WARNING! This website is no longer actively maintained. It is an archive of 2 years work by Doug Belshaw who now blogs at dougbelshaw.com...
What are the barriers to fully integrating ICTs into the curriculum?
I suppose how well integrated Information Communication Technologies are to the curriculum in different institutions varies enormously, but I’d be interested to hear what you think the main barriers are to their wholescale implementation…
Here’s what I posted on Alan November’s blog in reponse to a similar question:
As far as I see it, the following factors combined lead to a chicken-and-egg scenario:
- school culture
- senior leadership awareness of ICTs (potential and implementation)
- teacher ownership of outcomes (constraints, etc.)
- lack of agreed pedagogy for integrating ICTs into existing curriculum
- lack of teacher training/professional development in ICTs
- availability of resources
- dependence on external agencies (e.g. ICT technician)
- fundamental conservatism of education
All in all, I think Larry Cuban (1986) got it right when he said: “teachers will alter classroom behaviour selectively to the degree that certain technologies help them solve problems they define as important and avoid eroding their classroom authority. They will either resist or be indifferent to changes that they see as irrelevant to their practice, that increase their burdens, without adding benefits to their students’ learning or that weaken the control of the classroom.”
Which of these do you think is the most important? Have you any more to add to the list? 
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What is needed is bottom up funding for in-house training, inset and embedding. Give the responsibility of rolling out an effective ICT strategy with allied funding for time and training and make it part of an accreditation - a professional accreditation that can lead to financial inducements depending on “some” outcomes and I think you might get people buying in a bit more
Christopher D. Sessums has made a very long post on just this topic on his blog today.
I agree entirely with Leon. Start by giving teachers the time within school itself (e.g. making training days real training days), and giving teachers formal teaching time as part of their timetable. Then make the practice worthwhile on two levels - on a personal, professional level with an official accreditation and on a ‘next day in the classroom’ level by focusing on areas that will make a real difference to the teacher. The accreditation would simply need two things - prove you’ve used the training in the classroom and deliver the training to a colleague.
This isn’t a chicken and egg situation. No way. It is a situation were there are loads of eggs, laid by many chickens. The trick is to feed and nuture the chickens more and then’ll you’ll get better eggs.
Second part of my first sentence above doesn’t quite read correctly - I meant “giving teachers formal training time as part of their timetable”. Giving them teaching is far too outrageous!
I think, perhaps, those who can’t have a slightly different perspective than those who can… For example, last night I spent an hour and a half adding something toally brilliant to my moodle thingy about Mussolini’s seizure of power. Then I added a picture. It was too small, so I re-sized it. Then it looked horrible, so I selected the picture and hit delete. EVERYTHING I’d done during the previous hour-and-a-half disappeared immediately!!!! Now, since I’m basically masochistic, later this morning, I’ll do it all again… But I can imagine the attitude of some of my less dedicated colleagues.
The issue of technical support is fundamental. There has to be someone there who can solve the problems you’re bound to run in to but can’t fix yourself. Otherwise, the technologically incompetent like me will just give up and do something else.
There’s a sort of “critical mass” thing here. Once you have a supportive IT community in the school, you can wander next door to ask your neighbor how to do whatever. In my school, I’d have to wander a pretty long way before I found anyone…
Doug’s post about INSET is also relevant here. Here at my school, “professional development activities” tend to come in two forms: you can go away to the Mediterranean Association of International Schools Conference, where you can watch an “expert” do amazingly wonderful things with computers and wish you knew how to do that; or you can all file down to the computer lab during one of the professional development “mini-days” and sit there while the IT person rushes around from person to person trying to show us how to use some new piece of software (usually to do with reporting attendance or completing the database or something equally gripping). All this does is INCREASE staff resistance. The only people who understand the potential of the material being presented already know how to use it. The rest of us just think about that huge and growing pile of essays that need marking… But, we’ve had the “training” and the bosses can faithfully report to their bosses that they’re following the plan!
I agree with Mike that part of the problem is the perception by ’standard’ teachers that those with advanced ICT skills are somehow ‘different’ and that their skills are not worth acquiring. I think part of this is the fact that those who are enthusiastic about, and who evangelise about certain aspects of education tend to work a lot harder than everyone else. Ergo, ’standard’ teachers equate, in this case technology, with working harder than they already do…
There’s a good research report written for Becta by Andrew Jones about the uptake of ICT - the most interesting part is where Andrew lists two sorts of barriers to the uptake of ICT - 1st order barriers are those more practical barriers - access to technology, familiarity with programs - the sorts of barriers most gov initiatives try to approach. Second order barriers are the harder ones to remove/lower - teachers’ seeing the need for technology, developing understandings about how new tools can challenge and change practice in a positive way etc - the sorts of issues that Cuban highlights. Unfortunately, these are difficult barriers to address - but vital that they are.
INSET makes way for long term professional conversations; ‘training’ sessions become exploratory learning sessions for teachers (and sometimes with learners together); teachers are seen as (and see themselves as) professional educationalists and that activities that go on outside the classroom (preparation, developing new skills, familiarity with resources etc) are as important as what goes on inside the classroom. This coupled with an education ’system’ that can respond to teacher’s new practices and can find better ways of sharing it.
Thanks for the comment, Dan. Have you a link to Andrew Jones’ research report? I’m familiar with Larry Cuban’s work, but haven’t seen the Becta one…
You’re absolutely right about ‘long term professional conversations’ - it’s what I meant by my meandering Death to the INSET!
The Becta report is http://partners.becta.org.uk/index.php?section=rh&catcode=_re_rp_ap_03&PHPSESSID=a717fc1be08654b1e23b38b264cc4048&rid=11254 - it is a good literature review about ICT adoption.
There are some other good links that I will dig out - but Seymour Papert’s work here is also good.