Placing cybereducation in the UK classroom

Abstract

The use of the Internet in the classroom has often been characterized as a practice that disconnects the teacher from traditional forms of externally imposed influence. This paper examines this assertion by mapping the emerging field of cybereducation and considering how endemic knowledge is contextualized by national curricular authorities. The field theories of Pierre Bourdieu and Basil Bernstein are employed in order to demonstrate the relationship between expert discourse and classroom pedagogy, using the National Grid for Learning (NGfL) as a case study. This attempt to capture the dynamics of cybereducation ultimately suggests how this emergent intellectual field’s fragmentation and decoupling from State education forces offers policymakers the capacity to influence use. Progress of the UK government in integrating knowledge from an emergent educational field with its incumbent priorities is gauged, demonstrating the way in which national education officials have attempted to constrain potential departures from unregulated, officially mandated curriculum.

Notes

* Department of Sociology, University of Chicago, 1126 E. 59th St., Chicago, IL 60637, USA. Email: [email protected]

This is in the arenas of formal (classroom) or informal (non‐classroom or ‘distance’) education. My definition is narrower than ‘education technology’, which implies all uses of hardware, and broader than the oft‐used ‘Asynchronous Learning Networks’, which refers to a system of personal and technical connections.

One example of a formative environment (what Bourdieu refers to as situs) for cultivation is the school, as it ‘provides those who have been directed directly or indirectly to its influence not so much with particular and particularised patterns of thought as that with general disposition, generating particular patterns that can be applied in different areas of thought and action, which may be termed cultural habitus’ (Bourdieu, 1971a, p. 194).

Foucault’s field is ‘made up of the totality of all effective statements (whether spoken or written), in their dispersion as events and in the occurrence that is proper to them’ (1982, p.210). As opposed to Bourdieu, he emphasises the deconstruction of discourse voices without an examination of the positioning struggles that enable voices to be heard. For more on his discursive structures, see Mills (1997).

• Evidence of the importance of field‐specific style in establishing credibility within a field can be seen in what is now known as ‘The Alan Sokal Affair’ in which Sokal, a New York University professor of physics, published a paper in a prominent peer‐reviewed cultural studies journal, employing all of the requisite cultural studies language but representing ideas that could be identified as gibberish by ‘any undergraduate student in math or physics’ (Sokal 1996a, 1996b). The acceptance of the paper for publication has been heralded by Sokal as delegitimisation of the field of cultural studies.

• Details can be found on: http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/ (8/20/03).

‘Cyberspace’ was first coined by William Gibson (1984) in his groundbreaking science fiction novel Neuromancer. ‘Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators … A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system’ (p. 51). Its contemporary usage is in reference to environs one occupies online. For some of the most insightful work on online communities and culture, see Jones (1997), Rheingold (1993), Wellman (1997), and Silver (2000).

These publications, including Leading & Learning with Technology, Journal of Computing in Teacher Education (JCTE), Journal of Research on Technology in Education (JRTE), Multimedia Schools, Journal of Interactive Learning Research, The Technology Source, Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks (JALN), Technology Focus: Learning Technologies in K–12 Classrooms, when combined with the torrent of new books written on cybereducation, begin to represent relevant literature. Additionally, the presentation of papers comprising this literature at cybereducation conferences, such as CyberEducation 2002: U.S. Education and the High‐Technology Workforce, in February 2002, serves to secure greater cultural capital for the academic.

This difficult identification could nonetheless be accomplished empirically. We could note the academic capital of those who submit to the journals, or to account for the non‐academic contributors to the field, we could examine which journals are most referenced by authors. These three were the most‐referenced journals.

Self‐interest of Microsoft is arguably at play here in attempting to terminally subvert Apple’s first‐mover advantage into the educational technology arena, initially created by Apple CEO Steve Jobs’s donation of one computer to every school in America in the 80s. See Trotter (2001) for more.

• A report on their efforts states:

• The AeA and The Nasdaq Stock Exchange are pleased to present CyberEducation 2002. The new report compiles, in a single document, K–12 and postsecondary education data at thenational and state level and assesses the implications for the high‐technology industry. ‘The high‐tech industry is keenly interested in improving education in order to ensure a viable workforce in the future. We need skilled workers, most with a college education in order for our companies to prosper,’ said William T. Archey, AeA President and CEO.

• See http://www.aeanet.org (8/20/03) for more on the AeA.

Calls for the abolition of the ‘undemocratic’, nineteenth century—or what Paulo Freire calls ‘banking‐method’—teaching style, in which the student is expected to absorb the information given (within the conventional confines of the school, of course,) was a focus long before the Internet was in widespread use in education. More than thirty years ago, Ivan Illich (1971) suggested that computers could be used to create ‘learning webs’ as a form of ‘a deschooled society.’ He envisioned a ‘peer‐matching network’ that could pair up people in every field of work or topic with those with similar interests, circumventing what he saw as school’s narrow definition of appropriate education. We could extrapolate that if people, when computing, occupy a wholly different space that that in which they reside in daily, offline life (e.g. Turkle, 1995), then cybereducation facilitates Illich’s ideal.

This recognition of value has begun to occur, at least in the United States. For instance, of the top ten ranked research schools of education there, seven have developed extensive doctoral programs and/or research centres for the study of cybereducation and educational technology more broadly. For details, see: http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/beyond/gradrank/edu/gdedut1.htm (8/20/03).

We know ‘gridwatch was set up by the Government and is operated by the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (BECTA) to enable action to be taken to exclude inappropriate materials from the National Grid for Learning (NGfL)’ (BECTA, 2002d). Further, ‘the NGfL portal is being developed by a diverse and enthusiastic content team drawn from educational and ICT sectors’ (BECTA, 2002e). ‘The team’ provides contact information for one of its members.

‘Distance’ education is also addressed in the literature and in the NGfL, but I chose not to address this level because it is unclear how it might be represented in Bernstein’s pedagogic device.

For example, a recent issue of the journal ‘Teacher Development’ entitled Information and Communication Technology and Pedagogy (Brindley & Selinger, 2001), contains four articles on pedagogies of cybereducation.

A development emblematic of this pace is the State’s recent move to address pedagogical issues through its ‘Virtual Teacher Centre’. This positive move brings BECTA closer to offering a online space for the PRF, although the material therein remains created by the government.

In a promising development, differentiated levels of access are beginning to be parsed in a recent book by Mark Warschauer (2003), Technology and social inclusion: rethinking the digital divide.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Daniel A. Menchik *

* Department of Sociology, University of Chicago, 1126 E. 59th St., Chicago, IL 60637, USA. Email: [email protected]