Stepping Out of the Box: Rethinking the Failure of ICT to Transform Schools

Despite initial certainty ofpolitical purpose and considerable optimismregarding its effects on teaching and learning,the evidence of school inspector reports in theUSA, Scotland and England suggests thatinformation and communications technology (ICT)remains, at the beginning of the 21stCentury, a marginal force in the education of5-12 year-olds. Explanations for this havetypically been sought in analyses, byresearchers working in the `mainstream' ofschools and teacher education adopting anessentially rational or hyper-rational approachand focusing on inadequacies in resourcing,curriculum policy and training. Yet, othercurriculum changes have taken place despitecomparable barriers; teachers have made themwork. Consequently, it is not possible toexclude the potential for explanation which maylie beyond the essentially rational, systematicand structural arguments offered so far.Alternative avenues explored here include thesocial anthropological concepts of symbol,language, ideology, ritual and myth applied to20th-Century cycles of educational change, thesociological concept of subculture and humancomputer interaction (HCI) theory and models oftechnology acceptance.