Enchanting a Disenchanted Child: Revolutionising the Means of Education Using Information and Communication Technology and e-Learning

Enchanting a Disenchanted Child: Revolutionising the Means of Education Using Informationand Communication Technology and e-LearningAuthor(s): Liz BeastallSource: British Journal of Sociology of Education, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Feb., 2006), pp. 97-110Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30036118 .

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British Journal of Sociology of Education Vol. 27, No. 1, February 2006, pp. 97-110 Rz

Routledge Taylor &Francis Group

Enchanting a disenchanted child: revolutionising the means of education using Information and Communication Technology and e-learning Liz Beastall* University of Hull, UK

The Department for Education and Skills currently shows a high regard for the potential of technology transforming the British education system. Government White papers demonstrate e- learning-based unification strategies that reinforce the message that introducing Information and Communication Technology (ICT) will raise standards in schools. This paper examines the effect of these developments on teachers and pupils, and questions the government's motivation for change. The introduction of ICT has not been complemented by increased levels of effective professional development for teaching staff in the pedagogy of ICT across the curriculum and may have merely served to reinforce the generational digital divide. In attempting to enchant the pupils, the government may have alienated the teachers. This paper suggests that the Department for Educa- tion and Skills should place more emphasis on developing strategies and providing funding for solutions to gaps in the professional development of teachers in their pedagogical understanding of ICT across the curriculum.

Introduction

As the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) continues its drive towards a 'Unified e-learning Strategy' (DfES, 2003b) and remains focused on using technology to 'engage and motivate young people and meet their individual learning needs' (DfES, 2003a, p. 3), it is necessary to reflect on the effects of such large-scale changes in terms of pupils' and teachers' agency to their educational environment. This paper considers the role of 'Cyberkids' (Holloway & Valentine, 2003) and explores how young people today utilise their ability to relate to technology within the educational environment. Prensky's (2003) theory of 'digital natives' reinforces this position and

*3 Denmark Rise, North Cave, Brough, East Yorkshire HU15 2NB, UK. Email: [email protected], [email protected]

ISSN 0142-5692 (print)/ISSN 1465-3346 (online)/06/010097-14 v 2006 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/01425690500376758



98 L. Beastall

suggests reasons as to why teachers (adults) may struggle to internalise Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and e-learning in similar ways to their pupils. According to research by the DfES, teaching staff do not deny the potential that ICT has for their ability to educate young people, but they do question the theory behind dogmatic government strategies aimed at raising levels of pupils' attainment through the general use of technologies with which many teachers may be pedagogically unfamiliar. Moreover, if market forces continue to drive education via the technical and economic route rather than the pedagogical route, there is a danger that teaching staff may feel further levels of alienation. Teaching staff have recently undertaken rapid personal development training in the use of new technologies, and as a result of this there have been substantial changes in the methodologies of many teachers. However, it remains unclear whether these changes are having any positive effect on pupils' learning, which, as previously stated, is supposedly the strategic focal point of improving standards in schools via ICT. This paper will explore whether teaching and learning strategies are merely embracing technology in order to satisfy a societal drive towards a postmodern environment that sustains 'Cathedrals of Consumption' (Ritzer, 1999, p. 8) and their subsequent marketable products rather than aiming to produce policies based on individual, educational needs. The current digital era is conducive to a very flexible learning environment, and this report will examine whether current educational policy is designed to reflect this or whether it merely compromises teachers' professionalism and students' potential with quick-fix solutions to complex problems.

This paper will explore how various DfES initiatives are focusing on helping teaching staff to integrate more ICT and e-learning into the curriculum and will consider whether, as Ritzer (1999) highlights, the political and economic motivation behind strategic policy development will result in the process of rationalisation reducing teachers to mere representations of embodied 'human technology' (p. 87). If teaching staff develop a relationship with technology on the basis of compulsory training, then the future of innovative teaching practice is questionable. At the same time, the DfES have discovered the 'Hands on Support' (HOS) model of training teaching staff in the use of ICT, which does appear to offer a more effective means of encouraging innovation in teaching and learning. In providing teaching staff with individual support on a specialist to specialist basis, HOS helps teachers' to develop their understanding of how and why ICT can improve the delivery and content of the national curriculum, and thus improve teaching and learning standards. Unfortunately, HOS relies on large amounts of funding that schools tend to spend in other areas and until this funding is specifically directed towards HOS, by the DfES, it may remain a solution in theory but not in practice. This paper finds that teaching staff are beginning to embed ICT into their teaching and learning in order to align their differentiated relationship with technology closer to that of their students. It also finds that while Government policy supports this, it provides little in the way of specific pedagogical or financial support, which is indeed expensive in terms of time and cost, and instead drives education more towards a market ideology through the use of league tables and other targets that drive schools away from needs-based action and more towards quick-fix



Means of education using ICT and e-learning 99

solutions. The consequence of this is that teachers are not receiving the support they need in order to be able to support young people and provide them with a relevant, postmodern education that embraces technology in order to improve actual teaching and learning rather than the aesthetic delivery of it.

This paper represents a critical analysis of both academic literature and government policy relevant to the area of e-learning and education in the twenty-first century. Recent books and journals were reviewed in addition to a thorough search of the Internet and other online publications. The author is currently employed as a Knowledge Transfer Partnership Associate, within the University of Hull and Hull Local Education Authority, and is researching the impact that ICT and e-learning can have on teaching and learning. This has involved undertaking various qualitative and quantitative research methodologies in local schools and discussing issues raised during discussions with teachers and local government staff, in addition to lesson observations carried out over the past year (Cooper & Rawding, 2004).

The potential of ICT and e-learning in transforming the educational experience

There is little argument against the claim that children and young people have an advanced relationship with technology. This relationship has been cultured since birth within a society that not only incorporates change, but sustains it. Children are used to the disposable and temporary nature of a postmodern, consuming society, through toys, popular media, gaming systems and fast food. The education system not only fails to acknowledge this but actually works on opposing principles, delivering a fixed education within a narrow curriculum. As the student moves through the education system the feelings of alienation towards education grow.

[I]ts not attention deficit: I am just not listening. (Prensky, 2003, slide 93)

Prensky (2003) is author of 'Digital game based learning' and claims that young people today personify the existence of digital individuals and digital natives. His explanation of how young people have natural technological competence offers a theoretical model based on age and ability. As a result of their different relationship with technology, young people have parallel processing functions and can multi-task; for example, their ability to work at 'twitch' speed during gaming and when finding information on the Internet. Conversely, adults are considered to be 'digital immigrants' who struggle with the language of the digital age and who frequently struggle to stimulate effective interaction with the natives.

Prensky claims that today's students and teachers are not compatible, with teaching and learning styles frequently conflicting. Consider the following technologies familiar to those born post-1978:

* Atari * VCR * CD



100 L. Beastall

* Edutainment * Nintendo, Sega * Graphing calculators * Pagers * Cell phones * Handicams * Internet * Playstation * Gameboy * IM * Mp3 * Text messaging * Wi-Fi * Camera phones

Additionally, digital natives will experience the following during their childhood:

* 10,000 hours of video games * 200,000 emails * 10,000 hours on cell phones * 20,000 hours of television (incl. MTV) * 500,000 commercials * <5000 hours of reading books

Postmodern young people are empowered, but as students' they are disillusioned. Prensky believes there is a need to promote a new student-teacher relationship based on the following;

* Formerly teachers knew everything and kids didn't * Now kids know a lot too-and they're proud of it * We need to value what both groups know-and know how to do " We have to help both teachers and education keep up with our kids! (Prensky, 2003,

slide 6)

In their observations of students accessing the information age, Holloway and Valentine's findings correspond in some ways with that of Prensky. In their work on 'Cyberkids' (Holloway & Valentine, 2003) they investigate the spatial relations between children and adults, exploring barriers to communication and examining the distribution of power and organisational space. As students are able to access a wider realm of organisational space via technology, teachers' agency within their own professional environment is compromised. As technology threatens to alienate children and adults, it is important to attempt to address the differentiation that time has inflicted on the non-digital adult population. Whether or not this is possible remains to be seen. Children can not only learn from the technology, but they can interact through it; they can use their own digital language to communicate in ways that exclude the adult population. This process of discursive development has not been intentional, nor is it vindictive, yet it may appear so to teachers who may feel undermined and excluded




by a part of the organisational environment that they do not understand. Papert, in 'Computers and computer cultures', observes some children with their technology:

I began to see how children who had learned to program computers could use very concrete computer models to think about thinking and to learn about learning, and in

doing so enhance their powers as psychologists and as epistemologists. (cited in Pea, 2003, p. 232)

This examination of how the computer enables the child to think and to become a reflective learner is the key to understanding the difference between the relationship between pupil and computer and adult (teacher) and computer. For example, in his research regarding teaching adults, Corder (2002) debates the role of computers and e-technologies in delivery, and his statements regarding the use of technology in teaching reflect his relationship with them at that time.

Computers require a high level of personal skill and knowledge.

The internet is one of the great learning resources, [...] the problem is that you have to hack your way through endless reams of trash and pornography to find anything of worth. (Corder, 2002, p. 64)

As reflected here through Corder's own regard to ICT, hostility towards change, in any capacity, is predictable and the resistance to changing teaching styles is under- standable. The hegemonic transfer of digital-based learning via television, game and other interactive state apparatus has successfully prepared the next generation for the digital age, yet it has failed to create and sustain a momentum for continuous learning for previous generations.

Researching teachers' attitudes to ICT uncovers some positive and progressive practice in schooling; Holloway and Valentine (2003) describe an ICT lesson where students are given a task to undertake and are then coached through it at their own individual pace over a number of lessons. It is observed that the students, and, as a result, the teachers, are more relaxed and productive in these lessons and that interaction between the two is improved. Thus, 'the IT lesson is thus a space within the school where teacher practice means pupil culture can come to dominate' (Holloway & Valentine, 2003, p.50). Should the pupil culture here be one where ICT has become a confirmed and effective tool to enhance learning, then the current dominant teacher culture must be where ICT is a tool for teaching that they have not yet learned to use effectively. Until this happens there can be no advancement in the use of ICT as a teaching and learning tool. When teachers' knowledge reaches what

Hooper and Reiber (1995) describe as the familiarisation then innovation phase, rather than the introductory one, then teaching staff will be able to accommodate, facilitate and sustain an innovative learning environment. It is widely felt that 'inti- mate learning' (O'Brien & Guiney, 2001 p. 5), where the pupil-teacher relationship is based on a connection between the two individuals, can be facilitated through the use of ICT. During the learning process, interaction between the student and teacher is initiated through developing a common language, similar motivation and respect for one another.



102 L. Beastall

Realistically, as Twining (2002) explains, educational technologies are largely being used to present information and not to deliver it, thus undermining the process of inti- mate learning. Presentation technologies are being used to deliver curriculum information that has previously failed to engage pupils; what was an overhead projector is now a digital projector. The British Educational and Communications Technology Agency (BECTA) are constantly researching the effective use of ICT in teaching and learning, and subsequently the DfES has developed a training model for teachers that is designed to provide one-on-one HOS in the classroom. The use of technology is not enough; it has to be based on an understanding of its pedagogical value. The HOS training model has been developed following the relatively unsuccessful New Oppor- tunities Fund (NOF) training (Galanouli et al., 2004) and aims to provide support for staff in the classroom, where it is most effective. It is felt that such training will not only help to develop a pedagogical relationship between teachers and technology, but that it will also stimulate the familiarisation stage and encourage innovative practise. Unfortunately, as this report will discuss, it appears to be economic rather than educational politics that are preventing the widespread implementation of this solution.

Towards a unified e-learning strategy in Britain: current policy and practice

In December 2002 Charles Clarke, the then Secretary of State, declared in the Stra- tegic White Paper Delivering Results: A Strategy to 2006 that the government was committed to achieving excellence, releasing potential and creating opportunities within education, and that ICT was to play a major role in this:

Access to learning and services through information and communications technology is vital and must be available in new and creative ways for learners of all ages. We must prevent a digital divide where those who cannot use or afford new technology are disadvantaged. (DfES, 2002, p. 6)

Specific guidance as to how this was going to be achieved was given in the subsequent papers Fulfilling the Potential (DfES, 2003a) and Towards a Unified E-Learning Strategy (DfES, 2003b). The initial strategy document failed to acknowledge that, at this time, there was a digital divide already in place in schools in the form of teacher ICT skill short- ages. However, it did acknowledge that 'embedding e-learning will not happen fast' (DfES, 2003b, p. 6). The potential of e-learning and ICT was discursively determined as potential for teachers in the future and a reality for pupils in the present. The DfES had covered all aspects of the integration of e-learning, in establishing a mass training initiative in the form of the (NOF) programme, providing strategic advice, funding hardware for schools and establishing pedagogically informed support programmes.

Schools are significantly behind most other organisations in their use of ICT to support leadership and management. (DfES, 2003a, p. 2)

The aim of the DfES was that school management teams, as with those from most other large-scale organisations, would lead from the front and provide a strong strategic and pedagogical framework from which the digital-age mentality and e-confident schools would emerge. Unfortunately, according to BECTA (2004), ineffective




leadership of ICT and e-learning is one of the main barriers to the integration of successful e-learning strategies. Other barriers included (BECTA, 2004):

* Lack of access to appropriate ICT equipment. * Lack of time for training, exploration and preparation. * Lack of models of good practise in ICT. * Negative attitudes to computers in education. * Computer anxiety and a lack of confidence. * Fear of change and a lack of personal change management skills. * Unreliable equipment. * Lack of technical, administrative and institutional support.

BECTA's list of barriers to embedding ICT and e-learning is addressed in the e- learning strategy document; therefore, it is clear they have been acknowledged. However, these hurdles persist and little can be done about them in the short term. There are many strategic policies in place and the DfES remain focused on providing support, yet how effective this will be in actually improving education in schools in the present day remains unclear. More teachers are using ICT but there are still short- falls in fulfilling the government's original aim for the role of ICT in schools and raising standards. The DfES have acknowledged that embedding ICT will take time, (years) and yet the schools remain under pressure to perform and achieve results to satisfy local government's performance tables. As schools are placed under more and more pressure to perform to these targets, the potential that ICT and e-learning could have will remain stifled. Teaching staff do not have enough time to spend on familiarisation and innovation with ICT. This article finds the DfES strategy documents very thorough in their analysis of needs, yet wanting in their solutions to very practical barriers. The DfES have researched the need for HOS in schools; they have designed four models of support from which the best results have been found, yet nowhere in the Standards Fund Grant monies, which schools are allocated for certain ICT funding, do the DfES ring-fence funds for the best solution to the problem. Local education authorities (LEAs) therefore rely on the agreement of a large group of schools in order for them to pool funding and provide HOS where it is most needed. Unfortu- nately, in many areas of social deprivation where the need is greatest, schools are not able to dedicate funding to equipping staff with a pedagogical understanding of ICT, and instead continue purchasing hardware and software that the more affluent schools may have had for some time. The LEAs are therefore unable to coordinate HOS provision as it becomes expensive on a smaller scale. In an era of educational crisis, ignoring a solution to a problem raises cause for concern: if the reason for the ignorance is financial, then it makes education a victim of either political economics or a product of globalised consumerism.

Theoretical considerations: consuming education

Through 'Enchanting a disenchanted world: revolutionising the means of consumption', George Ritzer (1999) provides an arena for discussing the current issues



104 L. Beastall

concerning twenty-first-century education. His discursive analysis of postmodern 'Cathedrals of Consumption' (Ritzer, 1999, p. 8) provides a framework within which to locate education and schools and to relate it to the wider spectrum of postmodernity, change and the growth of a consumer culture. Comprehensive schools compete for results, customers (students), profit and a marketable product (staff and resources) (Hirvenoja, 2000). In order to survive in such a marketplace, schools have had to change their operational structure, to include marketing brochures, ICT and e-learning resources, alternative education for non-academic children and retention packages for staff. Ritzer (1999) considers how the homogenisation of western cultures based around consumerism is slowly creating a world of leisure so predictable that it is possible to buy and enjoy the same experience in all the capital cities of the world, regardless of continent or culture. This is already in evidence with the geographical diversity of the availability of the 'Big Mac' and a pair of GAP jeans (Ritzer, 1999, p. 86). Within education, the national curriculum, e-learning and the use of computers has the capacity to do the very same thing. As more software packages are developed and more resources are disseminated for use across LEAs, there is more chance that the delivery of education will be homogenised and that individual teachers' skills will become misplaced or redundant.

Children increasingly play an active role in consumer-related decision-making and can control the production of branded consumer products by large-scale interna- tional corporations such as Disney and McDonalds. They are able to use in-store technology such as hand-held scanners and are mostly able to operate interactive toys and games with little effort (Ritzer, 1999). A child's preschool social environment involves many non-physical interactive games, high visual stimulation and creative and specific audio stimulation and pleasure, whereas traditional school environments are mostly based around human interaction, verbal audio and none-digital visual. For many children this would be a big change from everyday life:

Interaction with people, at least in the realms of consumption, is gradually being replaced by interaction with things, both great and small. (Ritzer, 1999, p. 42)

The recent solution for the primary school classroom entering the digital age has been the introduction of the interactive whiteboard. This technology enables teaches to be more creative and interactive with the everyday curriculum, and enables the children to play an active role in their own learning. More and more primary school teachers are integrating this technology into their rooms and are reporting higher levels of pupil engagement and a feeling of personal development. For many teaching staff, the integration of new technologies into the classroom is a large-scale change and involves reinventing what they know about their ability to teach and a re-creation of themselves into digital-age curriculum delivery agents. Compulsory role-changing is part of the process of rationalisation within organisations-where control of time and space, both physically and ideologically, becomes naturalised and controlled. Just as the shopping Malls of America are windowless, so are many digital-age classrooms as they block out distraction, light and secure the schools resources. The 'Zombie effect' (ibid, p.89) of walking for hours around a shopping centre is now threatening




schools through ICT suites, where individuals surf the Internet and produce work on word-processors. The teachers are now herded into the ICT suites as the integration of ICT across the curriculum becomes ever more important as they aim to be more effective in their delivery. This is professional development in one sense, yet it also represents the dehumanisation of teaching as teaching and learning technologies rely less on human individuals for their input and more on the software designers working in conjunction with the large corporations. The impact of technology in schools could ultimately result in the total rationalisation of education, one stifled by a Weberian (ibid) iron cage (curriculum) and delivered through a networked panoptica whose values have roots in capitalist postmodernity. The potential dangers of this are unquantifiable.

They serve to deny the basic humanity, the human reason [...] they are dehumanizing. This dehumanizing effect is related to another aspect of the irrationality of rationality: [...] the disenchantment of rational systems and [...] the society they come to dominate. (Ritzer, 1999, p. 93)

Foucault (cited in Ball, 1994) would argue that this domination of the self, through any agent of power, offends the individuals' right to exist free of restrictive discourse. As Ball (1994) explains, in Foucauldian terms the discourse of organisational management constructs the required action and the individuals are therefore enslaved within it. The claim that 'we don't speak discourse, it speaks us' (Ball, 1994, p. 22) highlights how teachers are manipulated through discourse into passive ideological state apparatus, delivering information through a curriculum; however, this has nothing to do with technology and more to do with the national curriculum. The development and techniques of the teacher-self, essentially docile and subject to governmental manip- ulation, are essential to the creation and maintenance of the education marketplace, where society sends its children to receive information conducive to their postmodern socialisation programme. Part of this programme now involves the transfer of information through technology; hence the need for a new dominant educational discourse-one grounded ideologically in delivering messages to children that they can understand in order for them to be useful and profitable adults.

These changes have not happened overnight; Ritzer's (1999) 'Cathedrals of Consumption' are ideologically providing community-based stimulation. These enchanting and sacred places that create and sustain consumption offer something magical and fulfil the needs of a society driven by consumerism. The school environment is changing to satisfy societies thirst for fast food education, where information delivered via teaching staff can be replaced by search engines that are updated system- atically by machines that are neither time nor location specific. Therefore, a computers' potential as an agency of information delivery is as massive as its flexibility. Conse- quently, as postmodernity essentialises 'progress', educational institutions are changing the way they operate to reflect the new digital era, where technology may eventually be blamed for the decline in quality of education or heralded as the new saviour

depending on integration strategies. Thus the problem remains-postmodernity is

ready for the digital era of education, as are the children, but the teaching staff may



106 L. Beastall

need more strategic and pedagogical support in order to ensure best value and avoid its dehumanising consequences. Children accept the use of ICT and e-learning in the classroom as enchanting (but normalised), and research by BECTA suggested that teachers are increasingly also acknowledging this (ibid). Although most teaching staff see the benefits of being able to engage the students more effectively using ICT, they are unclear as to how this will help to raise the attainment of children and improve the learning process. As they 'marvel at the efficiency' (Ritzer, 1999, p. 101) of this new e-learning environment they may not be fully able to interact with it as their students can. The students' familiarity with technology has evaded most teaching staff and could remain as such until either the generation gap closes or the training of teaching staff reaches more of a reinforcement rather that an introductory stage; hence, the need for a model of HOS.

As discussed earlier, Prensky (2003) has labelled young people as digital natives and older people as digital immigrants, somewhat simplifying the problem faced in schools. Young people have evolved into the digital age as 'Cyberkids' (Holloway & Valentine, 2003) and are even thought to have a language of their own. As a result of this, teachers and students face feelings of alienation, and the learning environment frequently becomes counter-productive as knowledge gets lost in translation.

Technology, education and realism

Change and mobility are two of the key factors associated with postmodern societies. January 2005 saw the birth of the aeroplane of the future: the worlds' largest airbus holding up to 900 people and providing facilities such as a beauty parlour, casino and stand-up bar for passengers to use. It also hlas double beds for those who can afford to fly first class. The classroom of the future also exists: it has wireless networks, touch-screen technology, reading areas, working areas, interactive whiteboards and laptop trolleys with a wireless laptop per person. These classrooms are highly resourced and the pupils have access to the best equipment and software, in addition to highly trained, e-confident staff. However, like the airbus, these environments are available to those who are either financially or geographically able to access them.

The fast-food environment that postmodernity has created for the education marketplace is undermining the potential that ICT and e-learning could have on twenty-first-century teaching and learning. Following the largely ineffective NOF training, there is little structure to the dissemination of upgrading teachers' ICT skills and, as a result, the student and teacher potential is compromised. 'ICT in the curriculum has been broken backed without a pedagogic spine to provide the necessary structure and support' (Reynolds et al., 2003, p. 151). The DfES publications provide a national strategy for standardising delivery of learning through ICT, yet they fail to address the issue that training the teachers to be able to do this will require a heavy investment of time and money. The Governement's attempt at a quick-fix solution appears to attempt to homogenise the delivery of education via technology; a superficial approach that is likely to alienate staff who fail to see how using a laptop will help raise their student attainment levels and improve standards in schools. There




has been, and still is, massive spending (g700 million planned in 2005/06; DfES, 2003a, p. 4) and yet research highlights that many teachers are still not convinced that ICT in teaching is a long-term solution. (Holloway & Valentine, 2003; Pea, 2000). Teaching staff need time to develop their relationship with technology; to develop their own style of integrating e-learning and ICT into their classroom and see for themselves the benefits it will have not only to their students, but to also to the teaching environment as a whole. The following quote feeds support for a long-range plan for technology:

We don't buy glasses: we buy vision. We don't buy awnings: we buy shade. We don't buy a newspaper: we buy information. It isn't the product we want. It's what the product will do for us. We buy something [...] because we want what the thing will give us or do for us. (Pea, 2000 , p. 38)

Understanding the importance of the irrelevance of the type, shape, brand and actual specification of the e-learning technologies used in the classroom is vital when examining teachers' misunderstandings of their potential. The DfES claims that it promotes the use of technology to deliver the curriculum because it believes it can assist in transferring information to young people in a way that they will understand; just as televisions, audio and video equipment had been used in the past. Yet the DfES seems to have failed to disseminate this message effectively and some staff remain confused. In leaving inexperienced teachers alone with new technologies, the DfES are at risk of missing the full potential of digital technologies and are more likely to experience teachers exercising avoidance measures.

Should the DfES attach a sound pedagogical structure for the integration of technological solutions to enable effective curriculum delivery, they will be able to measure progress and could create best practice examples based on experience and not solely on ideological principles provided by the software designers and government repre- sentatives. Ritzer's (1999) 'Cathedrals of Consumption' are enchanting places, where individuals seek stimulation and interaction with the consuming society. Yet currently the DfES is having to battle to keep teachers and students inside the most attractive one of all-the cathedral of information-where an education is free and information is available to everyone. If the postmodern promises freedom to be, then a digital school, with human and non-human information resources, should provide its students and teachers with a positive, exciting and stimulating environment. Children are active consumers and this is not without adult consent; the advancement of technology has not only enabled this, but has essentialised it. However, the digital age has evolved during their childhood and not because of it. The 'Cyberkids' (Holloway & Valentine, 2003) are a result of their environment, stimulated and constructed by technologies that are driven and operated by adult programming.

This article has raised the dichotomy between the consideration that infiltrating ICT into the educational marketplace could de-humanise teaching and the admis- sion that schools and teachers need to develop teaching styles facilitated by technology in order to address issues of falling standards in schools. Perhaps teachers who are aware of these issues are more able to consider what using technology in their



108 L. Beastall

teaching can do for them in terms of their teaching styles and the overall delivery of information to young people. More and more cases of the effective use of technology are being reported: geography teachers using web-cams to show students extreme weather conditions at the north pole; mathematics teachers using animation to make more sense of fractions; language teachers forging links with schools in other countries and chatting online. The benefits for students of using technology in these cases are easily acknowledged and claims regarding the raising of attainment somewhat justified; what is less easy to assess is the context of the teachers' use of the technology. What is clear is that teachers who understand the technology and have a relationship with it are able to personalise their use of it. Consequently, these teachers can create an innovative teaching style that in some way helps them to avoid becoming a dehumanised commodity.

Lessons for policy and practice

As a result of this research, this article suggests the following as improvements to policy and practice:

* Teachers need to be made aware of the benefits of integrating ICT into their teaching; both for their own development as professionals and also to improve their effectiveness as teachers.

* The NOF training failed to have adequate impact on upskilling; therefore, teacher training programmes need to be more individually designed to meet specific needs, rather than try a blanket approach to problem-solving. The DfES have designed the HOS model for training that is now in practise in various local education authorities. Ring-fencing some Standards Fund Grant monies specifically for HOS would enable all local education authorities to develop this model of professional development. The creation of a culture based on peer-to-peer support would encourage teachers to improve their relationship with technology based on experience rather than compulsory DfES training.

* DfES strategic policies should be grounded in directing administration systems that aim to embed a pedagogical approach to the integration of e-learning and ICT in schools.

* Local government should invest in researching the changing learning styles of young people and redevelop curriculum-based teaching to compliment findings.

Conclusion

In postmodern education systems it is necessary to assume that there will be some degree of market ideology built into the development of any strategic planning docu- mentation. In this respect, it is fair to assume that policy-makers are not wholly concerned with providing simple solutions based solely on needs analyses, but that they are able to incorporate macro and micro issues that suit government agendas. Using ICT and e-learning across the curriculum is seen to be part of the solution to




delivering a more effective education to children in schools; however, the solution is also part of the problem. Attempting to embrace the use of technology in education has highlighted a skill shortage within the teaching staff and has indicated that the skill level differentiation may never be bridged. The postmodern teaching and learning environment has the potential to attract young people through familiar language and stimulating digital resources. However, in having to homogenise curriculum delivery due to a simple lack of skill diversity within the teaching profession, the marketplace is stagnating and could alienate its customer base; that is, the students. The Cyberkids of the twenty-first century have been socialised into possessing a naturalised degree of digital and technical ability but need these skills developing into transferable adult resources. Their ability to think digitally and to work outside the real-world time and space constraints gives them an advantage that is as yet an untapped resource. This article finds that teachers are not only frustrated by their own lack of ability within ICT and e-learning, but are also being restrained by a lack of strategically embedded, pedagogical support designed to encourage and support the process of change. In order for the digital age to explore its potential within postmodern education systems there needs to be an overhaul of strategic policy ensuring that future policies are designed to provide support where it is most needed. Should this be effective, organisational hegemony will be able to begin to embed the changes in delivery and provide the teaching staff with support structures that enable and sustain change.

References

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Enchanting a Disenchanted Child: Revolutionising the Means of Education Using Information and Communication Technology and e-Learning