National Education Programs on ICT in Europe

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National Education Programs on ICT in Europe

• Jef Moonen
• Emeritus Professor University of Twente
• Moonen Collis Learning Technology Consultants
• bettycollisjefmoonen_at_gmail.com
• www.bettycollisjefmoonen.nl

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Opening remarks

• New to ELFE project
• Much information is available in reports, and was
  presented during this conference
• Agree with much of what was said during keynote
  presentations

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National ICT programmes

• Impossible to do what organisors asked me to do
  give an overview of ICT programs in Europe---see
  remark of Ulf Fredriksson
• Therefore will focus on a limited number of
  aspects and make some critical remarks that maybe
  useful for your final recommendations
• Remarks will (implicitly) focus on the role of
  the teacher and the scalability and
  sustainability of proposed policy

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The importance of context
Context People in their contexts make it
complicated Learning-related processes supported
by technology always take place within a
complicated mix of personal, social,
organizational, and cultural contexts. Thus there
are no simple answers
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Focus

• Three perspectives on context
• Macro level Technological social context
• Meso level Curriculum context
• Micro level Daily classroom practice context

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Macro level Technological social context

• Specified by e-readiness ranking of countries
• E-readiness is a measure of the quality of a
  countrys ICT infrastructure and the ability of
  its consumers, businesses and governments to use
  ICT to their benefit
• Based on 100 separate criteria, both qualitative
  and quantitative, in several categories such as
• Connectivity and technology infrastructure
• Business environment
• Social and cultural environment
• Legal environment
• Government policy and vision
• Consumer and business adoption

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E-readiness rankings 2008 for European countries

• Score higher than 8.10 (max. 10)
• Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, UK, Switzerland,
  Austria, Norway, Finland, Germany
• Score between 7.10 8.10
• Belgium, Ireland, France, Malta, Italy, Spain,
  Portugal, Estonia
• Score lower than 7.10
• Other European countries
• Ref. The Economist Intelligence Unit

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Conclusions Technological social context

• The average e-readiness (for the world) rose
  again from 6.24 to a score of 6.39 in the 2008
  rankings
• However this overall progress masks some
  backtracking among some countries, and particular
  within the rankings top ten

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Integration of ICT

• The specific focus on ICT is fading away as ICT
  is becoming more ubiquitous (technological and in
  society)
• Is ICT still the right terminology to be used in
  policy recommendations? See name of ELFE
  (European eLearning Forum for Education..)
• A mismatch is developing between increasing
  ubiquitous use of technology and decreasing
  explicit focus on ICT in government policy (also
  for education)
• ICT is less separate from other, broader aspects
  of teaching-learning, or as G. Van den Brande
  mentioned it is all about learning

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Meso level Curriculum Context

• For the International Handbook for ICT in Primary
  and Secondary Education
• Categorized European countries into three
  clusters high performing (HP), average
  performing (AP) and low performing (LP)

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Clusters of European Countries in curriculum
implementation in relation to ICT (2005)

• High performing (HP) Austria, Finland, Sweden,
  Denmark and the UK
• Average performing (AP) Germany, Ireland,
  France, Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg
• Low performing (LP) Other EU countries

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Aspects of Curriculum Implementation

• Then related each cluster of countries to six
  aspects of curriculum implementation
• And to four levels of implementation
• Research for European region done by Scienter
  Institute (Italy) presented in Helios report
  2006

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Aspects/Levels Emerging of policy Applying policy Infusing policy Transforming education by policy
National/sub national policy document for IT in education LP
Master plan with a time frame LP
Budget plan and appropriations HP
Organizational structure responsible for implementing the master plan LP AP HP
Monitoring and evaluation scheme or mechanism LP AP HP
Statement of inclusion of women, minorities, and those with special needs in IT policy LP
AP
HP
AP
HP
LP
AP
AP
HP
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Conclusions Curriculum perspective

• In most countries there is a successful
  introduction of ICT in schools following a
  logical sequence of events initiating a policy,
  providing technical ICT infrastructure, teacher
  training
• The sequence of events continues to the infusing
  phase and to the aspiration for pedagogical and
  curricular change as well as content development
• However the use of ICT as a pedagogical tool in
  subject areas is not a major success
• Transformation toward a change of the educational
  structures, including new teaching/learning
  processes, is not yet occurring.

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Transition...

• Example of new learning in the Netherlands
• While there is a lack of transformational change
  within the existing educational structures and
  formal learning because of ICT, ICT creates a
  very substantial transformational change in
  society, outside of the school system and
  supported by informal learning
• See results in STEPS report

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Transition

• Ideas around digital learning skills for the
  21st century appear as a new target in the
  proposed transformation process
• Will these skills refer to new process skills,
  which will require a new pedagogy, or will they
  be seen as an updated version of how to work
  with a computer?

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Example of New Digital Learning Skills

• See report Thriving in the 21st century
  Learning Literacies for the Digital Age (LLiDA
  project)

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High-level terms, framing ideas
Component Competences
Learning to learn, metacognition
Academic practice, study skills
Information literacy
Communication and collaboration skills
Media literacy (also 'visual' and 'audio' and 'video' literacies)
ICT/digital/computer literacy
Employability
Citizenship
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Micro-level Practice in schools context

• There is a distinction between ICT as core
  versus as complementary technology
• Policy focuses on the core technology
• Daily practice however also involves
  complementary technologies which are difficult to
  influence on a large scale
• As container term in recommendations, ICT is
  too broad
• Need at least a distinction between specific
  core ICTs and other ones.
• Policy recommendations should focus on core ICTs
  
• For instance, computers, data projector,
  interactive whiteboard (?), use of powerpoint,
  use of word processing, etc
• Recommendations should focus more explicitly on
  teacher in his daily class practice

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References

• OECD Talis report Creating effective teaching
  and learning environments 2009
• Research done by Kennisnet Four in Balance
  Monitor 2008 (www.kennisnet.nl)

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Teachers and Schools

• High-quality teachers are key to the successful
  implementation of education policies
• The bottom line is that the quality of an
  education system cannot exceed the quality of its
  teachers and their works
• (both quotes from the OECD secretary-general
  Angel Gurria)
• So, what has to be done to get to high-quality
  teachers? Traditional answer is training. Of
  course. But.

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OECD Talis report

• Reference to discussion in US about health care
  reform
• Talis report Three out of four teachers feel
  they lack incentives to improve the quality of
  their teaching
• Main policy lesson
• Education authorities need to provide more
  effective incentives for teachers
• Not so easy, see example from Kennisnet.

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Teachers impressions of time saved or lost by
using ICT applications
Time burden
Time benefit
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School management intentions for further
investments in ICT
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Conclusion ICT use in daily practice should
offer more incentives for teachers as well as
other actors
Incentives
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Summarizing

• Macro-level Mismatch is developing between
  increasing ubiquitous technology use in society
  and decreasing focus on specific ICT use in
  educational policy
• Meso-level If ICT is still be used as a lever
  for transformation of the educational structures
  and pedagogies, maybe a focus on digital learning
  skills for the 21st century offer a solution
• Micro-level In practice, successful
  implementation of ICT will only occur when the
  emphasis of ICT is on its potential to improve
  the incentives for its actors in the
  teaching-learning process

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Conclusion

• ICT as a container term should be replaced by
  core-ICT specifics
• Core ICT-specifics should be related to potential
  incentives for teachers

ICT
InCenTives
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Thank YouMore informationhttp//bettycollisje
fmoonen.nlbettycollisjefmoonen_at_gmail.com
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References

• Jef Moonen (Ed.) (2008), International and
  Regional Programs and Policies, pp. 1069-1178. In
  Joke Voogt and Gerald Knezek (Eds.),
  International Handbook of IT in Primary and
  Secondary Education, New York Springer.
• Tjeerd Plomp, Ronald E. Anderson, Nancy Law,
  Andreas Quale (Eds.) (2009). Cross-National ICT,
  Policies and Practices in Education. Charlotte,
  NC Information Age Publishing.
• Insight Observatory for new technologies and
  education. The focus of the annual update,
  compiled with the help of policy makers in the 31
  member countries of EU, is to present trends with
  regard to new technologies in school education.
  See http //insight.eun.org
• Betty Collis Jef Moonen (2005), An On-Going
  Journey Technology as a Learning Workbench. See
  or download from resource section of website
  http//bettycollisjefmoonen.nl