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Teaching and learning withtelematics: an overview of theliteraturePatrick Dillon aa University of Reading , United KingdomPublished online: 19 Dec 2006.
To cite this article: Patrick Dillon (1998) Teaching and learning with telematics: anoverview of the literature, Journal of Information Technology for Teacher Education,7:1, 33-50, DOI: 10.1080/14759399800200024
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14759399800200024
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Teaching and Learning with Telematics: an overview of the literature
PATRICK DILLONUniversity of Reading, United Kingdom
ABSTRACT A review of telematics (information and communicationtechnologies) in teaching and learning with particular reference todevelopments in higher education in the United Kingdom (UK) is presented.Five themes are developed: the context of teaching and learning, themeasurement of learning, the development of core curricula, the design ofcourseware and emergent educational frameworks; themes and issues areestablished in each. It is suggested that the current educational paradigm inwhich telematics operates, which is influenced by both behaviourist andconstructivist theories of learning, is problematic in a field which is bothcomplex and chaotic.
Introduction
This review of telematics arises from research on informationtechnology-assisted teaching and learning in higher education (ITATL)conducted on behalf of the Higher Education Funding Council for England(HEFCE) and the Telematics for Teacher Training (T3) project, supported bythe European Commission (DG XIII-C). The former involved an analysis ofthe abstracts of 2143 papers listed in Educational Technology Abstractsbetween 1994 and 1996, and 2093 keywords associated with these papers(Boucher et al, 1997); the latter a review of the literature on core curriculain the use of telematics in education and training(http://www.ex.ac.uk/telematics/t3/).
Telematics describes the use of various combinations oftelecommunications, television and information technologies (IT).Telematics-based products and services can retrieve, store, process and
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communicate information as voice, sound, text, graphics, images and video(European Commission, 1997). Telematics thus incorporates information andcommunication technologies (ICT) and multimedia but the earlier terms arestill used extensively in the literature. Related and overlapping fields includecomputer-mediated communication (CMC), computer-supported collaborativework (CSCW), and computer-supported cooperative learning (CSCL).
The review presented here reflects the needs of the two projects fromwhich it arose and is thus not exhaustive. As it is based on establishedliterature rather than current developments it gives prominence toinformation technologies and may under-represent the emergent networkedelements of ICT. Nevertheless, within these constraints some themes andissues can be identified which are representative of the condition oftelematics in higher education today. The themes developed here areconfined to matters of teaching and learning, they being: the context ofteaching and learning, the measurement of learning, the development ofcore curricula, the design of courseware and emergent educationalframeworks.
The Context of Teaching and Learning
Telematics may be used in conventional, flexible and distance education tosupport teaching and learning which is one-to-one, one-to-many andmany-to-many. It may be synchronous, occurring at the same time andinteractively for all participants as in video conferencing, or asynchronous,occurring at different times for different participants as in email andtext-based conferencing (Collis, 1995).
Historically, the development of telematics in education has beeninfluenced strongly by the tension between two theories of learning –behaviourist and constructivist – and the relative influence they have had oninstructional design. The behaviourist position is characterised by:x an objective view of knowledge;x serial structuring of material and program control;x regular review and testing against pre-specified criteria.The constructivist position is characterised by:x a provisional view of knowledge;x flexible approaches to interaction with equipment;x attention to the social context of learning.Somekh (1996) and Willis (1995) review the behaviourist-constructivistdebate in terms of instructional theory and design generally, Atkins (1993)and Henderson (1996) with specific reference to multimedia. Current designtrends in telematics incorporate both behaviourist and constructivistcharacteristics (Beruvides & Koelling, 1994; Lebow, 1993; Riding & Rayner,1995). They include:
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x Content which takes account of learners and their characteristics –attention to prior experience and preconceptions, restructuring andextending the knowledge base as new information is integrated withpreviously learned material.
x Content which utilises the particular strengths of the medium through, forexample, the use of demonstrations, simulations, analogies, similes andmetaphors.
x Making the language of interaction similar to the language ofperson-to-person communication – efficient, concise, with a naturalgrammar and feedback.
Other theories of learning which have been influential in some sectors ofhigher education in recent years include Kolb’s theory of experientiallearning, Schön’s concept of reflective practice, the notion of masterylearning, the notion of situated cognition and Pask’s conversational theory. Experiential learning defines certain learning styles and seeks to matchthese with learning activities so that the differences of individuallearners are catered for. Reflective practice emphasises the role ofreflection in learning from experience and in integrating theory andanalysis with existing understanding. The challenge to distance educa-tion offered through the works of Kolb and Schön has been reviewedbriefly by Thorpe (1995). Sadler-Smith (1996) suggests ways in whichexperiential learning and cognitive styles can be brought to bear on thedesign of supported self-study material. Mastery learning is based on the notion that a student should be able todemonstrate progressive mastery or attainment over defined elementsof learning (Palardy, 1993). This usually involves defining learning interms of the behavioural outcomes expected and implies detailedanalysis of content. As such mastery learning is open to the criticismof reductionism and over-prescription of detail.Brown et al (1989) provide an early overview of situated cognition.Situated cognition is based on the notion that all knowledge, likelanguage, is a product of the activity and situations in which it isproduced and that concepts are both situated and progressively devel-oped through activity. In a more recent paper, Lave (1996) argues for asocial, collective approach to situated learning rather than apsychological-based, individualised one. Laurillard (1993) offers acritique of situated cognition, arguing that academic learning in highereducation is different from other forms of learning by virtue of thespecific way in which it is mediated by the tutor.
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Pask’s original conversation theory was ‘an attempt to investigate thelearning of realistically complex subject matter under controlledconditions’ (Pask, 1976). Pask argued for subject matter to be struc-tured so as to be amenable to students applying certain rules in demon-strating understanding. His early thinking on computer-mediatedlearning was within a behaviourist paradigm. More recently, Laurillard(1993) has described a conversational theory of learning based onexposition in which tutor and student set out their respective views ofthe matter under consideration. The tutor then identifies tasks for thestudent to perform which explore the differences between the twoviews. The tutor and student then reformulate their views in the lightof the discourse which follows.Laurillard (1995) has elaborated these ideas and applied them to thedesign of multimedia and an analysis of ways in which it is used inteaching and learning. She makes distinctions between different typesof media which support learning in different ways and argues thatmultimedia should be adaptive, with guided discovery that maintainsthe narrative line whilst allowing a fair degree of user control. Shemakes a case for design features which ensure that learners are keptaware of the goal all the way through, are advised of an appropriateway to approach a task, and have easy access to the narrative line at alltimes. Learners may construct their own approach and deviate fromthe line suggested and must construct their own analysis before beingable to access that of the expert. Laurillard and her colleagues at theInstitute for Educational Technology at the Open University in theUnited Kingdom (UK) are currently researching these ideas in thecontext of education in schools through their work in the Economicand Social Research Council’s Research Programme in CognitiveEngineering (http://www.cogeng.gla.ac.uk). Research on cognition (including development, skills and styles), theprocesses of learning and learning activities are revealed as thedominant themes in an analysis of 749 keywords relating to teachingand learning in all its aspects, associated with abstracts of articles inthree randomly selected issues of Educational Technology Abstracts,one each from the years 1994, 1995 and 1996 (Boucher et al, 1997)(Table I). It must be emphasised that Educational TechnologyAbstracts ranges wider than telematics and includes articles on, forexample, educational theory and print-based media. The analysis
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therefore offers an overview of the field of educational technologygenerally but telematics makes up a large proportion of it. Similarly,the abstracts range across all sectors of education but a large propor-tion of them relate to initiatives in higher education. This is becausemuch of the research and development in educational technology,irrespective of the sector to which it is targeted, is initiated and/ormanaged and evaluated in higher education. Moreover, the systems ofrecognition and accountability within higher education are such thatincentives to publish are high.
Measurement of Learning
There are both financial and educational dimensions to the question of whatcan and should be measured in teaching and learning with telematics(Ehrmann, 1995). The discussion here will be restricted to matters which aresubstantially educational; an economic analysis is presented by Boucherelsewhere in this volume. It may be more meaningful to take a unifiedapproach to estimating all costs and benefits in a given development,although at the moment there is no framework in which educational andeconomic indices can be integrated.
20Individual learning/independent study
23Performance
23Group activities/dynamics etc.
24Communication techniques/skills etc.
28Student attitudes
28Distance education
29Tests and testing
29Skills development
32Curriculum design/development
35Learning styles/theories/strategies
41Course objectives/content/evaluation
47Problem-solving
82Learning and learning activities/processes
97Cognitive development/skills/styles etc.
Table I. Numbers of keywords relating to all aspects of teaching and learning in three issuesof Educational Technology Abstracts.
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McAlpine & Weston (1994) provide a comprehensive list of forty-one genericattributes or characteristic properties of instructional materials which havesubsequently been validated and found reliable in studies over a period offive years. The attributes are grouped into four categories:x instructional design (e.g. objectives, sequencing, and alignment of
evaluation with objectives);x language (e.g. semantics and syntatics such as complexity of sentence
structure and vocabulary);x presentation (e.g. physical attributes of materials, graphics, format and
layout);x subject matter (e.g. knowledge structure, content accuracy, compre-
hensiveness).It may be possible to define attributes like these at a sufficient level ofspecificity for them to be used in the evaluation of both courseware andstudent learning.Central to accounting for educational outcomes is the distinctionbetween the learning reported by students and the learning observedby tutors. Here there is an overlap with the matter of assessment in itswidest sense. Issues that have arisen with respect to assessment oftelematics in higher education include distinctions between vocationaland academic work, the accreditation of skills, the examination ofknowledge and the assessment of higher-order cognitive processes.Willis (1993) is concerned with inconsistencies between espousedtheories of learning expressed in many policy statements and thetheory that actually informs assessment practice. Although the articleis not specifically concerned with telematics, many of the points madeare applicable to it, specifically:x Learners hold a diverse range of perceptions about learning.x Approaches to learning combine both the product and process of learning.
One therefore cannot consider what a student has learnt withoutconsidering how he or she has learnt it.
x An integral part of a student’s approach to learning is their motivation.This interacts with strategy to determine the approach a student uses inparticular situations.
Differences have been highlighted in the external horizons of the variousconcepts of learning. Students may see learning as something that happensin the classroom or as an activity that takes place as part of life in general.This separation has important implications for the development of lifelonglearning. As to what one might assess, Willis (1993) cites the work of Beatyet al (1990) on the essence of learning, i.e.x increasing one’s knowledge;x learning as memorising and reproducing;
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x learning as understanding;x learning as applying;x learning as an interpretative process aimed at understanding reality;x learning as changing as a person.Traditional modes of assessment focus on the first three. The fourth isimportant in assessing the transference of skills. The last two, normallyoverlooked in assessment, are arguably the most socially useful.
Core Curricula
In telematics, the measurement of learning has come into new prominencethrough the issue of core curricula. Most attempts at specifying a corecurriculum have done so in terms of core skills. However, there is nodefinitive list of telematics skills and the terms skill, capability andcompetence are often used interchangeably. The UK was one of the first nations to embrace the idea of a nationalcurriculum for schools. As such, it is possible to outline a develop-mental history of the telematics curriculum from its early origins in IT,through technological convergence, to the added dimension offered bycommunication technologies. It is also possible to show how establish-ing a core curriculum for students in schools led inexorably to theneed for a core curriculum for the education and training of teachers.This in turn raises the question of a core curriculum in telematics forundergraduates generally. In 1992, the National Council for Educational Technology (NCET), inconjunction with the National Association of Advisers for Computingin Education (NAACE) and the Association for Information Technol-ogy in Teacher Education (ITTE) collaborated in generating aschematic representation of how the competencies of teachers developcumulatively and interconnectedly through their initial training, theirteaching in schools and their continuing and in-service education(NCET, 1992). A framework for competence is laid during initialteacher education through which a competent student teacherdevelops:x a holistic understanding of the ways in which IT contributes to teaching
and learning;x an understanding of the developing nature of IT capability and an
awareness that it is integral to the whole structure and purpose of thecurriculum.
Implementation is through school-based work where the competent teachercan:
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x use the computer to support everyday classroom or field work activities atan appropriate curriculum level, access the learning which takes place andensure progression;
x bring to this an evaluative framework that enables critical reflection onhow IT changes the teaching and learning processes.
Competence is broadened through continued teaching and in-serviceeducation so that the proficient teacher can:x adapt to curricular changes, to the needs of learners and to emerging
technologies;x maintain a holistic understanding on IT in the curriculum;x continue to implement and evaluate IT-supported learning activities.Recently, this scheme has been extended by Davis et al (1997) to incorporatethe influence of prior experiences. NCET (1995) have also used the schemeas the basis for developing a matrix of IT capabilities for teachers.In the USA there is no national curriculum as such because require-ments and guidelines are the responsibility of each state. In 1989 theInternational Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) surveyededucators involved in the use of ICT throughout the country in orderto determine the level of competence required by pre-service studentteachers. Handler & Strudler (1997) summarise the foundation levelcurriculum guidelines, or core curriculum, for accreditation of ICTprogrammes for student teachers.In all of these developments, content is specified in generic terms andis essentially concerned with information. It is only with the conver-gence of information and communication technologies in recent yearsthat initiatives have been launched which explore the added value thatcommunication technologies bring to telematics generally. In the UKan Education Superhighways Initiative was launched in 1995 to lookat ways in which schools and colleges might use the emerging infor-mation superhighway to contribute to learning. One of the benefitsidentified was the notion of network literacy. The definition ofnetwork literacy provides an insight into the skills development envis-aged:
[it] ... may be defined as the capacity to use electronic networks to access resources, and to communicate with others. These threeelements of network literacy can be seen as complex extensions of the traditional skills of reading, writing, speaking and listening. The notion also extends previous conceptions of IT literacy, whichconventionally involve interactions with and around the computer.
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To this we must now add interactions at a distance through ICT. (DfEE et al, 1997, pp. 7-8)
A case study of how network literacy might develop in practice is providedby the Bristol On-line Education Network (BEON) project (Still & Sharp,1997). The proposed UK National Grid for Learning takes the integration ofinformation and communication technologies a step further. The gridis conceived as:
a mosaic of inter-connecting networks and education services based onthe Internet which will support teaching, learning, training andadministration in schools, colleges, universities, libraries, the workplaceand homes. (DfEE, 1997, p. 3)
The interesting development here is the networking of education andtraining with other areas of human enterprise and activity.Some indication of the training envisaged to support established ICTand the new developments in the UK is provided in the proposednational curriculum for the use of ICT in subject teaching in initialteacher training (DfEE, 1998). The proposed core curriculum is in twosections: effective teaching and assessment methods and trainees’knowledge and understanding of and competence in information andcommunication technologies in subject teaching. There are alsotelematics skills associated with pedagogy, frequently called ‘knowl-edge management skills’. Finally, there are skills concerned with theplanning and organisation of learning and teaching, recordingevidence, assessment and critical evaluation.The need for a coherent national framework for all qualifications,academic and vocational, is now widely recognised. In the UK, aQualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) was created in 1997to address this matter. The indications are that the effective use ofinformation and communication technologies will be regarded as acore skill in all curricula. In teacher education there is likely to be amove towards self-accredited competencies.
Design of Courseware
The paradox here is that despite advances in telematics generally, there isstill a separation between theories of learning and instructional design.Willis (1995) observes that most of the literature on constructivist/cognitiveapproaches to educational technology focuses on instructional theory ratherthan instructional design. Boucher et al (1997), in their survey of the
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educational technology literature, found some evidence that research anddevelopment in instructional design, teaching and learning take place ‘onthe back of’ instructional media, which is the primary focus of a largeproportion of publications. This can be explained partly in terms of thehistorical influence of the film and video industries that have establishedstyles, rules and protocols for using visual images. There is still a relativelylarge amount of research and development in audio-visual and broadcasttechnologies and the outcomes impact on telematics generally.With a clear specification for what is being assessed, it should bepossible to say what is expected of courseware and software. A recur-ring need in higher education institutions in the UK is for coursewarethat deals with authentic (i.e. real-life or meaningful beyond theimmediate experience) content, promotes higher-order learning andskills, and can be adapted to local conditions (Boucher et al, 1997).Willis (1993) argues that if students are to be encouraged to engage inhigh-quality learning, assessment must support such learning. Acompatible theory of learning would assume that real learning is activeand creative and relevant to real-life issues. Assessment would be‘inclusive’ such as that undertaken by the individual and peers andthrough student profiles.A minimum design specification might be based on what we alreadyknow about effective interaction between tutor and learner in collabo-rative learning, summarised by Wood & Wood (1996) and adapted asfollows:x Tutors provide a bridge between a learner’s existing knowledge and skills
and the demands of the new task. (Left alone, the novice might notappreciate the relations between what a task demands and what theyalready know or can do that is relevant.)
x By providing instructions and help in the context of the learner’s activity,tutors provide a structure to support the learner’s problem solving. (Leftalone, learners, while focused on their immediate actions, might lose sightof the overall goal of the activity.)
x Although the learner is involved in what is initially, for them, ‘out ofreach’ problem solving, guided participation ensures that they play anactive role in learning and that they contribute to the successful solutionof problems.
x Effective guidance involves the transfer of responsibility from the tutor tothe learner.
x Not all guided participation involves deliberate or explicit attempts toteach and learn. (Often interactions with the four characteristics just listedoccur in everyday interactions between tutor and learner where there isno specific learning agenda.)
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These are broadly compatible with conversational/narrative approaches tomultimedia espoused by Laurillard (1995) and described earlier. There has been some movement towards addressing the formal androutine elements of support – establishing a context, bridging withexisting knowledge, problem definition. Designing courseware thataddresses the informal, the non-routine, the situationally-dependent,the equivalent of the anecdotal, is to move much further in the direc-tion of artificial intelligence. As Wood & Wood note:
what is internalised during instruction is not simply speech, but rules ofaction, in the service of goals, which become activated by symbol systemssuch as language and diagrams. Whilst such rules can be described asproposition-like structures, they are not available to conscious inspection.However, they are, we suggest, plausible candidates for the ‘innerspeech’ that Vygotsky argued arises out of social interaction to form‘higher mental processes’. (Wood & Wood, 1996, p. 15)
The analysis conducted by Boucher et al (1997) on the subjects in whichthere are applications of educational technology is revealing. It showed thatthe majority are in subjects where routine or mechanical skills play animportant part, the knowledge component can be precisely specified orwhere there is a well-defined professional base. Teaching and teachereducation and literacy, reading and writing had the most applications(Table II). (The qualifications on the range and scope of EducationalTechnology Abstracts set out earlier apply also to this analysis.) Althoughthe dominance of teaching, teacher education and the fields of literacy andnumeracy might be expected, the analysis reinforces the importance of theeducational sector to developments in telematics generally and points to awealth of available expertise which could be applied in other sectors ofhigher education. The analysis of subject applications also reveals a paucity of course-ware for the creative and performing arts, where skills and knowledgeare less easily defined and/or specified. The question of whethertelematics courseware, however advanced, can serve equally well thedifferent structures of knowledge domains in the sciences and arts hasbeen raised by Atkins (1993). However, in the UK the setting uprecently of a Computers in Teaching Initiative (CTI) Centre in Art andDesign (http://www.bton.ac.uk/ctiad/) and other initiatives in the artsappears to be stimulating academic activity and courseware develop-ment in these fields.
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Emergent Frameworks
Educational developments in telematics are closely linked with flexible anddistance learning. This is due partly to the convergence of educationalpurposes and technology means, and partly because distance education isthe major means through which governments the world over seek to achievesignificant expansion in the provision of education and training, whilst atthe same time reducing the unit cost per student (Thorpe, 1995). Gaspar &Thompson (1995), Jegede et al (1995) and Thorpe (1995) provide overviewsof distance education, and Scott (1996) of flexible learning. Distanceeducation has moved from the correspondence model, through themultimedia model, to the telelearning model and now employs a variety ofhighly developed and refined teaching and learning resources (Jegede et al,1995).
13Accountancy/banking/business/economics
21Engineering
23Writing
23Reading
23Literacy, including visual aspects
26Medicine and health
33The humanities and social sciences
37Mathematics
38English and other languages
48The sciences
70Teaching/teacher education
Table II. Numbers of keywords relating to major subject applications in three issues of Educational Technology Abstracts.
Telematics provides the means for networking that is both the key tomodern distance education and a new dimension in conventional approachesto education. A major issue is the extent to which networking changes theprocesses of education. Collis (1995) implies that this is happening. Drawingon a number of case studies in teacher education, she suggests thatnetworking not only changes the mechanics of education, it also influencesits content and contexts by introducing many new scenarios. Wright &Cordeaux (1996) report greater emphasis on collaborative working, sharedapplications and discussion-based dialectical approaches to learning, arisingfrom the flexible use of video conferencing. Austin (1995) reports a shareddetermination to use new skills on the part of students and pupils in
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Northern Ireland and Norway participating in an email educational project.Riel (1995, cited in Light et al, l997) sees CMC leading to a restructuring ofthe teaching and learning relationship, shifting the role of the tutor fromcontrolling the transmission of information to providing intellectualleadership in challenging conversations among a community of learners.Other research presents a more cautious interpretation of change.Tolmie & Barbieri (1997) have edited a special issue of the Journal ofComputer Assisted Learning dealing with CMC in higher education.In this issue, McAteer et al (1997) make the point that CMCexchanges take place within a broad teaching and learning system ofwhich most participants have extensive experience. This systemprovides the context within which participants make sense of andadapt to the use of on-line communications. In other words, becauseexisting work practices and styles are the ones most familiar tostudents, these are the ones which are automatically applied to the newtask. Henri (1995, cited in Light et al, 1997) observes that teleconfer-encing is similar to traditional learning situations – the student speaks,the tutor answers, confirms, approves, reinforces.Lewis (1997) claims that individuals within a community work withtools and agreed practices in order to achieve certain objectives. Thepractices act as ground rules for the negotiation of the objectives andthe individual and collective tasks and actions that need to be under-taken to meet the objectives. This negotiation shapes later communica-tion, including CMC. This semi-formal route to structuring telematicsactivities, evident from case studies of video conferencing (Davis et al,1997) and computer conferencing (Selinger, 1996) in the UnitedKingdom, and on-line, teacher education in the Netherlands (theREFLECT project, Veen et al, 1996) and Italy (the POLARIS project,Trentin, 1997), is also a means to specifying skills and assessing theirdevelopment.Escobar (1994) is amongst those who assert that initiatives like thesewill lead to the emergence of a new learning culture. Some writershave described virtual communities in which links through the Netsubstitute for face-to-face relationships in binding a geographicallydispersed group with a collective purpose. Bainbridge (1995), whocites Escobar, doubts this, suggesting that the term ‘pseudo-community’ would be a better descriptor. Bainbridge (1995), whilstacknowledging that the Internet will increase ‘information freedomand cultural diversity’, suggests that in the absence of conventional
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forms of academic quality control, bad information will drive out goodinformation. Thus emphasis is again placed on conventional intellec-tual and literary skills.
Conclusion
As Scott (1996) has observed, educational change in higher education is aprocess, not an event. The process is value-laden, complex, continuous,uncertain and cyclical; it is driven by ongoing evaluation, both informal andformal; it is reciprocal, it must be led, owned, monitored and supported.Moreover, Boucher et al (1997) noted the lack of a widely recognised andaccepted integrated framework through which sense can be made of themultitude of often conflicting factors which influence telematics in highereducation. The impression is of a field which is both complex and chaotic.
Others have drawn similar conclusions. Lebow (1993) makes someanalogies between constructivist approaches to instructional design andchaos. He notes that ‘sensitive dependence on initial conditions’ (so that aslight change in the beginning state can result in disproportionately largeeffects) suggests that students’ feelings, attitudes, values, goals, doubts andconcerns are involved in every learning situation and affect future learningin ways that cannot be reliably predicted. Jegede et al (1995), withoutexplicitly mentioning chaos, imply much the same.
Thorpe (1995) cites Winn (1990), who has drawn on ‘extensiveresearch which demonstrates that the way people solve problems is verycontext dependent and that human reasoning does not conform to themodels of logic embedded in mathematical or philosophical analysis’. Theidea of ‘plausible reasoning’ is cited as a more appropriate interpretation ofhow people think in everyday situations, and points to the importance ofnon-logical processes such as intuition and perception. Thorpe claims thatwhen we add to this idea the evidence cited in Laurillard (1993), thatlearners can and do make their own decisions about the nature of thelearning task, ‘... we are faced with a conceptualisation of learning asdynamic and, in many ways, unpredictable’.
You (1993) takes a bold step and argues explicitly for chaos theory as abasis for non-linear models of instructional systems design because:
they assume a more holistic orientation, rather than one ofuni-directional causality; are better able to accommodate factors in agiven situation that can interfere with the prescribed design process; andreflect the dynamic and unpredictable aspects of the learning process.(You, 1993, p. 20)
If one accepts such premises, then taking the widest possible view of whatmight constitute initial conditions becomes essential. Beynon (1993) andHickman & Corritore (1995) are amongst those who argue powerfully for a
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socio-cultural definition of technological literacy. If Beynon’s argumentabout the cultural, social, organisational, and political contexts oftechnological practices is taken in reverse, this suggests that the range ofinitial conditions which could prove sensitive is vast.
This suggests a need for a ‘total environment’ approach to the entireconverging field of telematics and flexible and distance learning. This wouldrequire an ecological paradigm which is sensitive to change. Such aparadigm may help resolve some of the tensions between behaviourist andconstructivist approaches and instructional design and theories of learning.It implies inter- and multidisciplinary approaches to research anddevelopment, drawing on, for example, computer science, cognitiveengineering, psychology, education, instructional design and telematics. Thismay at least generate a framework through which information andcommunication technologies can merge seamlessly into education, much likeliteracy and numeracy.
Correspondence
Dr Patrick Dillon, Department of Science and Technology Education,University of Reading, Bulmershe Court, Reading, Berkshire RG6 1HY,United Kingdom ([email protected]).
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