Simple answers for complex problems: education and ICT in Finnish information society strategies

Following the information and communication technology (ICT) revolution, governments around the world have formulated strategies to meet the challenges proposed by the ubiquitous globalization and information society discourse. Education has been the focal point of the information society strategies, first, because strategies have touted the use of ICT to enhance education and, second, because education is seen as a way to move nations into the information age. Finland has been soaring high in the international ranking lists measuring different aspects of information society development, and Finland’s recent success in the Programme for International Student Assessment study might suggest a relation between information society development and education. In this article, Finnish information society strategies (1999–2004) are analyzed in relation to education in order to shed light on the underlying discourses. It is then argued that the action programmes based on deficiently defined premises’ lead to ICT being seen as a simple answer for complex societal and educational problems. Further, political discourse is challenged by a diverging interpretation of the information society. By providing a cross-section of Finnish information society strategies and their implementation, the internationally recurrent themes are discussed as an example of a larger phenomenon in educational policy.

[1]  Peter Golding,et al.  Forthcoming Features: Information and Communications Technologies and the Sociology of the Future , 2000 .

[2]  Ian Goodwin,et al.  The European Union and the information society , 2002, New Media Soc..

[3]  Neil Selwyn,et al.  Reality bytes: examining the rhetoric of widening educational participation via ICT , 2003, Br. J. Educ. Technol..

[4]  Neil Selwyn,et al.  Learning to Love the Micro: The discursive construction of 'educational' computing in the UK, 1979-89 , 2002 .

[5]  Neil Selwyn,et al.  SCHOOLING THE INFORMATION SOCIETY? The place of the information superhighway in education , 1999 .

[6]  Jan Servaes.  The European Information Society: Much Ado About Nothing? , 2002 .

[7]  Tony Brown,et al.  Challenging globalization as discourse and phenomenon , 1999 .

[8]  Neil Selwyn,et al.  Logged on to learning? assessing the impact of technology on participation in lifelong learning , 2003 .

[9]  G. Longford,et al.  Digital Restructuring: Gender, Class and Citizenship in the Information Society in Canada , 2000 .

[10]  Neil Selwyn,et al.  Education, nation states and the globalization of information networks , 2000 .

[11]  S. Clegg,et al.  The Emperor's New Clothes: Globalisation and e-learning in Higher Education , 2003 .

[12]  N. Mercer,et al.  Promoting Mr. "Chips": The Construction of the Teacher/Computer Relationship in Educational Advertising. , 2001 .

[13]  Neil Selwyn,et al.  Surfing to School: the electronic reconstruction of institutional identities , 1999 .

[14]  N. Selwyn.  `Doing IT for the Kids': Re-examining Children, Computers and the `Information Society' , 2003 .

[15]  Neil Selwyn,et al.  'Gilding the Grid': The marketing of the National Grid for Learning , 1999 .

[16]  Anders Henten,et al.  Information society visions in the Nordic countries , 2000, Telematics Informatics.

[17]  N. Selwyn.  The Discursive Construction of the National Grid for Learning , 2000 .

[18]  Mary Bryson,et al.  New Technologies and the Cultural Ecology of Primary Schooling:Imagining Teachers as Luddites In/Deed , 1998 .

[19]  Rosamund Sutherland,et al.  Constructing the Child Computer User: From public policy to private practices , 2001 .

[20]  Neil Selwyn,et al.  Reconsidering Political and Popular Understandings of the Digital Divide , 2004, New Media Soc..

[21]  N. Garnham.  ‘INFORMATION SOCIETY’ AS THEORY OR IDEOLOGY: A CRITICAL PERSPECTIVE IN TECHNOLOGY, EDUCATION AND EMPLOYMENT IN THE INFORMATION AGE , 2000 .

[22]  Neil Selwyn,et al.  The role of the ‘technical fix’ in UK lifelong education policy , 2001 .