Pedagogy and ICT in an Information Society: Perspectives from International Comparative Studies

Rapid social changes brought about by technological advances and globalization have made impacts on the goals and processes of education both in terms of national/regional policies and classroom practices in many countries around the world. The roles and impacts of ICT use in the classroom have taken on different dimensions in the context of these global changes since the 1990s. The IEA (International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement, which is holding its 48th General Assembly in Hong Kong from October 8-11) has launched since 1997 a series of several modular comparative studies under the title SITES (Second International Technology in Education Study). So far, three modules have been conducted in more than 20 systems around the world to investigate: (1) the status of ICT use in schools around the world (SITES M1) through a survey of schools, (2) how the integration of learning technologies into the teaching and learning processes have enabled deep content, sophisticated pedagogy and impressive student outcomes and the contextual factors for their sustainability and transferability through in-depth case studies (SITES M2), and (3) pedagogical practices and the use of ICT by science and mathematics teachers and the contextual factors at school and system levels that may influence them through a survey of schools and teachers (SITES 2006). The speakers for this seminar are researchers who have played important leadership roles in the three SITES studies. Professor Plomp will start this seminar by reflecting on and discussing this topic from the curriculum perspective (how the notion of "good education" differs in an information society from that in an industrial society), change perspective (how introducing ICT to enhance education can be looked at as a process of change) and international perspective (how findings from the IEA (International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement) SITES (Second International Technology in Education Study) Modules 1 & 2 studies inform us about what changes may take place when schools and teachers try to renew teaching and learning through the use of ICT). Dr. Hans Pelgrum has been leading the school survey component of SITES2006 study. He will focus his presentation on tentative outcomes and potential implications from the study in relation to school conditions for pedagogy and ICT. Professor Nancy Law will present tentative findings on the general pedagogical practices of teachers and how these relate to their use of ICT in classrooms. She will also present preliminary findings from analysis that explores the relationship between teachers’ personal characteristics and school contextual factors on their pedagogical use of ICT.Prof. Tjeerd Plomp (1938) is emeritus professor of education of the University of Twente in Enschede, the Netherlands, where he served as Dean of the Faculty of Educational Science and Technology from 1982 till 1985 and as chair of the Department of Curriculum (from 1990 till 1998). He was chair of IEA, the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement, from 1989 - 1999. In the IEA he served as chair for the 'Computers in Education' study (Comped), the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the IEA Second International Technology in Education Study (SITES). At present he is study director of the IEA SITES2006 study, a survey of schools and (math and science) teachers on pedagogical approaches and the use of ICT in it (with data collection in 2006). His research interests are educational design and design research, international comparative research, and information technology in the curriculum and teacher education.published_or_final_versionCentre for Information Technology in Education, University of Hong Kon