Hype, hope and ICT in teacher education: a Bernsteinian perspective

Abstract

This article draws from ethnographic data produced inside mathematics teacher education in Sweden. It explores and makes visible the ongoing process of education during workshops in information and communication technology (ICT) laboratory contexts in which student teachers were working with spreadsheet applications on the computer. The main finding is that, contrary to the intentions to renew and revitalise education, ICT in use seemed to operate as a relay in the reproduction of traditional ways of teaching and learning. However, the investigation is not one of the failures of education to make use of ICT but one that tries to distance itself from the traditional enthusiastic rhetoric, with the ambition to contribute to a more realistic discussion. Bernstein's concept of pedagogical discourse has been used. One education setting has been studied in detail.

Keywords:

• information and communication technology
• learning technology
• teacher education
• mathematics
• ethnography

Notes

The concept ‘technological push’ refers to an understanding of technology as a catalyst for educational change and the way in which an official information society discourse has pushed ICT into classrooms without regard for the perspective of the teacher, the learner or the learning outcome (Cuban 2001).