Curriculum Development and New Information Technology

ABSTRACT

Many reports of achievements in developments in new information technology in schools lament the, as yet, unfulfilled hopes that they will radically change education. Those involved in new information technology sometimes seem to imagine that the problems of change that they face are somehow unique and have not been faced by others who have set out to change the curriculum.[l] I shall argue that the view of curriculum change employed by many policy makers and by some of those charged with implementing policy is inadequate.[2] While some acknowledge the need to change attitudes and practices in schools, national programmes have often failed even to include teacher training elements, and few have addressed the school as a focus of change, although the classroom has been addressed. My argument is that a better awareness of the common issues of curriculum change may make individual changes such as envisaged by the advocates of new information technology more effective, or at least less painful! Further I urge for a focus on the school, rather than individual classrooms, for both support and research efforts.

In a previous paper I traced the development of technology education in general (McCormick, 1991), this being a curriculum area that has some overlap with information technology. There are parallels to be drawn with this case of development, indeed there is direct overlap, and I will seek to illustrate this. In arguing for a more sophisticated view of curriculum change I will not be suggesting easy policy or programme changes, nor seeking to explain the lack of impact of new information technology, rather I hope to encourage (as I said above) an emphasis on the school and new directions for research. To facilitate my argument I start with a consideration of curriculum change in general, as it relates to national education systems, then consider the case of curriculum change in technology education, and then give an overview of development strategies in the new information technologies.[3] I then apply the evidence from these three sections to the fourth when I deal with curriculum change in the new information technologies, and end the paper by considering the implications for curriculum development in the new information technologies.