GeorgesLouis Baron

1
ICT in French Primary Education, twenty years
later infusion or transformation?
Technologies, medias and mediating artifacts What
really matters?

• Georges-Louis Baron
• baron_at_inrp.fr
• georges-louis.baron_at_laposte.net

2
Plan

• ICT in French primary education now
• French Context
• ICT competencies
• A diachronic view what has really changed?
• Possible perspectives

3
France important trends

• A steady movement toward decentralisation
• New partnerships
• Public
• Private
• New instruments being elaborated to monitor the
  educational system
• Regarding ICT, a long-standing tradition of
  national public policies

Data about French primary education
About ict in families
4
Primary education in France specificities

• Historical links
• Primary teachers
• Secular Republic
• Teachers are civil servants of the national state
• A fading divide between primary and secondary
  education
• Professional development is a right

5
ICT in French Primary Education Now

• Current situation every school is equiped
• Home usage is frequent
• Many very interesting educational innovations
• Many skilled innovators
• Day to day Classroom usage is very irregular
• Difficult transitions towards generalisation
• Importance of teacher support
• ICT teacher-advisers

6
General trends

• Software tools are easy to use
• No specific curriculum needed in general
  education
• Programming for technical studies only
• BUT
• Problems obviously exist

7
Colleges of education (IUFM)

• Historical important role regarding ICT
• BUT
• A decreasing importance of specific ICT training
• A rising interest for the use of new modalities
  of teacher education
• New forms of distance learning using the Internet

8
Recent innovations

• Assistant educators
• Informatics and internet certificate (B2i)

9
(1) Assistant educators

• Helping teachers to cope with ICT
• Often specialising in ICT
• Quite efficient in general to assist teachers
  with ICT tasks
• Sometimes taking full control of ICT matters

10
(2) A informatics and Internet certificate (B2i)
for students

• A list of competences
• Sometimes rather ambiguous
• But not quite like ECDL
• No attached curriculum
• A similar certificate for teachers (C2i)
• Should be compulsory for teaching
• Still experimental
• http//c2i.education.fr/index.htm (in French)

11
Competencies and representations of ICT

• Which competencies must be transmitted to a new
  generation ?
• What for?
• Not the responsibility of researchers
• Other broader issues
• Political and pragmatic

12
Research results on pupils representations

• Rather static and contextualized representations
• Depending upon the social milieu
• An important role for teachers
• Several phases of appropriation
• Need for some kind of transmission

13
Teachers representations and competencies

• No technophobia
• High rates of computer ownership
• High rates of computer usage
• Lower rates of usage in front of students
• Albeit ministry study suggest very high
  percentages in primary education
• 90 ?
• Or 25
• Heavy problems with teacher training

14
Which evolutions within 20 years?

• Several phases (1)
• lt1984
• Mainly small scale experimentations
• LOGO
• 1985 national plan informatics for all
• School equipment
• inscription in the national curriculum
• Logo, programing

15
Several phases (2)

• 1990
• Disillusion, an interest for software tools
• 1995 multimedia and the Internet
• A new start?
• New inventions
• New hopes / problems
• A continuing prescription role for the ministry
  of education
• 2004, and after?
• Fools gold ???

16
What has changed within 20 years (1)?

• ICT has spread in schools
• Many teachers have a practice of ICT
• Most of them at home
• Some in the classroom
• Some new usages of ICT have become plain
• Word processing, searching information

17
Changes (2)

• A different balance of power between national and
  local political authorities
• From media to mediating artifacts
• The rise of a new maket
• Aimed at accompanying pupils

18
So

• a certain amount of infusion
• Still some forms of support from the ministery
• Small apparent transformations
• Unsolved problems with teacher education
• The regulating role of curricula
• Slow modifications
• But things evolve

19
How to foster transformative processes?

• Disseminating examples of good practice
• Interesting
• not enough to generate sustainable changes
• Some obstacles are very strong
• Conflicts of professionality
• Eg Teacher / tutor
• Comparative studies are in order.
• difficult challenge.

20
Perspectives

• Action-research is very necessary
• Invention needed
• How to insure  reproblematisation ?
• Some theories may help to explain and consider
  change
• Callon Latour sociology of translation
• Activity theory (Engestrom al)

21
To be continued
22
France a few figures (2003)

• Elementary education
• Early childhood education
• 2.6 millions students (88 public)
• Primary education (6-11)
• 4 millions students (86 public)
• Lower secondary education
• 3.3 million students (79 public)
• 1 million teachers and professors paid by the
  State
• primary schools 318 000 (women 79)
• secondary schools 432 000 (women 57)
• Higher education 87 000 (women 34)

23
Recent figures about familial computer ownership
(2003)

• Overall
• 42 had a computer at home
• 28 had an internet connection
• But
• 72 (resp 62) for executives
• 18 (resp 8) for people without diploma
• 62 (resp 41) for 15-24 years old.

24
What really matters?

• Difficult question
• Change process are hardly predictable
• At least at middle term
• Solutions are generally short ranged
• Innovations too-short lived
• And problems very complex
• But there are hints
• Initial visions
• Invention / research
• sustained support to innovators
• Attention to ICT instruments

do matter