ICT and Changing Mindsets in Education

1. Introduction: ICT and Changing Mindsets in Education

1 1. Introduction: ICT and Changing Mindsets in Education Kathryn Toure In using ICT in education, as long as the focus is technology we will fail. As long as the process is overly extraverted with little endogenous say-so and do-so, we will fail. This introduction to ICT and Changing Mindsets in Education will briefly develop these arguments as a way of introducing the edited papers collected in this book. Information and communication technologies (ICT) on their own will not bring about improvements in educational quality, but when we change our mindsets to use them reflectively and strategically, teaching and learning processes can be deepened. This includes leaving behind paradigms of teacher as master. Creative and contextualized appropriation of new technologies contributes to more active and interactive pedagogies, increased motivation, updated teaching materials, discovery of self and others, and changed roles and relationships among teachers and students and with knowledge. Learning can become more dynamic as teachers and students become partners in accessing information, constructing relevant knowledge, and representing self and others. However, new technologies such as internet and computers are often introduced and sometimes even parachuted into schools in ways that do not enhance teaching and learning, that promote automated thinking instead of critical thinking, that encourage dependency rather than autonomy and interdependence, and that reinforce existing patterns of exclusion. Too often the emphasis is on equipment, on making profits from schools, or on promises of modernity than on opportunities for teachers to learn and experiment effective uses of technologies to enhance teaching and learning processes. Ministries of education have been all too eager to import computers into schools, without putting in place a policy environment and curriculum that supports the integration of technology into teaching and in ways that ensure equitable access. The focus seems to be on technology rather than on learning objectives and contexts, as if we were slaves to computers rather than champions of education. According to Rieber and Welliver (1980, cited in Newhouse, 2002: 16), with no systemic plan for incorporating technology into schools, efforts fail. Appropriate policy frameworks must guide ICT initiatives to promote quality of education. Teacher training and new skills in partnership management are essential. In Africa, we need local, national and regional efforts that facilitate development by educators of appropriate digital resources created by and for Africans and others, otherwise we may see ourselves as mere consumers for example of Wikipedia and Microsoft encyclopaedia Encarta Africana. It will not be easy to create the right conditions for meaningful appropriation of ICT in educational settings in a world where the state is increasingly withdrawing from social sector responsibilities, where over 50% of schools in some countries do not even have electricity, and where we witness a convergence not only of computing and telecommunications industries but also of these sectors with education. Businessmen and women, supranational companies, and developers could control our palettes and dictate usage patterns if educators and researchers do not play a 2 more active role in designing the way forward for the use of ICT in education. This will require, among other actions, harnessing research processes and findings. Joseph Ki-Zerbo, the renowned historian from Burkina Faso, reminds us that 85% of scientific and technical research on Africa is orchestrated off the continent (Moumouni, 1998: 7). When calling for self-directed research systems in Africa, the philosopher Paulin Hountondji argues for the “methodical reappropriation of one’s own know-how as much as the appropriation of all the available knowledge in the world” (Hountondji, 2002: 255). Such an approach will be required in the meaningful appropriation of ICT in education. As Jìmí 0. Adésínà (2006) argued so well, enthusiasm for ICT and "techno-talk" can be a fatal distraction if we do not consider the mechanisms for endogenous decision-making around ICT development on the continent. He argues that this necessitates reinvestment in the public sphere and particularly in higher education and research. Some schools in West and Central Africa began pioneering the introduction of ICT such as computers and internet in the late 1990s, with little government support when national policies on ICT in the education sector were nonexistent. ERNWACA1 researchers, in partnership with the University of Montreal and with support from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), have researched processes surrounding the introduction and use of ICT in teaching and learning and learned lessons from early adopters in 36 schools, schools which came to be called "pioneer schools." Despite the risks, in...