable educational activities than those held in the computer lab, where there are schedule-planning constraints. After several years of experience in the computer lab, a computer co-ordinator in one school (NP1) came to the conclusion that the PCs currently assigned to the school computer lab should be reassigned to classrooms, so that pupils and teachers alike might learn more responsible use. In Scotland, the ICT curriculum guidelines issued to primary teachers has resulted in some schools deciding to move all the classroom computers into labs so that whole class instruction on specific uses can be taught. A wide variety of locations in secondary schools Compared to primary schools, the situation in secondary schools appears to be much more complex, to judge by the number of different places we found computers: general computer labs (in other words, accessible to teachers of all disciplines); specialized computer labs (for teaching computer science or technology); ordinary classrooms; 21 EMILE Comparative Report libraries; general teachers‟ rooms (accessible to teachers of all disciplines); and specialized teachers‟ rooms (accessible to teachers of a specific discipline). The solution involving PCs at the rear of a classroom is frequent in primary schools, but rare in secondary schools. In Scotland, where national statistics indicate that 62% of secondary school teachers have a computer in their classroom (compared to 93% in primary school), we observed that more frequently there is only one PC in the classroom, and used mainly by the teacher for back-office activities. Sometimes teachers do use a classroom PC with a video projector to illustrate a class in history, geography, or natural science with multimedia documents. All the secondary schools we visited had at least one general computer lab. Everything indicates that this is true more or less everywhere. We do need to distinguish between general computer labs, which are equivalent to those existing in primary schools, and the specialized computer labs that are reserved for specific disciplines or even, in some cases, for specific teachers. Several examples are the technology or computer science classes in Greece (GS2), or living language classes, which in some cases (FS1) have a specific lab reserved. The use of computer labs poses the same problems in secondary schools as in primary schools: the necessity for reserving ahead; sometimes having to split a class in two to avoid having two pupils per computer; and a situation where neither pupils nor teachers feel particularly responsible for the equipment. The teachers‟ rooms often have one or two PCs, depending on the size of the school. They are used by the teachers for specific administrative tasks (in France for example, typing up grades) or individual class-preparation work. But this type of use is not very intensive, with a few exceptions. (In Hungary, for example, the PCs with Internet access in the teachers‟ rooms receive heavy use, probably because teachers in this country are still not very well equipped at home.) In Norway, teachers complain that the PCs are obsolete; and in Scotland, they are more apt to use the PCs in their own classrooms and the specialized labs. Besides the computer lab, the library (also called “documentation centre”) appears to be the most common place for computer use, and one where usage is likely to develop even more. Besides books and periodicals, libraries have encyclopaedias on CD-ROMs to offer and, more and more frequently, Internet access. There are generally fewer PCs than in the computer lab; because of this, we observed more individual use, or in small groups. There are problems supervising free-access practice in between classes or during breaks. A significant number of schools resort to security software and ban chat practices. There is no general rule, however: some libraries seem to manage very well by giving more responsibility to pupils and arranging the PCs so that the screens can be overseen from a central position. Our sampling also included schools that have changed strategies, for example first tolerating chat rooms and then prohibiting them, or operating without filtering software, and then installing it. Besides the above six locations, our field observations turned up some very specific local situations. In one Scottish school (ES1), a teacher created a cyber café for pupils for their own use outside class hours. In Norway (NS1), there is a computer lab reserved for remedial Norwegian-language training for immigrant or struggling pupils. In France, the administrative supervisory authority for secondary schools (collèges) in the Vienne Department acquired PCs that are on loan to teachers who wish to use them at home. So teachers‟ homes are also a possible location for school-owned computers. Another location can be pupils‟ homes, in the cases where local authorities decide to systematically equip all pupils in a specific class, school, town, or region. Such initiatives are still rare and experimental, but they are likely to increase. 22 EMILE Comparative Report Configuration Once it has been decided where to place the computers and how they should be used, the specific location in the room and the configuration must be decided. The importance of these decisions is often neglected, although we have observed significant effects on the types of use as a result of specific choices. Classroom computers in primary schools are usually set up in the rear of the classroom, opposite the door. We ascertained from interviews that the people responsible for installing the electrical outlets (and for Internet access, the telephone jacks) are the ones who decide where the PCs are to be placed, rather than teachers. The computers are arranged so that they won‟t disturb the existing order in the classroom, in particular the way pupils‟ desks and chairs are arranged with respect to the blackboard and the teacher‟s desk. The rear of the classroom has a number of advantages from this point of view, and is appropriate both when the desks are arranged in standard parallel rows facing the blackboard and when they are placed in islands of four to six pupils each for group projects. In both cases, the workstations in the rear constitute a workshop (see diagram). Computers in the rear of a classroom with desks arranged in rows. Computers in the rear of a classroom with desks arranged in groups. One can understand why introducing computers is generally easier and more acceptable for teachers who are used to arranging their classes in islands. The studies on Besançon schools FP1 and FP2 (where all teachers were obliged to accept three workstations in their classrooms) gives a good idea of this: both configurations are shown in a diagram and the problems associated with each discussed in detail. One notable observation is that it is possible to have the workstations at the rear of the classroom and make effective educational use of them, although this requires following specific organizational rules that differ from those for a class that makes use of parallel workshops. In both primary and secondary schools, there are many more possibilities for arranging workstations in a computer lab. These are even more interesting for us to study, because they are usually set up from scratch and therefore accurately reflect the intentions of the individuals who organized them. For our purposes, we have classified the different solutions observed into four categories of typical arrangements. 23 EMILE Comparative Report “Inner” Configuration The screens are turned towards the centre of the room, facilitating supervision. Technically speaking, this is also a simple arrangement: outlets can be set into the walls. On the other hand, it does not facilitate working in groups, since pupils face away from one another. In large rooms, a table may be placed in the centre (dotted lines), and pupils can turn their chairs around to work together with a teacher. “Outer” Configuration The screens are turned towards the periphery of the room. Supervision is difficult during individual use because the screens are not easily visible. Technically speaking, this arrangement requires cable duct underneath the tables or hanging from the ceiling. It is appropriate for a “classroom” type of use, since the pupils all have a view of the centre of the room or a blackboard set up on the other side of the room (dotted lines). “Standard” Configuration This standard classroom arrangement in rows is the one generally used in labs where computer science is taught in the traditional way. It requires special wiring for each table, and is not a very flexible configuration. “Island” Configuration This arrangement is well adapted to workshops and working in groups – but also for individual use. Supervising the screens is relatively easy. The arrangement requires a floor- or ceiling-wired system. 24 EMILE Comparative Report These are typical configurations found in schools, although there are also computer labs that combine one or more – for example, an “inner” configuration on two walls with one or two workshop islands on the other side of the room. We saw more “inner” configurations than the others. It is easy to install and supervise, and allows flexible use. These advantages are certainly what explain its success, although we must be careful not to overemphasize the phenomenon. Decisions affecting the configuration of computer labs are usually based on technical considerations and made by people who not only will not be users, but who also are not directly concerned with educational issues. Therefore, the decisions usually do not reflect a specific vision for types of use. For both the Odysseia Project in Greece and the Multilab Project in Italy, the workstation configuration (inner) was decided by national plan designers. In Oslo, Norway and Besançon, France, the municipal councils made technical choices for computer labs that were applied to all schools, leaving them with few options for arranging the workstations. Economic considerations also tend to play a significant role – the most frequent configurations are also the cheapest ones. Computer labs are designed to hold groups (whole class or half of one) for teaching sessions that last at least 50 minutes. Teachers either accompany their class or turn it over to a specialized co-ordinator. The practices vary widely from school to school and country to country. Generally speaking, it appears that regular use of computer labs is still confined to a minority of teachers in secondary schools. Nonuser teachers give various reasons, often in connection with a lack of technical reliability: those who have experienced a total or partial breakdown during a computer-lab work session with their pupils usually are unable to forget it, and are reluctant to renew the experience. In schools where there is someone permanently in charge of computer lab management and maintenance, that type of problem obviously is less frequent and the user rate tends to be higher, although this is not an absolute rule. Regular computer lab attendance also depends on the co-ordinator‟s personality and ability to motivate. Conclusion Our observations and analyses are in agreement with those of specialists, and confirm that the location and arrangement of computers in a school significantly influence or reflect how they will be used for educational purposes. It is particularly important in primary schools, where the “computer lab vs. PCs in the classroom” alternative comes into play. We also saw that different arrangements in the same computer lab encourage different types of use (traditional class, small group projects, or working individually). And yet they also show that, in general, teachers are not the ones who make the decisions – at least, collectively, as a teaching team - as to where the computers are placed in their school and how they are arranged in computer labs. This is particularly true in the case of national or regional plans that use technological and economic considerations to choose standard equipment for standard computer labs with a configuration that is the same for all. Even in that case, saying that educational concerns are totally overlooked when making such choices would be an overstatement, however. Specialized researchers and practicing teachers are often consulted for network specification whereas, when schools decide on their own to acquire equipment, teacher opinion is often expressed through individual teachers who are more interested in computers and who will be using the equipment intensively. This means that their recommendations will reflect individual preferences that are not likely to be suitable for many of the other teachers, who might be average, hesitant, or novice users. Technological, economic, and organizational choices are what determined the places and arrangements we observed. Such choices involve reasoning that does not always take the contextual parameters (cultural, educational) that are responsible for the differences between individual situations into 25 EMILE Comparative Report account. This is probably why the configurations observed in our six countries appear to follow a common logic. However, interviews with teachers in several different countries (France, Scotland, Italy, and Norway, in particular) indicate that, although educational criteria may not play a large role when the equipment is set up, they do tend to resurface over time as more and more teachers develop use, and as collective experience accumulates. It will be interesting to see how practices develop over the coming years with respect to this point, in particular in experimental schools and schools where current configurations will come up for re-evaluation - and just how the educational input will influence new choices made by teaching teams. 26 EMILE Comparative Report D. Professional development for teachers in the educational use of ICT It is not easy to convince a middle-aged, highly respected teacher of literature to go ahead and learn Internet search in order to teach students critical evaluation of web-based information: “I have always been teaching them about truth and honesty – why do I need a digital text to show what is there in those lovely smelling, nicely printed books?” (Hungary) The uses to which teachers will apply computers in their professional lives will depend on the extent to which they are confident in their ICT knowledge and skills and in the extent to which they have developed valued pedagogical uses for the technology. In this section we look at one of the main influences on this, the contexts which teachers are offered in which to learn and acquire information and develop their skills in ICT uses within the classroom. Strategies for staff development and support The problem of changing the educational systems and practices of countries is universally acknowledged to be difficult and effecting change in teachers‟ practices within classrooms is particularly so. The introduction of ICT into schools is regarded in many countries as the means by which significant modernisation of educational systems and practices can be effected. Central to any initiative or aspiration for change is effective professional education. The provision of contexts for the development of teachers‟ skills in ICT has been informed by a variety of models of teacher development: the provision of centrally organised national training to skill a whole workforce; peer group training within the workplace; professional development through involvement in school based projects; formal courses offered by a variety of providers and selected by individual teachers; and proactive professional groups of teachers forming learning communities on their own behalf. In the different countries involved in the EMILE study, all of these types of training were found and professional development is achieved in each country by different permutations and combinations of strategies. However, regardless of the mechanisms by which training or professional development is made available or takes place, the final decision as to whether, when and how ICT will be used in classrooms remains with the individual teacher. The decisions taken and consequently the experiences offered their students will reflect the individual teacher‟s personal experiences, ability to engage with different sources of knowledge, and their capacity to be involved in the social interactions which are essential for the consolidation of that knowledge into effective pedagogical practice. The overall finding was therefore, that at this stage in the introduction of ICT into European classrooms there is not only a huge variability in the forms of professional development strategies offered to teachers, there is a huge variation in the reaction of teachers to these experiences and the subsequent use they make of them. 27 EMILE Comparative Report In this account, the examples given relating to individual countries are not exhaustive and will be considered under the following headings: 5. Formal training programmes a) Centrally planned provision of staff development With the exception of France and Hungary where the responsibility for training was most devolved, there had been strategies on the part of Governments to offer widespread training extensively across the whole teaching workforce. b) Flexible courses for teachers The formal training programmes are offered either as part of professionally organised courses (Association of ICT Teachers, Hungary) or in the form of courses by diverse providers approved by the Government (Scotland). Some courses have to be undertaken mainly in the teachers‟ own time, and/or as part of a requirement for staff to undertake specified amounts of professional development over a specified period (Hungary, Norway). 6. Peer tutoring Formal and informal use is made of knowledgeable teachers to train and/or support colleagues pedagogically and technically. In almost every country, staff with some expertise are given a formal or informal remit to undertake training of their colleagues (ICT teachers, Norway; ICT coordinators, Masterclass, Scotland; Mintel trainers, Italy). 7. The provision of dedicated ICT aides who are not teachers (ICT Aide educateur in France; Civil Workers in Norway; ICT Officers in Scotland). 8. Professional learning communities of teachers – either within schools, (Scotland, Norway), or within subject areas (Hungary, France) as on line communities. 1. Formal training programmes a) Centrally planned provision of staff development With the exception of France and Hungary where the responsibility for training was most devolved, there had been strategies on the part of Governments to offer widespread training extensively across the whole teaching workforce. For example in Italy, the Multilab training sessions were organised by the Ministry of Education initially in a pilot project in 1996 for secondary teachers and undertaken by a team of government professionals who acted according to a series of scheduled plans and activities. The teachers who volunteered or were selected to participate in the Multilab training sessions were trained on the general principles of ICT, how to use ICT and web authoring software and how to devise interesting teaching sessions with ICT for different subjects. Teachers were also trained to become Multilab-tutors and to teach further ICT sessions to a limited number of their colleagues once they returned to their main teaching activities in school. The intention had been that by regular sequencing of new training courses the whole teaching profession would ultimately be trained. To facilitate the application of the training, a planned resourcing of schools took place so that teachers had some likelihood of having access to the equipment they had been trained to use. However, as the levels of skills of teachers have diversified and the technology has advanced, the national standardised plan has required considerable modification. In May 2001, the Ministry of Education launched another 80 hour training session on multimedia and the use of the Internet by means of an on line interactive TV learning method and some Internet sessions. The level of teachers' participation to this course has not yet been particularly high. In Norway, early national commitment to the use of computers in the 1980s was accompanied by the development of specialist educational machines and software. The subsequent abandonment of this ambitious and costly customised enterprise has left the Norwegian development in the introduction of currently available ICT into classrooms somewhat disjointed. National schemes for the development of 30 hour courses for teachers were to a large extent rendered ineffective by the failure of the 28 EMILE Comparative Report government to ensure that teachers had the equipment on which to practise and use the skills in their workplace, or at home. In Scotland, the national initiative in universal teacher training (NoF training) was centrally funded by money allocated from the national lottery to authorities and schools. Unfortunately, the conditions of this funding allocation meant that although the development of the training materials and the provision of the trainers to deliver the courses were funded, there was no funding to release teachers from their classroom duties to undertake the training. Teachers either had to wait until their local Authority allocated time for their release from school or they had to undertake training in their own time. Although they had a choice of courses (see below), this was not popular with Scottish teachers. (www.ngflscotland.gov.uk/nof) b) Flexible courses for teachers We found examples of training offered by private companies (Norway); providers funded by the government (Scotland); by local Authorities/Departments (France); and by professional associations (Hungary). In France local educational departments are free to make their own arrangements for teacher courses. In one department the courses offered were graded by time commitment and level, and were accompanied by a reward in the form of a computer for those who volunteered to undertake the training. In Hungary courses in which a computer was given as a reward have also been offered. Teachers awarded the grant to undertake the course had to promise to use the computers regularly to support their preparation for teaching and submit evidence of educational applications on request. This grant was considered an excellent model to promote teacher motivation although some experts, dissatisfied with the quality of the PCs that were handed out, would have preferred a voucher which teachers could use for the purchase of machines of their choice. There is a requirement for teachers to undertake centrally funded formal professional development – 120 hours over 7 years. Courses in ICT (40, 60 or 120 hrs.) are one of the options they can choose, and courses are offered by a number of providers, the main one being the Association of ICT Teachers (teachers of computing). The courses are offered outside school hours and are taken therefore in the teachers‟ own time. In Norway, in addition to courses offered within the educational system, there are many private organisations which offer different generic computing courses for adults over a series of levels. Many adults (including teachers) undertake the lower levels for their own interests or these are paid for by their employers. In Scotland, the national lottery funding allocated for training went initially in supporting ten approved providers of training (from Universities, Authorities and private companies) in the development of courses. Teachers were encouraged to select the style of course appropriate for them and by June 2002 over 90% of teachers had undertaken or had signed up to take a course. However, although some teachers enjoyed their course, there was a range of problems associated with the matching of individual needs and skills to the right course, with aspects of timing, delivery style and management quality. It was decided, from 2002, to adopt a quite different model of learning based on peer tutoring. 29 EMILE Comparative Report Peer tutoring In this model, formal and informal use is made of knowledgeable teachers to train and/or support colleagues pedagogically and technically. In every case study school it was found that the presence of one or more enthusiastic and proactive members of the teaching staff in a school was a key to promoting the level of the ICT interest and activities of their colleagues. However, schools are complex social organisations and even this did not always work as expected: Some teachers think that the computer lab is my domain so they do not bother to learn. (Italian elementary teacher) Italy It was a requirement of teachers trained under the national Multilab scheme that they undertook the training of colleagues in their school (snowball or cascade models). However, staff turnover and the varied enthusiasms and levels of knowledge of both tutors and colleagues have resulted in a limitation of the numbers of trained teachers operating as a skilled ICT workforce in each school. A proportion of elementary teachers in particular have had no opportunity to benefit, or have declined to engage with the technology. Hungary At first ICT teachers in Hungary were asked to do the job of systems manager on a voluntary basis – revolt followed. The Association of ICT Teachers undertook consultation and negotiation. As a consequence of the Authorities recognising the complexity and time-consuming nature of this job, about 85% of secondary and 50% of primary schools now have an independent systems operator. Mainly teachers by profession, they have a key role in administering change -–helping teachers with ICT issues in an ICT environment to allow the teachers to concentrate on teaching. Employing older students to act as part time operator‟s assistants is also general practice. Norway Schools had been allocated proportions of teaching posts (e.g. 74%) for the dedication of time for teacher support. In Norway a lot of ICT firms have closed down, so ICT experts, especially female ICT experts, have qualified and come into schools as teachers. Many of them already had a qualification because they had held posts as trainers in their private company. All schools tend to have some teachers who are released from teaching to devote some percentage of their time to servicing the equipment, training of colleagues, and teaching in the computer suites. This ICT adviser often adopts the role of teacher giving the students the ICT related input. Two difficulties were identified – the first associated with teachers who leave their pupils with the ICT teacher and thus lose the opportunity for learning themselves; the second with those teachers are interested and engage with the instruction offered by the ICT teacher, but fail to consolidate the skills and put them to subsequent use as a consequence of lack of access to hardware. The level of access to computers at home seemed particularly low in Norway. In one school an advanced ICT user is paid to give courses to colleagues. Scotland In Scotland a model of peer group teaching is being promoted through the concept of „Masterclass‟. Authorities have been asked to nominate staff who are interested in engaging in a high level training in the skills of using ICT in classrooms and in specific subject areas. The aim is to develop a skilled and enthusiastic force of 600 teachers, with a shared vision of ICT use for pedagogical change, who will train their colleagues in the Authorities and schools and promote the sharing of good practices. 30 EMILE Comparative Report 2 The provision of dedicated ICT aides who are not teachers (e.g. ICT Aide educateur in France; Civil Workers in Norway; ICTOs in Scotland/Norway) In France, aide-educateurs are young people between 25 and 30 who, since 1997, are able to be employed within the schools as a means of reducing youth unemployment. Funded partly by the government and partly by the individual school, they have been particularly welcomed by teachers in the area of ICT. They are typically in charge of the use of the computer room, to be there when a teacher wishes to use the room with their whole class, or part of it; to manage the free use of ICT by pupils, e.g. during lunchtimes, or to run a computer club; and to manage the maintenance of the school network. It was observed that the use of ICT in the EMILE case study schools was lower where there was no ICT aide-educateur. It was not unusual for the teacher to indicate to the Aide what activities were to be done and to leave the class in their charge. In Norway if civil workers (people refusing to undertake military service) are found to have ICT skills they are used for technical support in schools. In Oslo there is also centralised technical support offered by the helpdesk. However, there is a view that the City school net was not planned with enough staff capacity to meet the needs for helpdesk-support and compares unfavourably with the provisions in the private sector. Essential services are missing, for example the school net has no filter, and no desktop protection program. This means that students can find whatever they try to find on the Internet. They can also change the main pages on the computers and this leads to many hours of “clearing up” every day for the ICT responsible teacher. In Scotland, mixed forms of personnel offering support were also observed. The 32 Authorities have different arrangements for the technical and pedagogical support for teachers. ICT Officers appointed by one large Authority to service each secondary and the associated elementary schools, comprised both those who knew only technical matters, through to those already in teaching posts who sought exile from the classroom. 4 Professional learning communities of teachers – either within schools, (Scotland, Norway), or within subject areas (Hungary, France) as on line communities. „During individual interviews, the answer to the question “Do you know how your fellow teachers go about using classroom computers?” was universally negative‟. (French primary school). The extent to which the incorporation of ICT into learning and teaching was a matter for individual teachers was highlighted by all the case studies. There was no clear example in any of the 24 case study schools of a self motivated vibrant whole-school learning community with a focus on ICT related activities. Focal points of development were generated by interested headteachers and/or individual enthusiasts, but these did not extend to involve the concerted activity and commitment of all the staff in a school. Learning as collegiate groups France The working hours and pattern of the day appeared to be the main reason for the low level of communal engagement in professional development in ICT. Where an enthusiastic individual had initiated and taken responsibility for a significant initiative – e.g. “The Home-College Operation” which involved equipping a class and teachers with laptops, the other teachers involved had found it „interesting‟ and „successful‟ but „exhausting‟. It had involved much additional personal investment and commitment of additional time to think about and develop new materials. The two central leaders were identified as the key reasons it had been sustained. It appeared that in France there was no tradition of cooperative, 31 EMILE Comparative Report communal, professional development. In both primary and secondary schools teachers are obliged to be in the school only to give their lessons; when these are completed they tend to leave work. Hungary In one school in Hungary, an innovative school (www.arpad-pecs.sulinet.hu), the principal paid for inschool training provided by the regional Institute for Educational Services. Staff preferred this as local problems and issues could be raised and dealt with on-the-spot by the tutors. However, still within this school there were teachers who were not engaging with the technology. Within secondary schools the main system operators tend to be teachers of computing. These teachers are responsible for the ICT labs, and are sources of information for colleagues, but not for their professional development. ICT was still not necessarily a focus of interest for many teachers. Norway Some teachers have been attempting to communicate with each other by email the administrative information which normally takes up most of their professional meeting time, in order to leave more time for pedagogical discussions. In Scotland the model of teacher groups within a school taking communal responsibility for their professional development has been fostered and has worked well in some aspects. All schools are required by their authorities to develop a whole school policy on the use of ICT, but the policy is enacted differently in the practices of different teachers. Elementary school staff groups are small, and because they share concerns for the same national curriculum and the same children, they frequently work as a whole school team in deciding how to use ICT in their classrooms. However, in secondary schools, the potential unit of teamwork is the subject department. Within a secondary school pupils experience very different levels of ICT use in the classes of different teachers of the same subject and in different subjects. The use of On-line Communities „We seldom saw teachers using the Internet and ICT for e-mails exchange‟. (Sardinia Report) In every country the emergence of on-line communities was evident, but engagement with the associated sites was as yet at a fairly low level. Teachers often work in relative isolation, either physically because of the closed classroom door, or because of distances from subject colleagues, or culturally because of the autonomous nature of the teaching profession. On-line communities offer an attractive opportunity to engage in wider experiences and debate without moving from the comfort zone of home territory and facing unmanageable confrontation with different ways of thinking. Secondary teachers in particular can experience immediate professional benefits from sharing subject related information. In France the most developed sites had been established by individuals or interest groups, and many were therefore linked to subject areas - history/geography; literature, technology, mathematics, the preservation of the French language in education etc. The cafepedagogique.net was established by those concerned about the use of ICT in classrooms. They all offer a forum in which members feel in control and therefor free to express their views. Primary teachers in France, somewhat marginalised by the official sites, have developed their own thriving on-line community, Cartables at www.cartables.net 32 EMILE Comparative Report In Hungary the Ministry for Education set up the Schoolnet web-site which is now run by an independent body the Schoolnet Foundation (www.irisz.sulinet.hu). There is an editorial board for the site comprising subject specialists for each school discipline who were selected from applicants regarded as expert in their field. A large group of part time subject specialists are employed who create, and update, authentic, content rich materials and it is becoming an increasingly popular website: http://www.sulinet.hu. However, as in France, this is primarily directed towards and engaged with by secondary teachers. An examination of the „official‟ mailing lists of the Hungarian Schoolnet pages revealed that on-line traffic was still disappointingly low – with a few exceptions (Teaching Infomatics and the List of System Administrators). A case study of rural primary schools concluded that the most prevalent barrier to the formation of teachers‟ networks was the passivity of primary teachers and their aversion to new methods. However, the absence of network specialists/systems administrators in these schools was also a potential barrier in the way of easy use of the internet. Norway In Norway there were a variety of different types of websites – official sites set up by the central government, the local authorities and unofficial sites set up by teachers who wished to share materials and good practice. In Scotland, the Scottish Virtual Teachers Centre (www.svtc.org.uk) was established by the central government educational service, but as yet, only a small proportion of teachers regard it as a useful source of information. A new centrally funded site Heads Together, modeled on the English site Talking Heads (both at www.think.com), offers school principals a range of resources and services which are intended to promote communication, enable the exchange of information and experiences, encourage access to research and other expertise, and generally promote effective and efficient means of professional development for senior school staff who otherwise would be operating in relatively isolated contexts. Headteachers are being trained in its use, but will have a high degree of control over areas of content and use. In Conclusion It may seem ironic that those who are in a profession primarily engaged in promoting learning seem to find it difficult to adopt a model of learning which allows the skills of innovators to be readily disseminated throughout the profession, or even throughout groups of professionals working within the same school with the same population of pupils. The approach of governments, both at national and local level has been to provide what seems reasonably to be the ingredients necessary for the teachers to begin to use this powerful new tool in their daily work – they have promoted access to hardware, offered formal training, and encouraged the dissemination of examples of good practice which have been largely generated by teachers themselves. However, these have not always been easy to coordinate. But central to all initiatives is the understanding that the profession of education is a complex one, and every rational plan ends up wrestling with the diversity and complexity of the reality of life in schools. Perhaps three points may be made through reflection on our findings.  the potential of ICT to give access to powerful sources of information and dynamic learning contexts for school subjects will have a significant influence on schools in the coming years. All teachers will have to adopt the technology for pedagogical purposes and to learn to use it well. It was a common observation that teachers who were skilled home users did not necessarily use the technology for teaching purposes in their classrooms. The new teachers entering the profession are 33 EMILE Comparative Report now more skilled with the technology, certainly, but their lack of rich classroom experiences make it difficult for them to be the „Red Guards‟ in the education of their older colleagues. We found no secure data indicating that younger teachers were more familiar and comfortable with its classroom uses.  Young people everywhere have enthusiastically embraced the technology for their own purposes in a way that teachers have not. There is no evidence yet that they enthusiastically use it for learning in schools, and teachers will need to develop the appropriate contexts for this to begin to happen. However, the pupils have their own agendas to see to in schools, and if teachers do not quickly begin to develop either better skills or find ways of recruiting the skills and interests of pupils, they may find pupils will begin to apply their skills for their own purposes, subverting those systems of the school which monitor and control them. The advent of ICT has severely challenged the professional development strategies within educational systems by requiring fast learning of novel skills and practices. If teachers see themselves as serving only the requirements put upon them from elsewhere in the system, they will be, like many pupils, rather reluctant learners. There was evidence of this in every country. In Scotland there is a new policy within the system, to give schools and teachers more responsibility for the management of the schools and the decision taking once undertaken centrally. If teachers are to become mature as a profession, there is an urgent need for them to generate secure strategies for their own professional learning – ICT is the test bed for this.  34 EMILE Comparative Report Appendix 1 The EMILE Research Team France Serge Pouts-Lajus, Observatory of Technology for Education in Europe Greece Stella Vosniadou, Professor of Cognitive Psychology, University of Athens Hungary Andrea Kárpáti, UNESCO Chair for ICT in Education, Eötvös University, Budapest Péter Fehér, Baranya County Institute of Educational Services, Pécs Italy Sylvia Ferrera, PhD Student, Goldsmiths College, University of London Norway Jorunn Spord Borgun, Oslo University College Kirsten Klæbo, Oslo University College Scotland Mary Simpson, Chair of Classroom Learning, University of Edinburgh Fran Payne, University of Aberdeen EARLI Rupert Wegerif European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction Scottish EMILE Reports Report 1. Simpson, M. and Payne, F. (2002) National EMILE Report: Scotland. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh. Report 2. Simpson, M. and Payne, F. (2002) The Introduction of ICT into Scottish Primary and Secondary Schools: a cross-cultural exploration. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh. Report 3. Simpson, M. and Payne, F. (2002) The Introduction of ICT into Scottish Primary and Secondary Schools: a cross-cultural exploration. First Report to Schools. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh. 35 EMILE Comparative Report Appendix 2 A typology for European educational systems Serge Pouts-Lajus (France) The European union countries belong to a cultural whole that, although highly contrasted, is relatively unified in comparison to those that are represented by UNESCO and the OECD. Belonging to a common economic, social, and political system has worked to reinforce the unity over the past few years. Therefore, comparative analysis is easier there than in the contexts mentioned above. The different educational identities of the European countries unfold against a common organisational backdrop. The main characteristics of this backdrop are that: education is a highly institutionalised social function; the schooling institutions responsible for educating youth are well-funded, being the top item for public expenditure; school is a public service; it is free of charge and mandatory; parents must send their children to school until they reach an age that is set by law and which varies from one country to another (14 to 16 years); mandatory schooling is divided into two cycles: primary and secondary; teaching is provided by qualified personnel recruited at the university level; the teaching content of mandatory education (curriculum) is determined at the national level, although some countries (Germany, Spain, and Great Britain) provide for considerable regional planning; pupils are grouped into classes of between 20 and 35 pupils; at the primary level, most teaching [for a class] is given by a single teacher; at the secondary level, there are a number of specialised teachers (national language, sciences, modern languages, etc.); and teaching is usually a face-to-face, simultaneous situation: the pupils in any one class learn the same lessons at the same time, in the presence of a teacher. - This list of common characteristics is not all-inclusive - another one is the interest in ICT, which we will deal with further down. Identifying specific features that characterise the originality and specificity of the educational system in each European country is harder to do, given the large number of variations on the joint model. Francine Vaniscotte suggested dividing the countries into four relatively homogenous geographical and cultural groups where the educational systems are very similar. Each group in the typology can be identified by its geographical location or its cultural tradition (Scandinavian, Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, and Latin) and by the dominant characteristic of its educational system (“unified” schooling, comprehensive schooling, vocation-oriented schooling, or common curriculum schooling). In the following descriptions, the countries represented in the EMILE Project have been underlined.  Scandinavian type: “unified” schooling (Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway) This educational model is the solution to a very strong collective determination to provide the same schooling for all children up to the age of 16. In Denmark, where unified schooling is in its purest state, the child follows all his/her schooling with the same group of pupils, and to a certain extent with the same teachers. The objective of unified schooling is to fulfil the potential of all pupils. This type of schooling is very concerned with children‟s rights and their well-being. There are no provisions for staying down in case of failure in a class, and no evaluations with marks are given out before the eighth year of schooling (15 years). 36 EMILE Comparative Report  The Anglo-Saxon type: comprehensive schooling (England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland) Unlike the Scandinavian type of unified schooling, comprehensive schools separate the primary level (6 to 11 years of age) from the lower secondary level (12 to 15 years of age). In this model, regions and schools enjoy a high level of autonomy (in England and Wales, there were no national programmes before 1988). Although pupils do undergo regular evaluations, the main objective of comprehensive schooling is also the fulfilment of children‟s potential: teaching is very individualised, and tutoring as well as help for pupils in difficulty are common practices. Some similarities between the Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon systems may be due to the fact that these are countries with a Protestant tradition – in fact, in Ireland where the school system is almost completely managed by the Catholic Church, the similarities are not as striking.  The Germanic type: vocation-oriented schooling (Germany, Austria, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Belgium, Hungary) Unlike the two preceding types, the main objective of Germanic schooling is not fulfilling the child‟s potential. It is about social and professional insertion, letting each individual find his/her place in society. The school system is characterised by early orientation, which is never experienced as a sanction, as it is in the Latin-type school system. The first orientation occurs at the end of the fourth year, around the age of eleven. The child‟s fulfilment here lies in an appropriate academic orientation and his/her future insertion. Orientation is a normal process that is experienced positively by pupils and their families; it is never irreversible, as there are many ways to go from one career orientation to another, to continue studying, or go back to studying after an inappropriate orientation. Even within companies, the possibilities for moving up in the hierarchy are quite open.  The Latin and Mediterranean type: common curriculum schooling (France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Portugal) These are traditionally Catholic countries (with the exception of Greece, which is Orthodox) where the main objective of school is to acquire knowledge. These countries experience the greatest tension between tradition and modernity and between the demands of equality as an ideal. For ideological reasons, then, these countries rejected the vocation-oriented school system. Evaluation and selection do play a large role, however; they are useful in picking out and training the scientific elites, especially in France. Marks, exams, and competitions are practiced to a large extent starting in primary school. Teaching methods favour lectures given by teachers who are considered to be an expert in their discipline. These descriptions are obviously just outlines that sketch out the orientations and main objectives of the different school systems with an historical mention of old traditions. It goes without saying that transmitting knowledge is also a major concern in the schools of Northern Europe and that teachers in the Mediterranean countries are not indifferent to the fulfilment of their pupils‟ potential. Also, for various reasons, some countries (such as Belgium or Ireland) are torn between several cultural influences and are led to develop their own specific composite system. Hungary, where the educational system is traditionally Germanic, appears to have opened up very rapidly to an Anglo-American cultural influence. An important point to make is that European school systems, which are all confronted with societal change (the most significant one certainly being the explosion in mass secondary education), have evolved considerably over the past few decades and continue to do so (for example by integrating ICT as teaching tools). Some of the changes have brought the national systems closer to each other, although deep-rooted individual differences in the organisation and teaching methods remain, to the extent where the prospect of a convergence or even harmonising the different 37 EMILE Comparative Report educational systems of the EU countries is slim indeed. Schooling of the Germanic, Scandinavian, Anglo-Saxon or Latin type is regularly adapted to a nationally-oriented environment and cultural tradition. This is why formulas that are successfully applied by one are not necessarily applicable to another. It is particularly useful to emphasize the point just before tackling ICT issues which, as we shall see, usually develop without reference to cultural and educational identities. 38 EMILE Comparative Report Appendix 3 Two sample curriculum outlines A school plan in Norway For the 1-4th grade, they shall learn how to turn on and off the machines, how to use the mouse and know what happened when you touch different buttons. They shall learn how to start a program, write an address, send – and open e-mail. Find information in lexicons. Know what Internet is, learn net etiquette and find the school‟s governmental information‟s links, plus do simple search on the Internet. The students shall also learn how to use a writing program and learn by playing the pedagogical soft ware and games and use simple drawing programs. The 5th graders shall continue to use pedagogical games, and send and check his or hers e-post with attachment. On the Internet they be able to do free text search, understand what Internet is and understand that anyone can write /publish anything on the Internet and learn to be critical to the sources to what they find. They shall use simple mathematics functions in the mathematics section in Works, and be able to cut and paste text and know how to regret, knowing how the spelling function works, plus what it lacks logic. They shall know how to put pictures in text documents from the picture gallery and use WordArt, know that there are viruses, and how to protect themselves from that. By the end of this year there would be a computer test. And if the students passed the test they would get a bronze “School ICT- certificate”. The 6th graders shall continue to use pedagogical games and learn how to install/ un install programs and to turn the machine off if it is gone into e freeze etc. Learn to get pictures through a scanner and do simple justifications, and use simple functions in mathematical programs, plus make simple graphical of statistical presentations. Learn how to import pictures in to a text document, change font types and size and learn how to make bottom and top text. Learn how to do personal justifications in the e-post program. Train upon doing search in the Internet in project work. In the end of 6 th grade the students who pass the test gets silver “School ICT- certificate”. The 7th graders shall continue to use pedagogical games and learn how to use text program, move, copy and delete files. Make and set up maps in a file system program and learn how to find and send files from Internet into their own filing system. They shall also have a project on how to make their own Internet school page with the help from the ICT responsible to publish. At the end of the year the students who passes the ICT test get a Gold “School ICT- certificate”. This plan is yet not implemented in a large scale for all students in the school. 39 EMILE Comparative Report National Core Curriculum Outline: Hungary - Appendix 4: Basic ICT-related requirements of the Hungarian Core Curriculum (1996): teaching content clusters for the discipline “Information technology” for grades 1-10 (Source: Turcsányi-Szabó and Ambruszter, to appear) Till end of 8th grade (ages 13-14) Handling computers and accessories. Basic issues of informatics. Historical review of computers. Informatics in Hungary. Till end of 10th grade (ages 15-16) Types and characteristics of hardware equipment. Tools of textual and graphical man-machine interaction. News, information, and data types. Use of operating systems: Solving problems on the level of operating system, use of utilities. Getting acquainted with the role of networks. Network basics. Till end of 6th grade (ages 6-12) Computers and their surroundings. Introduction to basic issues of informatics. Using calculators. The sense of proper order of magnitude. Use of operating systems: Basic knowledge of operating system used in schools. Use of utilities. Use of computers in learning and acquiring knowledge through educational programs. Developing algorithms through text and diagrams. Coding a simple algorithm. Logical games. Simulating random events. Modelling simple natural and economic events. The meaning of text and picture construction, editing. The basic handling of a word processor and a drawing tool. Composing algorithms in text, diagrams and their understanding. Introduction to databases and spreadsheets: Simple search problems. Connection between data. Developing algorithms and coding. Knowledge of a few commands in a programming language. Modelling processes. Optimisation. Fine-tuning existing programs in order to solve problems. A more thorough look into the functions of word processing and picture editing. Knowledge of the main functions of a word processor and a picture editor. Function of spreadsheets. Entering and editing data. Basic ideas of functions, graphs, diagrams, histograms, connection and differences. Problems of search and queries in databases. Maintenance of databases. 40