An empirical study of school‐based planning for the use of information technology to improve the quality of education in the twenty‐first century

Abstract

This study aims to provide recommendations on school‐based planning for the use of information technology (IT) to improve the quality of school education. Focus group discussions and case studies were conducted to collect the views of school practitioners on the need for IT in education and related areas of school‐based planning. The results of this study indicated that schools in Hong Kong recognise the importance of Twenty‐first Century Knowledge, the role of IT and the need for school‐based IT in education plans. The schools put considerable effort into curriculum re‐interpretation to accommodate the use of IT to improve learning and teaching, and have shown determination in their leadership to provide and manage IT infrastructure in response to the trend towards the integration of IT into school education. Four sets of school‐based strategies are recommended to promote the role of IT in enhancing school education, namely the use of IT to foster the capability of enquiry learning, the promotion of self‐regulated learning involving the use of digital resources, the use of digital student learning records to encourage assessment for learning, and the creation of a digital campus for effective learning and teaching.

Keywords:

• enquiry learning
• information literacy
• information technology in education
• school‐based planning
• self‐regulated learning

Acknowledgements

The author would like to acknowledge the support of the ‘Provision of Services on Designing a Resource Pack to Support School‐based Development of Information Technology in Education’ project of the Education Bureau of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, PRC.