How the Computer went to School

Front matter

Computer t0 Ochoa

How the Computer Went to Ochool

Australian Government Policies fon Computers in Schools, 1983-2013

Contents

List of Abbreviations and Terms. s pra oe vii ACRNOUMEACEMENES cia i d aiioe he A ED a eG A E a xi Introduction: The Toolbox of the 21st Century? a...n nnn ee XV 1. From Laboratory to Classroom... 2... ee 1 2. The Computer in Australia... 2... 0... ee ee 28 4. The Global Economic Arena... sis amea dorinwe ee e ee 81 Referentes e mait SS Oe BS SAS he BR 193 About this BOOK s er esak Bua AY a ea Ea a eRe a 214

List of Abbreviations and Terms

AACRDE Australian Advisory Committee on Research and Development in Education

Introduction

The Toolbox of the 21st Century?

At a press conference in October in the run up to the 2007 federal election campaign, Australian Labor Party Opposition Leader, Kevin Rudd, held up an open laptop computer and proclaimed it to be the ‘toolbox of the 21st century. Designed to capture attention, the computer symbolised the new policy he announced: a tax rebate to encourage parents to buy computers for their school-age children. Once the election campaign was underway, Rudd pledged to bring about a ‘Digital Education Revolution’ by putting a computer on every senior school student’s desk if the ALP were elected (Rudd, Smith and Conroy 2007). The Digital Education Revolution, in turn, was linked to the construction of a high-speed National Broadband Network (NBN), the infrastructure on which the Digital Education Revolution would be built. Throughout 2007, Rudd had argued that high-speed broadband was critical, describing the broadband network as a ‘nation-building investment’ (Rudd, Conroy and Tanner 2007, n.p.). The provision of computers to school students via the planned National Secondary School Computer Fund (NSSCF) would enable young people to connect to the NBN through their schools to ‘turbo-charge’ their learning, because, Mr Rudd explained, ‘Labor understands that in the 21st century, information technology is not just a key subject to learn, it is now the key to learning all subjects’. Education, he declared, was ‘the engine room of the economy’ (Rudd 2007, n.p.).

The Digital Education Revolution policy drew praise from educators. Immediately following the election of the Rudd Government in December 2007, the implications of the policy were explored in a segment on the national broadcaster’s flagship current affairs program, The 7.30 Report (ABC 2007). Presenter Kerry O’Brien noted that the new government’s education program was a ‘billion dollar promise’. However, several principals who appeared on the show to discuss the policy were enthusiastic about the promise of greater numbers of computers for students and improved access to broadband. ‘I thought it was fantastic. I mean it was a real vision for what education might be in the future, said Julie Williams, the principal xvi | How the Computer Went to School of Kealba Secondary College, while Rick Tudor, the principal of Trinity Grammar in Kew, spoke of it as a ‘wonderful initiative’. Concerns were raised by one education academic about the focus on laptop computers while another pointed out the extra training teachers would require, but there was no hint within the segment that computers were anything other than a positive for learning in both the classroom and at home.

‘The policy’s adoption as part of the ALP’s platform suggested a perceived electoral advantage in the pledge to provide senior school students with an individual computer. But what was the appeal of such a pitch? Why was it seen to be a potential vote-winner? What meanings did Rudd and the ALP invest in the computer? How did these gain purchase? In 2007, putting computers in schools was hardly a new idea. For years, governments around the world have advocated the use of computers in schools as an essential learning technology. Over time, the view that computers can enhance student learning has gained broad acceptance. When Australian schools promote the use in their classrooms of the latest computing technology, now iPads, they signal their technological sophistication and the promise of academic success. However, the association of computers with success in school was not inevitable. Computers did not simply appear overnight on students’ desks. Over more than 30 years, individuals and organisations actively promoted computers as learning technologies. Enormous amounts of money and time have been, and continue to be, devoted to educational computing with the inevitable inequities which are intrinsically associated with the dispensation of funds.

Powerful actors contribute to the formation of views in the public mind, including conceptions of new technologies and of the purposes for which they are to be used. Since 1983, one such powerful actor, the Australian federal government, has promoted computers as essential for school students and for the future of the nation. Until the ALP’s institution of the Digital Education Revolution, state and territory governments have been considered more often as the locus of educational computing policies (but see Lankshear, Snyder and Green 2000; Moyle 2002; Zammit 1989). However, the federal government has had a longer involvement in the promotion of computers for schools than is commonly assumed, consistent with its more prominent role in policy direction, particularly since the 1980s. The first national policy on computing in schools was produced during the election campaign of 1983. Between 1983 and 2007, other federal government policy texts represented computers as an essential component of a modern school education.

The Toolbox of the 21st Century? | xvii

Federal government policy texts have shaped public conceptualisations of computers and their perceived benefits for school students, leading to increased emphasis on computers as an indispensable element of a good school and vital for academic success. Schools have reorganised and in some cases restructured buildings, curricula and timetables to accommodate computers. Teachers have been placed under considerable pressure to use computers, whatever their educational philosophy, and have been labelled as reluctant to accept change if they argued a contrary case. Not all students, despite beliefs to the contrary, have enjoyed using computers in their learning. Nor can it be argued unambiguously that computers have markedly improved learning, let alone transformed it, despite expectations to the contrary. Nevertheless, the substantive and increasingly expensive nature of this enterprise has become accepted by the public.

This book presents an account of how and why the computer came to be considered as a powerful learning technology which was essential for schooling. It argues that a historical perspective is crucial and illuminates how conceptualisations of computers emerged from their early history and the purposes for which they were used. An important backdrop to understanding the production of policies for educational computing in Australia is the development of computers and their patterns of use in the US. Accordingly this book explains how computers were developed and introduced into American workplaces and schools. The US federal government was intimately involved in these aspects and was prominent in framing the computer as a suitable technology for schools.

For Australia, strongly influenced by its close relationship with the US, computers represented both a threat and a promise: a threat of marginalisation as other countries adopted computing technologies; and a promise of economic benefit should they be adopted for use in Australia. In the very different Australian environment, computers came into use much later than in the US. Initially regarded as an instrument to achieve greater efficiency in government and large organisations, as they were deployed more widely in Australian society the impact of new computing technologies raised concerns amongst policymakers. The dual positioning of threat and promise is central to understanding the uses imagined for computers in Australian schools and the beliefs which animated their proposed purposes in education. Around the world, at different times, other countries developed policies to introduce computers into school education or chose to prioritise goals for schooling which did not involve computers (Bakia, Murphy, Anderson and Trinidad 2011; UNESCO 2011). Some of these countries also exercised xviii | How the Computer Went to School influence over policy in Australia, particularly the UK. However, rather than explore these, I have focused on the Australian experience and the way in which it contrasted with that of the US, the global leader in computing technologies.

About this book

How the Computer Went to School is based on doctoral research which had its genesis in my professional practice. In the late 1990s, I taught in a small Victorian independent school which introduced a program to mandate a personal laptop computer for all Year 8 students. Rather than the smooth transition to more effective learning which had been anticipated, the sheer disorder in the classroom which resulted was striking. Power cords snaked across the room, books did not fit on tables, computer bags cluttered the aisles. Lesson time was consumed by the practical difficulties of negotiating the hardware and the students’ need for constant troubleshooting. The messiness of these early experiences contrasted forcibly with the transformative vision projected in the school’s carefully crafted technology plan. A constant drumbeat in the background to the adoption of the computer program was the media refrain of the ‘new economy’ and its driver, the Internet. Both inside and outside the school, professional development was concentrated on the computer, its potential applications and ways to incorporate the technology into the curriculum. Policy statements from the state government promoted ‘e-learning’. Similar statements from the federal government were fewer but funding was provided by the Howard Coalition Government for professional development to integrate computing technologies into teaching and learning in schools, a powerful signal of priorities.

The rhetoric of the coming transformation of learning enabled by the computer was far distant from the reality of my classroom and those of my colleagues. This dissonance led me to wonder how, and by whom, the computer could ever have been considered as necessary in schools. Like many Australians, I had long held a belief that federal government actions profoundly influenced lives, a belief which led to me to situate my doctoral research at the federal government level and to investigate its role in the promotion of computing in schools. What had initially seemed a straightforward undertaking proved to be more complex and with deeper roots than I had imagined. To trace these roots, I turned to policy texts, the medium through which governments present plans for change and map paths for action. My focus was on the use of language in specific texts:

The Toolbox of the 21st Century? | xix the values and beliefs about computers and education which were preserved within them; and how language was used persuasively to mould public views towards the acceptance of prescriptions for particular courses of action. Using the tool of language analysis applied to four important policy texts, I examined the nature of the claims made for computers in schools and the purposes projected for their use by the federal government.

Kevin Rudd’s metaphor of the computer as the ‘toolbox of the 21st century and his announcement of the Digital Education Revolution during the election campaign of 2007 caught my attention. My doctoral research was nearly complete and I knew that this was not the first time that a policy on computers in education had featured in an election campaign, although it was the most prominent. However, the metaphor of the ‘toolbox’ signalled a shift in understandings of the computer and an attempt to recast its meaning for the electorate. At the same time, the metaphor also built on and reprised key framings of computers as an educational technology which have a long, but largely forgotten, history. Rudd’s use of the metaphor of the computer as a ‘toolbox’ was a political ploy on one level but on another, it expressed a sense of mastery over the technology which had been absent from earlier projections. Metaphor was a key focus in the language analysis I employed in my research and the shift in understanding of the computer, from ‘tool’ to ‘toolbox’, neatly captured the changing views of the computer and its purposes in education over the period of my study.

This book explores when and why the federal government acted to advocate the use of computers into schools. I argue that in policy texts from 1983 to 2007, federal government policymakers attempted to fix the nature of computing technologies and to map practices for their use in schools in ways that promoted, prescribed and proscribed, inevitably valorising some purposes, particularly economic ones, over others. These findings were built on detailed language analysis which is synthesised here in order to be accessible for a wider readership. Accordingly, the presentation of the language analysis here covers only two aspects of the textual analysis contained within the thesis. These are the different discourses within each policy text and the use of metaphor. I use the term ‘discourses’ to mean the divergent world views which derive from differing sets of values. Tracing world views and the interests with which they are associated sheds light on those involved in policy construction and the purposes they envisage. The linguistic device of metaphor, which conjures particular meanings, is used by policymakers to depict new technologies such as that of the computer and to shape conceptualisations that privilege some practices over others.

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The book includes a new chapter which examines the ALP’s Digital Education Revolution policy text and the implementation of the policy during its term in government. Policy shifts and new technological developments between 2009 and 2013 are also brought up to date. A critical approach is intrinsic to this book. It underlies the discussion of changing perceptions of computers over time, how later concepts built on and obscured earlier ideas and the relationship of these to the political, economic and social circumstances within each policy was produced. Drawing attention to which purposes were prioritised for computing technologies in education offers the potential to add a new dimension to the understandings of the computer and its possibilities to those which have been advanced by successive federal governments since 1983.

Key understandings: technology, policy and education

This book is underpinned by several key theoretical understandings, of technology, policy and education. An outline of how they have informed my research and hence this book follows in summary form, as does a short explanation of the critical discourse analytic approach I employed to undertake the language analysis.

Technology

Technology is commonly thought of as a set of tools requiring some degree of technical skill to operate. Instead, I have conceptualised it, as with other technologies, as part of the social world, that is, as ‘social practice’ (Lankshear et al. 2000, 32). Computing and communications technologies, as with other technologies, are produced by people who have particular ends in mind. As the product of the social world, they cannot be conceived of as value-free, that is, standing apart from the world in which they are developed and utilised. Computing technologies are produced within a commercial system and are subject to the regulation which applies to those activities. The operation of computing and communications technologies involves other regulations instituted by government as communications technologies in particular have long been subject to stringent controls (Sussman 1997). The process of developing and applying regulation is a political one in which proponents of a particular technology will seek to advance their interests (Galperin 2004a). Institutional frameworks channel the representation of interests in ways which privilege some over others. Examination of these institutional frameworks, their constitution and reconstitution, and the way these contribute to the formation of meaning,

The Toolbox of the 21st Century? | xxi sheds light on the relationship between the interests involved and the political construction of regulation.

State and territory governments constitute powerful interests with which federal government policymakers must contend. With education the constitutional responsibility of the states and territories in Australia, the federal government’s intervention can be welcomed or fiercely contested. Federal and state relations are a constant undercurrent in education policymaking at both the state and the national level (Lingard 2000) and evidence of the often fractious nature of federal and state policymaking in education is embedded in the policy texts examined in this book. ‘The negotiation of these tensions between the federal and state and territory governments illuminates the ambitions of successive federal governments, but also demonstrates some of the limits on their power in a federal system of government.

Governments were early users of computing technologies, investing them with the weight of their authority, but they also opened a new space for contestation. The introduction of the new technology of the microcomputer in the late 1970s and early 1980s, for instance, created struggles over the existing terrain of school education which led to pressure on governments to act to introduce computers into schools. ‘The ways in which people used the new computing and communications technologies led to changing social practices and aroused public anxiety. Media coverage emphasised and amplified the disruption, disjuncture and the potential future benefit of such technologies, informing views as to their nature and possible further uses. Governments at both the state and national level reacted to these challenges and employed policy as one part of a process of bringing about change (Bell and Stevenson 2006).

Policy

To frame my research, I adopted a view of policy at the governmental level as about change: governments responding to change or the perceptions of change, instigating change, seeking to manage and direct change to achieve specific purposes (Bell and Stevenson 2006). Rather than thinking of policy as the methodical construction of a technical plan, I have taken a critical approach which considers policy to be the outcome of a development process in which particular interests, values and beliefs are prioritised over others. This process is inherently political and contested at every level (Bell and Stevenson 2006; Taylor, Rizvi, Lingard and Henry 1997). Within the language of the policy texts that are the outcome of the process, these conflicts are preserved (Taylor et al. 1997).

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A vivid illustration of this contestation over meaning was given by Western Australian Premier, Colin Barnett, following the April 2013 Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting over the federal government’s proposed reform to school funding. Asked on the ABC’s (2013) Capital Hill program to describe the COAG process, he replied testily that ‘we've just spent two hours arguing about the choice of individual words in a communique’. In the research, I aimed to uncover the imprint of the political struggles of the day of the kind Barnett drew attention to, the beliefs and values which animated them and importantly, the competing interests involved in policies which promoted computing for schools. At the same time, I was interested in the window the texts could open into moments of instability when new meanings were being formed, before they became accepted as settled.

Policy visions delineated for the future of schooling must appeal to, and aim to attract, differing groups with divergent views. To provide plausible grounds for change, the vision of the future delivered within policy texts must be persuasive. In the case of computers, these technologies were not always considered to be an integral component of education. The project to promote the adoption and use of computers in schools has required discursive work, which has formed meanings and preferred practices for the use of computers in schools. Policy texts contributed to describing, shaping and circumscribing the field of educational computing (Rose 1999). The computer was represented in ways that attempted to naturalise it as an integral component of a modern education through the projection of an ‘imaginary’, that is, a vision for the future, which was contrasted to a less than satisfactory present (Fairclough 2001, 3). Values and beliefs about education and its purposes are contained within these representations (Taylor et al.

Education

While education is regarded universally as vital, views on the purposes and content of education differ markedly. Indeed, conflict over education, its purposes and the values prioritised within it, is endemic as education ‘touches the lives of every citizen’ (Marginson 1997a, 4). Historically situated, purposes for education change over time. For governments, vocational purposes have co-existed with nation-building and citizenship purposes, often uneasily (Marginson 1997a). For others in the community, education has different purposes, depending on their perspective. Some important purposes include the development of individual potential and the

The Toolbox of the 21st Century? | xxiii transmission of valued cultural knowledge (Marginson 1997a). But critically, education certifies and credentials students, fundamentally affecting their future lives and their access to valued social goods (Marginson 1997a). Policymakers have sought to improve access to higher levels of education for the disadvantaged and thereby to enhance their prospects, but the move to mass education has not resulted in the elimination of social inequality as had been hoped. Instead, the inequalities that exist in society are not just reproduced, but reinforced and intensified in the educational process, as those with social power are able to use the system to their advantage (Teese and Polesol 2003). In my view, one important goal for education is to achieve greater equality for all students, particularly for those who are disadvantaged.

Policies for computing technologies in education, as with others, can contribute to or detract from greater equality in education. Judgements were made by policymakers on computing technologies and their place in school education which involved values and assumptions as to who should use them, how, and for what purposes. Particular practices were privileged, with certain ends in mind. Seldom are these explicitly stated within educational policies. In the research I set out to trace the values and beliefs within selected policy texts through a critical discourse analysis approach.

A critical discourse analysis approach

The conceptual basis of critical discourse analysis draws from a range of sources but I have adopted and adapted the approaches of Norman Fairclough and Ruth Wodak who have studied political discourse extensively (eg, Fairclough 2000a, 2000b; Reisigl and Wodak 2001; Wodak 2001a, 2001b). Central to critical discourse analysis is the concept of discourse, or language and its use in society. It is through language that people make sense of the world, communicate that meaning to others, and these meanings in turn shape society (Fairclough and Wodak 1997). Because of its social location, language is imbued with power relations. Expressed in language, these shape people’s perceptions of the world. People’s world views are expressed and consolidated in language, including where people belong and how they should be categorised (Fairclough 2000a). These differing world views are known as discourses. As there are many differing world views, so too are there many different discourses, each of which embodies different value systems (Fairclough 2003). These contend against each other for dominance within texts, with a text considered to be ‘any actual instance of language in use’ (Fairclough 2003, 4). The discourses that dominate xxiv | How the Computer Went to School are critical in signalling, authorising and legitimising practices such as, for instance, the allocation of resources for some purposes and not for others. In this way discourses contribute to, or challenge, the constitution and maintenance of social inequalities (Fairclough 2003).

It is this concept of different discourses and the value systems embedded within them that enables their disentanglement through analysis of a text. Each text can incorporate numbers of different discourses, particularly policy texts, as they often have multiple authors (Taylor 2004). Negotiation of meaning and struggles over different ways of understanding and representing the world are thus traceable in these different discourses. Over time, meanings become accepted as common sense and their initial circumstances are forgotten (Fairclough 2003). Detailed textual analysis elucidates the linguistic mechanisms and manoeuvres by which constructions of the world are realised (Fairclough 2003). The application of critical discourse analysis to policy texts enabled me to denaturalise and destabilise the existing ‘common sense’ (Apple 1993, 53) meanings that were attributed to computers and their role in education and, instead, to suggest that they should be considered as ‘truth claims’ which have been made by particular interests for particular purposes (Fairclough 2003, 167). Considered as claims rather than as truths, apparently common sense meanings can be subjected to scrutiny on those terms.

The shifting terminology of the computer

From its earliest history until the present, there have been a number of terms, often used interchangeably, to designate a computer and its associated technology. The difficulty of definition in itself reveals the shifting nature of the technology and its use, but it also suggests the multiple meanings attached to the object. Technical changes over the last 50 years mean that the word ‘computer’ describes something that is very different now from the earliest machines and from what will exist in the future (Schnaars and Carvalho 2004). Originally, the term ‘computer’ was applied to a human who performed computations (Campbell-Kelly and Aspray 1996; Ceruzzi 2003). One of the earliest electronic computers, the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC), was designated a ‘computer’ to associate the new machine with people trained for computation and to confer on it those professional attributes (Pugh and Aspray 1996).

While the term ‘computer’ remains in use, continuing technological change has seen different descriptors used to distinguish amongst newer types of computers: thus the ‘minicomputer’, the ‘microcomputer’, the ‘personal

The Toolbox of the 21st Century? | xxv computer’, the ‘laptop’ computer. More recently, with smart phones and tablets, the word ‘computer’ has begun to disappear. At the same time, new terms that attempted to encompass the range of computers and peripherals came into use. The most widely used of these is ‘information technology’, which was expanded to ‘information and communications technologies’ (ICT) when computing devices also enabled communication.

In this book, I use the term ‘computer’ to focus on the object, its development and application, and the phrase ‘computing technologies’, following Moyle (2005), or ‘computing and communications technologies’, to denote the broader range of technologies. Rather than attribute human characteristics to these technologies, I view these terms as directing attention to technology as the product of people’s interactions.

A note on method

A review of the literature on computers in education from the 1960s till 2007 formed the basis for the selection of policy texts examined in this book. This literature comprised academic journals, books, conference proceedings, PhD and Masters theses, both published and unpublished, and reports to and policies of the Victorian and the federal governments. To establish the wider context, I also reviewed selected literature from the same sources across the disciplines of economics, politics, history, education and technology studies dating back to 1945. I selected four policy texts for close analysis. These are:

Teaching, Learning and Computers (CSC. NACCS 1983) (see Chapter 3);

Education and Technology Convergence (Tinkler, Lepani and Mitchell 1996) (see Chapter 4);

‘Learning in an online world’ (DETYA 2000b) (see Chapter 5);

A Digital Education Revolution (Rudd, Smith and Conroy 2007) (see Chapter 6).

In this book I present a personal reading of the texts and their historical situation which is built on textual analysis. Inevitably I have made choices as to which elements appeared to be relevant, interesting or worthy of investigation. I have aimed to present a nuanced account of specific texts and the discourses within them through tracing their origins and considering how these foundational ideas may continue nevertheless to exert influence into the present. My focus is different from that of the historian. It is on the claims made for computers over time, by whom, and on how those claims have been legitimised.

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Outline of the book

Chapter One presents aspects of the computers development in the US between 1946 and 2012. It explores the role of the US federal government, the academy, business and industry in this development and how computers came to be considered as worthwhile for school education. In Chapter Two, the diffusion of the computer into Australian society is compared with that in the US and linked to the Australian federal government’s promotion of computers in schools between 1983 and 2007. Chapters One and Two form the backdrop to a close analysis of specific policies produced in 1983, 1996, 2000 and 2007 which are the subjects of Chapters Three to Six.

Chapter Three is concerned with the first national policy statement on computers in Australian schools, Teaching, Learning and Computers (CSC. NACCS 1983). The chapter examines the specific factors that influenced the production of the policy, the claims made about the benefits of computers for students in schools and the relationship between these. The Keating ALP Government’s policy document, Education and Technology Convergence (Tinkler et al. 1996) is the subject of Chapter Four. New meanings for computing technologies in education were being advanced and new purposes imagined. In Chapter Five, the first Howard Coalition Government policy, ‘Learning in an Online World’ of 2000, is detailed. The chapter also considers changing policymaking structures and the shifting terrain of federal and state and territory responsibilities in education. The foundational text, 4 Digital Education Revolution (Rudd, Smith and Conroy 2007), and its relationship to the NBN is the subject of Chapter Six. The implementation of the policy during the ALP’s term in government is explained in detail and consideration is given to the imprint of the implementation process in the construction of meanings for the computer in school education.

Chapter Seven compares the discourses of each of the four policies examined in this book, exploring the continuities amongst them but also the disjunctures. It draws conclusions as to the values and beliefs about computing and education which are represented in the policies, the meanings proposed for educational computing and the practices which were preferred. It also considers which meanings were foreclosed and the voices within the policy process which were silenced or ignored. Chapter Eight concludes with an argument for a renewed scrutiny of the attributes ascribed to the computer to contribute to a more informed debate as to future directions for educational computing.

Chapter One

Early in 1946, the American War Department unveiled a closely guarded wartime secret to the American public: the first electronic computer, the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC), which was developed to perform time-consuming and labour-intensive calculations of weapons trajectories during the Second World War. After the war, the machine’s inventors, Dr John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert Jr, provided a demonstration of the machine and its problem-solving capacities to an attentive press audience. On its front page, The New York Times celebrated the achievement of scientists and the military under the banner heading, ‘Electronic computer flashes answers, may speed engineering’ (Kennedy 1946).