“High Access and Low Use...: Explaining an Apparent Paradox”
We focus on the preparation and support of teachers, but we do recognize that new teachers move on to settings that influence how they translate their existing ideas and knowledge into practice. Here is one final perspective on factors that determine what students experience.
If you had to select a place where you would think technology would be used extensively in classrooms and in ways that changed educational practice, where would that place be? Larry Cuban (2001; Cuban, Kirkpatrick, & Peck, 2001) reasoned that place would be Silicon Valley in California. He undertook a study of several elementary schools, high schools, and colleges from that region to predict what might happen as other schools and colleges matched the conditions already present in the schools he had selected.
As you can tell from the title, Cuban failed to find extensive use of technology in what he felt should be fairly supportive institutions. He also found relatively few innovative uses of technology. More than ten years later (Cuban, 2010), now commenting through his blog, Cuban maintains pretty much the same position.
“….there is little evidence of across-the-board success in promoters of new technologies reaching the goals they seek in transforming teaching, learning, and preparing students for jobs.”
It is no so much that some teachers are not involving their students with technology in creative and productive ways, they are. It is just that the proportion of teachers in this category is not large. Cuban speculates that the history and context of educational practice are important factors impeding significant change. Assumptions and practices end up being self-perpetuating. One such cluster of factors evident in high schools includes the isolation of instructors by academic discipline, the 50-minute class period, and the “transmission” model of instruction. The isolation of disciplines requires that each group be relegated a short period of time so each content area can be covered. Short periods of time with learners encourage a transmission approach. It is difficult to get around to using technology when operating within such constraints. Cuban concludes that the use of technology will gradually increase, but the applications that will become common will be consistent with long-standing methods of teaching and learning. Environmental factors appear to limit how technology ends up being used and existing patterns are difficult to change.