The old-fashioned teachers’ brigade will be savouring an ‘I told you so’ moment, while the One Laptop per Family (OLPF) aficionados would no doubt feel somewhat chagrined. A study undertaken by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has found that the frequent use of computers in schools is more likely to be associated with lower results than if they are only subject to moderate use, such as once or twice per week. The study compared international test results in reading, mathematics and science, such as the Pisa tests, which more than seventy countries take (Guyana is not among them).
A recent BBC report quotes the OECD’s Education Director Andreas Schleicher as saying
“If you look at the best-performing education systems, such as those in East Asia, they’ve been very cautious about using technology in their classrooms… Those students who use tablets and computers very often tend to do worse than those who use them moderately.” Specifically, schools in Shanghai in China as well as those in South Korea, Hong Kong and Japan do particularly well on the Pisa tests, but have a lower use of computers in school, while Singapore, with only a moderate use of technology in schools, scores highly on digital skills. In the case of the latter in particular, this result would not normally have been expected.
Guyana was among those developing countries to join the bandwagon of computers in education, although in our case it was not so much a matter of putting computers in the institutions, as putting them into the hands of the children. Schleicher was quoted as saying that school technology had raised “too many false hopes,” while the British government’s expert on pupil behaviour described teachers as being “dazzled” by school computers. In our case, of course, it is less the teachers who have been “dazzled” than the politicians.
This does not mean that there is no benefit to be derived at all from giving pupils access to technology in a school setting; the report says that those who are exposed to the moderate use of computers at school have “somewhat better learning outcomes” than those who use them rarely. As stated above, the point seems to be, however, that frequent use means worse results, and that there are “no appreciable improvements” in reading, mathematics or science when schools have invested heavily in technology.
In fact, according to the study it was found that among the seven countries with the highest level of technology use in schools, Australia, New Zealand and Sweden were confronted with “significant declines” in reading, while results in Spain, Norway and Denmark had “stagnated.”
One of the arguments behind the OLPF programme was that it would help close the socio-economic gap between students, so that there would be a more level educational playing field for poorer families. What the study found was, however, that this did not happen. Mr Schleicher was quoted by the BBC as saying “One of the most disappointing findings of the report is that the socio-economic divide between students is not narrowed by technology, perhaps even amplified.” Furthermore, he went on to observe that ensuring children have a good grasp of reading and maths “is a more effective way to close the gap than access to hi-tech devices.”
This is not to suggest that anyone is proposing banishing the internet from a school setting altogether; as one expert quoted by the BBC said, “It is endemic in society now, at home young people will be using technology, there’s no way that we should take technology out of schools, schools should be leading not following.” Even Mr Schleicher considers that it is not a question of eliminating technology from schools, but finding ways to make it more effective, and suggests digital textbooks which can always be updated as an improvement on traditional methods.
He does warn, however, against students cutting and pasting from the internet to do homework assignments, for example, something which schoolchildren in the urban areas of this country, at least, are only too adept at already, despite not having computers at home.
As it well known, the OLPF project here was fraught with all kinds of problems which had nothing to do with educational issues at all. In any event, given our circumstances this government’s decision to put the laptops into the hands of teachers, rather than those of students, is probably the best ad interim approach. In the end, the issue is one of too many poorly educated and inadequately trained teachers in the school system, and raising the level of teaching must be the first priority if better outcomes are to be obtained in the areas of reading and maths.
It is certainly important to aim for computers in an institutional setting as well, although that will not be possible in most schools at the moment owing to security issues in many cases and power ones in some. There are, however, alternatives which could be looked at, such as learning centres which would be open during after-school hours, and which have professional supervision to teaching standard. They could provide books to read in situ, advice with homework and access to computers. They could also furnish a supervised base where the children of single mothers who work long hours could go.
However it is done, the point is that for the internet to be useful to children in a pedagogical sense, it needs to be integrated into the curriculum at some level, and function as one of the tools in the teacher’s arsenal, not be the main medium of learning.
