National Education Programs on ICT in Europe

1. National Education Programs on ICT in Europe Jef Moonen Emeritus Professor University of Twente Moonen & Collis Learning Technology Consultants bettycollisjefmoonen@gmail.com www.bettycollisjefmoonen.nl

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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…

5. Focus Three perspectives on context • Macro level: Technological & social context • Meso level: Curriculum context • Micro level: Daily classroom practice context

6. Macro level: Technological & social context • Specified by ‘e-readiness’ ranking of countries E-readiness is a measure of the quality of a country’s 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

7. 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

8. 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 backtrackingamong some countries, and particular within the rankings’ top ten

9. 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’

10. 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)’

11. 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

12. 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

13. AP HP AP HP LP AP AP HP

14. 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.

15. 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

16. 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’?

17. Example of New Digital Learning Skills • See report: Thriving in the 21st century: Learning Literacies for the Digital Age (LLiDA project)

18. High-level terms, framing ideas Component Competences

19. 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’ ICT’s and other ones. • Policy recommendations should focus on core ICT’s • 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’

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

21. 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….

22. 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 forteachers • Not so easy, see example from Kennisnet.

23. Teachers’ impressions of time saved or lost by using ICT applications Time burden Time benefit

24. School management intentions for further investments in ICT

25. Conclusion: ICT use in daily practice should offer more incentives for teachers as well as other actors Incentives

26. 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

27. 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

28. Thank YouMore information:http://bettycollisjefmoonen.nlbettycollisjefmoonen@gmail.com

29. 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