Information technology into education: towards a critical perspective 1

The starting point for this paper is that the use and discussion of information technology (IT) in education is uncritical. The dominant emphasis is on more being inherently better; and questions about the relationship of the technology to teaching and learning ‐ the sorts of questions which educationalists have traditionally asked about educational innovations ‐ have not featured prominently on the agenda. Rather, problems and limitations have been played down in the emphasis on the technological hard and software. This paper makes an initial contribution to what we see as the need: for ethnographic, classroom based research on IT in education using the interactionist model; to locate IT in education in its broader social, historical and cultural setting; to dismantle the technoromantic rhetoric or theology of IT in education, and to replace it with a more balanced and realistic assessment of its strengths and shortcomings; to develop a range of critical and analytical concepts to move us towards a theor...

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