New technologies and the cultural ecology of primary schooling: Imagining teachers as luddities in/deed
Educational Policy; Los Altos; Sep 1998; Mary BrysonSuzanne De Castell

Volume: 12
Issue: 5
Start Page: 542-567
ISSN: 08959048
Subject Terms: Technology
Culture
Ecology
Elementary schools
Abstract:
The article's concern is with discourses of innovation, and it makes some instructive connections between technoromanticist discourses across two "revolution": The industrial revolution at the dawn of the 19th century and the information revolution at the close of the 20th century. Its central questions is this: Given the proliferation of futurist and neophilic rhetoric about the "digital revolution" and the wonders of computer-mediated learning, how can we explain teachers' less than enthusiastic participation in bringing about changes involving computers?

Full Text:
Copyright Sage Publications, Inc. Sep 1998
[Headnote]
This article's concern is with discourses of innovation, and it makes some instructive connections between technoromanticist discourses across two "revolutions": the industrial revolution at the dawn of the l9th century and the information revolution at the close of the 20th century. Its central question is this: Given the proliferation of futurist and neophilic rhetoric about the "digital revolution" and the wonders of computer-mediated learning, how can we explain teachers' less than enthusiastic participation in bringing about changes involving computers? This article draws on data from a 2-year study of the implementation of new technologies in 12 elementary schools across the province of British Columbia. In broad strokes, it is a study of failure, for what it does is document in some detail the very great divergences between what teachers actually do with computers in their classrooms and the enthusiastic claims and exhortations of educational administrators and policy makers with respect to the educational benefits of new technologies.

The most significant impact of technology on education will come from an extensive transformation of the curriculum and instructional practices.... Technology-based education makes learning more active and interactive for each student. Technology brings resources to the classroom that motivate, stimulate, and encourage students. Computers are an integral part of many of today's jobs, and computer literacy will be even more essential in the future. Our job is to help learners today to prepare for the challenges of tomorrow.

-British Columbia School District 47, District

Technology Policy

It's just simple things that drive me crazy. Like, we have this lab of new computers and this great paint program and no mice. Can you believe it? It's been 3 months since they delivered those machines, and no one knows who is responsible for getting the mice. So they sit there.

-New Technologies and the Primary Program project teacher (female teacher, Primary 4)

If newer and more computers are the answer to the plight of institutional schooling, then what is the question? Besieged by critical reports and increasing demands for "accountability," public schools invariably are positioned in a sociopolitical matrix within which it becomes essential to appear to be implementing powerful cutting-edge reform efforts. One of the most significant actors in the contemporary rendition of this drama, which has, of course, been played and replayed ad nauseam (Cuban, 1986; de Castell & Luke, 1983; Timar & Kirp, 1987), has been the computer (Bryson & de Castell, 1994; Goodson, Mangan, & Rhea,1991; Kerr,1991; Means et al.,1993; Newman, 1992; Noss & Hoyles, 1996; Olson, 1992; Schofield, 1995). From its initial awkward and uneven appearance on the educational scene in the early 1980s to the current exponential growth and apparent integration of a range of digital communication technologies in schools, technoromanticist hyperbole has been the order of the day in educational policy documents and "administerese" concerning the likely impact of the "new and improved" teaching machine. As we have argued elsewhere, Romantic tales of modern technicists prescribe "computer literacy" as a necessary rite of passage for youth born into the "information age"-the systematic inculcation of specific skills and dispositions which allow for successful adaptation to the inexorable demands of relentless progress toward a "space-age" society... Technicist accounts of technology adopt an artifactual view of such technologies, severing them from the normative contexts of social practice within which they have their uses. (Bryson & de Castell, 1994, p. 206)

Whether conservative and "skills based" or constructivist and "student centered," technicist discourses (e.g., Dyrli & Kinnaman, 1994; McCorduck, 1985; Negroponte, 1995; Wallis, 1995) accord to the computer a quasideterministic role on the educational stage-an autonomous actor endowed with the power to effect cultural change. For example, Seymour Papert, the "godfather" of educational computing, elegiacally describes the computer as "the Proteus of machines. Its essence is its universality, its power to simulate. Because it can take on a thousand forms and can serve a thousand functions, it can appeal to a thousand tastes" (Papert, 1980, p. viii).

But just as we have had to learn to distinguish between "mythologies"1 (Barthes,1973) and their far more mundane referents, as, for example, Butler (1990) distinguishes between "gender" and "gender effects," so too we might productively consider drawing a distinction between the mundane computers in actual classrooms and the computer or what we might, following Butler's analytical lead, call "computer effects." Central to the mythology of computer effects is the presumption that the changes brought about by the introduction of the computer to the culture of the school will necessarily be positive ones.

Faced with a barrage of futurist and neophilic (a term used by Sofia,1996, defined as "the love of the new") rhetoric about the "digital revolution" (Negroponte, 1995) and the wonders of computer-mediated learning (Gregoire, Bracewell, & Laferriere,1996), how then to explain teachers' less than enthusiastic participation in bringing about changes involving computers and the growing body of empirical research documenting few significant changes to educational practices, social relations, or outcomes brought about by the implementation of computers in schools? A great deal of evidence has been amassed to date (for excellent reviews, see Cohen,1987; Cuban,1986; Griffin & Cole,1986; and Schofield,1995) indicating that new technologies tend to be used in classrooms in ways that are consistent with traditional practices and that, although a great deal of hype surrounds the implementation of new technologies, promises of widespread change rarely are realized.

Traditional approaches to implementation research involving schools and new technologies (see critical reviews by Apple & Jungck, 1992; Cuban, 1986; Goodson et al., 1991; and Olson, 1992) have tended, by and large, to concentrate on goals pertaining to the empirical assessment of projected increases in student achievement through the uncritical use of standardized tests and other purportedly "general" measures (e.g., Baker, Gearhart, & Herman, 1992). If teachers are included at all in such research, then the focus typically is on the variability of teachers' ability and/or propensity to implement the desired changes. Teacher resistance to change and variability often are cited as causal factors in the lack of significant changes following implementation attempts. From this standpoint, teachers may be construed as a type of "nuisance variable," but one that significantly influences the likelihood of projected achievement outcomes being realized. Teachers who are perceived as hesitant, or who experience difficulties with the implementation of educational change in this type of top-down project, accordingly will be understood as resisting educational innovation. They may be characterized, for instance, as "reluctant users" or as "Luddites," in need of some type of intervention facilitative of an attitude change with respect to new technologies. A host of faulty and pejorative assumptions underlie such inferences, not the least of which are that change is equivalent to progress and that new technologies necessarily constitute an educational improvement over old ones. From this standpoint, refusal to implement new technologies in education is a negative action indicating a refusal to grow and learn, that is, a falling away from the educational ideal of the school as a learning culture. The story of the frame-breaking Luddites of early l9th-century England (Berg, 1980; Darvall, 1969; Noble, 1995) may prove useful here as a conceptual corrective, a means of beginning to characterize more appropriately the complexity of relationships that exist among a particular culture of practice, discourses about tools and innovation, and the adoption of new technologies.

The Luddites were weavers whose professional identity and culture were situated in a cottage industry within which, in Marxist terms, the workers had local control over the means and conditions of production. Their craft-based community of practice was severely threatened and ultimately destroyed by the advent of capitalism and its inevitable requirement for the automatization of production. A consideration of the actual and material significance of the intrusion into the cultural ecology of this cottage industry has allowed Noble (1995) and other historians of technology (e.g., Hobsbawm, 1962; Thompson, 1968) to argue that the Luddites' "smash the machines" form of resistance to mechanized looms was not motivated by an abstract, general anti-technological stance. Rather, the weavers resisted the large-scale implementation of those specific technologies and their relocation from the household to the factory, which threatened their relationships to the means of production, with the social relations vital to the preservation of their professional culture, and with their family and community lives.

Of critical importance here in thinking about the relevance, if any, of the various historical accounts of the Luddites' technological sabotage, for gaining insight into teachers' apparently widespread resistance to the intrusion of new technologies in their workplace, is that it would be similarly erroneous to construe the resistant teachers as anti-technology and the reformers and policy makers as pro-technology. Rather, the intrusion of technological innovation into a rather stable culture produces, as Noble (1995) suggests, an embodied, material, and engaged response to the technologically mediated present, on the one hand, and the production by groups likely to benefit from technological innovation of abstract, technicist, future-oriented discourses about the seemingly unlimited potential inherent in innovation for the beneficial impact of new technologies, on the other. It is rare that these two groups are equally situated within the matrix of power relations, which alerts us to the necessity to consider the capacities and opportunities for resistance2 available to the "Luddite" teacher.

Educational policy documents or Ministry of Education texts tend (overwhelmingly) to favor technoromantic, future-oriented abstractions concerning the potential of the computer to effect vast and positive changes on public education, not to mention on society as a whole. Contemporaneously, a large body of texts proclaiming an anti-technological stance in relation to the context of schooling (Apple, 1986; Postman, 1992; Weizenbaum, 1976), has provided a critical account of the likely impact of the computer on the school as a result of deskilling, dehumanization, and other projected negative outcomes. Whether technoromanticist or anti-technological, these accounts are theoretical in nature and engage only at a distance with the embodied, material context of public schooling. Neither "way of telling" stories about computers and schools provides information that could yield insights into the actual and embodied culture of schooling within which agents, whether teachers or students, are affected by-and also shape the impact of-the introduction of the computer.

The main purpose of the study reported here, then, was to shed light on certain complexities involved in the introduction of new technologies to existing school-based cultures and to attempt to understand the reasons why teachers in the study acted as they did in absorbing the impacts of new educational technologies rather than to try to diagnose the "causes" of their "failure" to implement certain prescribed "innovations."

NEW TECHNOLOGIES AND THE PRIMARY PROGRAM PILOT PROJECT: BACKGROUND

During the 1980s, research carried out by the British Columbia Ministry of Education confirmed the commonplace observation that significantly fewer elementary schools, as compared to secondary or postsecondary educational institutions, were integrating new technologies, such as computers, video cameras, and CD-ROMs, into the work environments of either staff or students (Chan, 1987). By 1990, the Ministry of Education and elementary teachers across British Columbia were involved in attempting to implement a broad package of curricular reforms titled the "New Primary Program" (British Columbia Ministry of Education, 1990a) (spanning kindergarten through third grade), which prescribed for an "active learner" a solid foundation of literacy, "learning-to-learn skills," and "meaningful activity." Assessment practices, the most controversial element of this reform attempt, were to be "anecdotal" and provide data that would permit teachers to communicate with parents about individual children's "authentic accomplishments." "Computer literacy" and the integration of new technologies "across the curriculum" was mandated as a necessary element of these reform efforts.

Impetus for the 2-year "New Technologies and the Primary Program" (NTaPP) pilot project (1990-1992) described in this article came from the 1990 Report of the Provincial Advisory Committee on Computers (British Columbia Ministry of Education,1990b) and from development initiatives established by the British Columbia Educational Technology Center3 (ETC). The project's explicit aim was to study attempts to integrate new technologies into the working lives of elementary students and the staff in their schools. A total of 68 British Columbia school districts submitted applications for involvement in the NTaPP project to ETC, and a demographically and geographically representative subset of 12 schools was selected. The schools were dispersed across British Columbia in a wide range of settings including small and large cities, remote rural areas, and suburbs. Concurrently, a call for proposals was publicized for a university-based research team that would be a "collaborative research partner" in the NTaPP project, and the proposal submitted by the first author4 of this article was chosen. The prescribed role for the university-based research team was to monitor and evaluate "at arms length" the various pilot projects that each participating school had proposed to undertake, to assess participants' general uptake of new technologies across all 12 schools, and (presumably) to lend academic authenticity to the stated aims of the project as a whole.

The project directly included 81 participants distributed across 12 pilot schools, reflecting, on the whole, the distribution of age, years of experience, gender, and grade-levels/groupings represented in contemporary British Columbia elementary schools. Participants included teachers (52 female, 5 male), school-based computer coordinators (5 female, 7 male), and principals (2 female, 10 male). In this article, we are concerned primarily with what elementary teachers and school-based administrators have to say about the implementation of computers in the various arenas of their professional cultures and crafts. (For a complete report on the NTaPP project, see Bryson, 1993.) The findings reported here are drawn from a set of in-depth interviews conducted with on-site personnel during Year 2 of the pilot project. These interviews were intended to provide participants with an opportunity to discuss (at length) those issues that had emerged to this point (in questionnaires, on-site visits, and collective gatherings) as of greatest concern and significance. The interview protocol included questions pertaining to (a) teachers' pedagogical uses of in-school new technologies, (b) specific impacts of new technologies in the participants' schools, and (c) the impacts on practitioners' working lives therein.

TECHNOLOGY AND TECHNIQUE: PRACTIONERS' PERSPECTIVES ON CRAFT AND INNOVATION

Teachers, principals, and computer coordinators predominantly espoused a value-neutral relation to new technologies as "just another tool" to use in realizing pedagogical goals. A female computer coordinator put it this way: I think it's all in the way you look at how the computer is being used. If you're looking at it as being used as just another tool . . . it's like saying. . . "I don't give the children felt pens because they might color in a different way or something." To me, the computer is just a tool for doing something.

Like computer coordinators, principals, on the whole, envisaged the goals of implementation as primarily focused on the questions of how to implement-a task that demanded, from their perspective, effective management of human resources and appropriate in-servicing. The main assumption in these latter two groups was that the implementation of new technologies was necessarily a good thing-pedagogically sound and representing a necessary investment of resources in preparing children for life in a technologically saturated workforce. Teachers were the only participants to consistently describe an ambivalent relationship to new technologies; they expressed enthusiasm and excitement about the pedagogical possibilities offered by new technologies, while concomitantly questioning why one would want to implement new technologies. Teachers' comments frequently suggested a tangible resistance to unproblematically taking on the goal of becoming skilled users of new educational technologies. Their explanations indicated that the hesitation was a multiply-produced outcome of several factors including a well-hewed skepticism toward faddish educational "innovations of the moment," lack of direct hands-on experience with new technologies, and an adaptively cautious response to the challenges posed by an already overloaded work-related agenda. As one teacher noted,

It seems like, typically, we get started on these things . like computers and education.... There's always a new thrust toward something, a great push. Everybody goes crazy. You run out and do all these things, and then the next year nobody talks about it. (female teacher, Primary 2)

Many teachers discussed what they characterized as potential conflicts between professional goals and aspects of specific new technologies. In relation to the use of "learner profile" software (created to support assessment data collection and reporting), for example, teachers' comments indicated discomfort with the notion of a machine-produced report card. The possibility for a "recipe book" reporting process frequently was mentioned as an undesirable potential outcome of this type of tool. As one teacher put it,

I find they [computers] are an interference in that you're not being as direct as you were with the old ways. I think what I say to the parents directly is different [from] what I say to them through a computer.... Writing a report card the old way was much more personal. Even though it may have had errors, and even though you may cross out a word and put in another word, in a way that told the parent what you were thinking or what was happening when you were writing the report card.... But the computer printout is so polished and so perfect, you don't know what went on before you got to that. (female, Primary 2)

AVAILABILITY OF, AND ACCESS TO, RESOURCES

During Year 1, teachers, computer coordinators, and principals alike frequently commented in questionnaires, in interviews, and during on-site visits, about the drain on resources created by the implementation of new technologies in their schools. Budgetary reshuffling and resource allocation procedures needed to be developed and implemented to cope with the multiple, and often vexing, demands of the implementation process. These types of local changes in how resources are created and allocated at the school level proved, all too often, to be both complex and resistant to "quick fix" solutions. Early in Year 1, for example, the research team visited an NTaPP school at which children had not been working on their new computers for several months because no one could figure out how best to coordinate the schoolwide purchase of diskettes. By Year 2, functional routines were, for the most part, in place locally to accommodate such small-scale on-site resource implications created by the implementation of new technologies. Staff members were, however, explicit and impassioned about their frustrations in dealing with the large-scale resource demands created by the implementation of new technologies.

By Year 2, schools in British Columbia were faced with province-wide budget cuts and the necessity, at that time, of restructuring staffing and other significant line-item allocations to deal with new and sobering fiscal realities. In some ways, this "belt tightening" seemed to affect computer coordinators most adversely. Computer coordinators had, one might venture to say, "carried the ball" during Year 1, shouldering a new set of responsibilities created by their schools' participation in the NTaPP project. Typically, the resident "technical expert" was provided during Year 1 with some time "on-load" to troubleshoot, organize resources, manage the computer laboratory (where applicable), and conduct on-site in-service workshops. During Year 2, however, time on-load was dwindling, release time was seriously restricted, and those with on-load time to provide the services of computer coordinators were facing the complete elimination of that allocation during the 1992-1993 school year. Meanwhile, teachers' needs either remained at a constant or had increased by Year 2, creating a workload for computer coordinators that seemed entirely discordant with the material provisions for their work. In their discussions about the availability of particular types of hardware, teachers frequently commented on access problems. The following respondents' observations were representative:

Last year, the children were aware that they had time on the computers in the lab almost every day, or every second day, and they would look forward to it. They would write things for the computer, and they were able to see immediate feedback. What we have now is one computer and a printer down the hall. (female teacher, Primary 4) I think the main thing is the kids getting access, and every school has a problem of getting enough equipment. Once you get people turned on to using computers, it builds in a need for more computers. There's always something else you need to have, and it just never stops. (male principal)

As might seem clear by this point in the description of NTaPP practitioners' comments, the implementation of new technologies generates a complex mixture of enthusiasm and frustration. The mere presence of new technologies creates a demand for technical expertise, and whoever has taken on the role of expert is placed in a professionally awkward situation. Each NTaPP school designated one person as a computer coordinator, typically the staff member with the greatest computer-related expertise at the outset of the project. During Year 1, some of the computer coordinators were provided with release time (although often only .1 or .2) to provide technical support. However, by Year 2, support for the computer coordinator was dwindling or had disappeared altogether, and yet concomitantly, needs for rapid access to technical expertise were on the rise. As teachers started to explore a greater range of software applications, their needs for on-site help increased. Typically, teachers described explicit needs for rapid access to technical help as well as a certain reluctance to seek out that facilitation. After all, when one is faced with a computer that will not load software, or when a network crashes, who can wait until the computer coordinator is available to access technical help? Computer coordinators described these types of difficulties as follows: If I don't come out of my own classroom and help a teacher right now, then everybody in the lab has to get up and leave and their period 's shot.... Unless one person assumes responsibility for doing all of the problem solving, which means you give up almost all your time, then the whole thing breaks down. (female computer coordinator) My own workload is heavy enough as it is. I'm really tom because, on the one hand. . if someone needs help and the machines break down, I'll do my best to fix them. On the other hand, I think. . . if I do that, the powers that be will say. . "Well, who needs a computer resource teacher?" because it's running fine without one. So, I'm tempted to say . . . if it breaks down . . . "Sorry, [it is] not my job." I'm sort of torn. Which way do I go and when? (male computer coordinator)

THE CULTURE OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS AND THE POLITICS OF INNOVATION

The primary kids did stories about living on different planets. We superimposed their images onto their graphics through the videotape so that the youngsters actually had themselves standing on the planet Saturn waving and saying "Hi, Mom! . . . Here I am!" Parents from all over the place gravitated over there, and very quickly ETC's reputation, UBC's [University of British Columbia's] reputation, and our reputation as being at the forefront of technology in the province were enhanced. (male principal)

Elementary schools are complex and diverse workplaces in which teaching staff members often are required to carry out a wide range of tasks with the bare minimum of resources, all the while successfully contending with the demands and expectations of several types of interest groups including parents, colleagues, administrative superiors, and students. This is a tough juggling act indeed. These demands can be conflicting and can create stressful situations for elementary teachers. NTaPP participants argued that parents were generally supportive of the implementation of new technologies in their schools. The consensus was that parents view new technologies as integrally associated with the requirements of current job markets and that, for students to be able to participate effectively in the information age, they need to be computer literate. As one male principal put it, "The parents and the kids recognize that computing will be a large part of their work and their social environment, and for that reason they're very keen to become involved."

Many elementary teachers regularly work after hours, staying after school, working at home, and coming in on weekends to accomplish the wide range of tasks associated with successful classroom practice. Some have argued this to be just another example of the many types of work that women regularly perform without pay or formal recognition, such as child rearing and housework, or types of work that have been termed "invisible labor," that is, types of work that people are called on to perform that are not recognized within formal institutional systems or practices including job descriptions and remuneration procedures. It seems clear that, for 2 years, NTaPP teachers were called on to deal with a broad range of extra demands associated with the implementation of the Primary Program including specific changes that fell within the purview of the project. It goes without saying that, as usually is the case in such pilot projects (Sheingold & Hadley, 1990), the NTaPP teachers represented a highly motivated group characterized by a strong desire to learn about the educational uses of new technologies. However, learning goals entail material demands and needs that rarely were backed up with the provision of support or extra resources. A female computer coordinator characterized this process as follows:

The teachers at the school are so inundated with stuff that's going on all the time that they resent having to put a lot of time into in-service. I used to run a computer center thing once a week from 3:30 to 4:30, but having in-service after school is just too much.

Another female computer coordinator said, "I had great plans to do computer in-service after school. Well, that went on for September and part of October, and then people got really busy and it fell by the wayside." A female principal interpreted teachers' frustrations as follows: "If you are pushing yourself to really learn stuff. . . you're going to have technical problems. It's going to be frustrating, and you'll want to take an ax to things."

Oddly, possibly the most important aspect of the implementation of new educational technologies-the impact of new media on children's learning-was hardly ever discussed by NTaPP participants. Participants tended to describe what children produced with particular types of technologies (e.g.,writing a story using word processing software) rather than focusing on how the use of a new medium affected the process or why the change was pedagogically worthwhile. Clearly, a great deal of time and effort and other material resources was invested in the implementation of new technologies in this project. This is not unusual. In the case of new technologies, the hardware costs are substantial, and the resultant pressures for the reorganization of learning environments are extremely resource depleting. However, technological change in educational contexts often takes place with a greater emphasis on the "how" questions about implementation than on the "why" questions about pedagogical suitability (Apple, 1986; Cuban, 1986; Fullan, Miles, & Anderson, 1988). Perhaps this is just another example of the now familiar way in which urgency supersedes importance in determining the key constraints influencing educational (and other) decision-making processes or contexts.

Regardless, this project was no exception to this generalization, although there were a few isolated cases in which ongoing reflections about technology and pedagogy took place. On the whole, almost no time was set aside in the NTaPP sites for ongoing discussions relating common pedagogical practices and philosophical or social commitments to questions about the judicious uses of new technologies. Overwhelmingly, the consensus was that the effect of new technologies would necessarily be optimal in relation to children's learning and that the drain on resources was worthwhile. No one seemed to be sure about why this confidence and extraordinary sacrifice of resources were warranted.

The most frequently cited beliefs about the inevitability of significant material changes in educational contexts were that new technologies were "quite simply unavoidable in 1992," "a sign of the times," "the key to promoting computer literacy," "important for job market suitability," "a good vehicle for career development," "necessary for a school's image," "helpful in selling the Primary Program reforms to parents," and "what kids expect these days." Perhaps this type of thinking is commonplace. After all, who really has the time or authority to stop the clock and ask for extra time to think about proposed new developments stemming from yet another ministry initiative. Nevertheless, it seems important to point out that comprehensive reviews (e.g., Apple, 1986) of the actual, as compared to the projected, relationships between new technologies and characteristics of the labor force indicate that considerable caution ought to be marshaled in the face of arguments that urge educators to implement new technologies widely on the basis of projected increases in technology-linked jobs. In a similar vein, although it is commonplace today to hear impassioned (and often desperate) arguments urging educators to implement new technologies on the basis that we currently are situated within an "explosion of information" or an information age, it is worth spending a little bit of time considering the evidentiary basis for what underlies these claims. In fact, there is no reasonable way in which to measure amounts of information and no good reason to believe that workers or citizens currently are faced with more information than, say, their medieval counterparts.

Undoubtedly for a complex array of reasons, few NTaPP participants discussed relations between pedagogical practices/assumptions and new technologies. Those who did discuss relations between educational practices and new media tended to focus on uses of either word processing or learner profile software. Interesting convergences and differences emerged in these discussions. Essentially, students' uses of word processing software to produce a variety of types of texts appeared to be, in Franklin's ( 1990) terms, an example of in-class computers functioning as a "holistic technology," whereas learner profile programs did not, by and large, map easily onto teachers' existing or projected assessment/reporting practices and might be aptly characterized by Franklin as "prescriptive." According to Franklin, holistic tools amplify the capacities of their users while, concomitantly, enabling the preservation of culturally valued practices and social relations. Prescriptive technologies, by contrast, sever workers from the tools of their craft "by requiring external management, control, and planning. They reduce workers' skill and autonomy" (Franklin, 1990, p. 55).

NTaPP practitioners were unequivocally enthusiastic about the uses of new technologies to support children's development as writers, that is, as individuals working collaboratively in the production of meaningful texts such as class- or school-based newsletters, banners, stories, reports of special projects, and letters to pen pals. One teacher said, "The children are very keen to write on the computer. They enjoy typing, and they are more explicit about what they write and more expressive. They really like to print out their work so that they have a finished product to show their parents or to put in a book" (female teacher, Primary 1). A female computer coordinator pointed out the potentially facilitative relationship between computers and reduced anxieties about text production, arguing, "Children who aren't able to excel or succeed with motor skills love working on the computer. The views they have toward their own work when it comes off the printer are just wonderful."

Another teacher said,

It's not that young children can't draw and can't write, but it's doing things in a finished format that children aren't capable of. A lot of children's printing skills right now are a little on the rough side. It's difficult for them to get their work into what they like to think of as letter perfect. Not that they couldn't have written this type of thing by hand, but the finished product looks so nice. (female, Primary 2)

NTaPP practitioners were struggling, during Years 1 and 2 of this project, with the implementation of new assessment and reporting practices mandated by the Primary Program policy reform (British Columbia Ministry of Education,1990c). In a nutshell, assessment was supposed to produce a wide range of data that would be anecdotally communicated to parents in report cards. Locally developed computer-based learner profile programs offered some apparent solutions to the information management problems created by the requirement that teachers continuously collect, organize, interpret, and report to parents about a representative sample of behaviors and products for all of the children in their classrooms. Teachers overwhelmingly disagreed with the projected facilitation and used the software only as a word processor to produce report cards. Teachers' observations about assessment indicated the use of a range of tools (e.g., post-it notes, clipboards, photographs), none of which was compatible with computer-mediated assessment. As one teacher said, "I keep everything just like I did before, in notebooks. Then, I just gather everything around me at report time and sit down and use the computer. I'm not using the computer to input information daily or after school" (female teacher, Primary 3).

All teachers agreed, without a doubt, that the single most useful aspect of learner profile software was access to a facility that enabled the production of a professional-looking product. Teachers commented particularly on the positive reception that their computer-generated report cards had been accorded by parents. During a period characterized by a relatively high degree of uncertainty as to proper modes of reporting within the Primary Program, as well as attendant complaints and concerns expressed by parents, it is little wonder that teachers responded so positively to what could appear, to an outsider, as a relatively minor aspect of an entirely complex and overwhelming task. One teacher (Primary 3) put it like this: "The parents don't have the same values as the school system. They just want to know where their child is ranked-period."

Learner profile programs, then, did not appear to have been used to great advantage by teachers, nor did these programs appear to be particularly congruent with the teachers' actual assessment practices or their beliefs about assessment. Teachers did not devise ways of capturing and recording ongoing assessment data during the school day, nor were these programs used to modify existing instructional practices. Computer-mediated text production, on the other hand, appeared at first impression to support teachers' practices in relation to student writing and to enhance their capabilities for implementing a writing curriculum that was consistent with their expressed beliefs about language arts. However, a closer examination of teachers' positive appraisals of technology in their language arts classes showed them praising neatness, the ability to impress and reassure parents, and the semblance of polished and professional text-in short, the look of the product rather than the intellectual significance of the writing process.

NOT "JUST A TOOL?" GENDER (IN)EQUITY ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS, AND TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION

When we began this project, British Columbia Ministry of Education data on staffing of "computer expert" positions by gender showed that 9.4% of the district-level computer coordinators were female and 90.6% were male, and 7.1% of the school-level computer studies teachers were female and 92.9% were male. In addition, almost all of the vendor-provided technology support personnel positions were held by males. By contrast, elementary teachers were overwhelmingly female (97%), as is typically the case, whereas administrative authority continued to be primarily a male preserve (80%). Most of our interviewees began by denying that any gender differences in access to, or uses of, educational technologies existed in their schools. Here is one male principal's comment:

Gender equity and gender issues are non-issues in elementary schools. I've always been . . . the male is in the minority figure in elementary schools. The computer coordinator is male, but I don't see any connection between expertise and maleness simply because that person happens to be male. If anyone attributed any significance to that male figure being responsible and being the expert, I would really be surprised. However, many respondents went on to relate significant gender differences, frequently noting in passing that their responses were logically inconsistent. Here, for example, is an excerpt from a conversation with a computer coordinator (CC) and a principal (P), both male, which illustrates this type of inconsistent response:

P: I think it's time. I don't think it's a gender-related thing, I do walk around the classrooms quite a lot, and what I've seen is that the women on our staff are proving that they do have competence and skills. They can pick them up.

CC: I don't think it's a gender thing. You have to be interested.

P: The number of women on staff that type their own report cards now, or use computers to collect their anecdotal comments, has grown. I know because I don't have to buy as much secretarial time now when reports come out. The women-and this is a predominantly female staff-feel more confident with the computers just by using them.

CC: Boys, if there's any difference that I can see, are more interested in the technical side of it. Like, where does this plug go, and what does it do? Girls seldom ask those questions. But when it comes to actual usage of it, I don't see a lot of difference... Well ... okay. I think there is a difference.

In many of the responses, the appeal was made to some type of learning styles type differentiating element, as in the notion of "left-brained" versus "right-brained" people. This way of explaining things seemed distinctly preferable to any mention of gender in generating accounts about why certain users seemed to have more of an affinity for new technologies than did others. Here is another male principal responding to a question about gender differences: Well, okay, I think there is a difference; it's not a generalization that's not untrue. But there's a difference, even among males, in how they use computers. I don't think it's so much gender related, though. I am a very left-handed kind of person [sic], and a lot of my friends who are into computers are also very left-handed people [sic].

Another very typical type of "explanation" invoked the concept of differing levels of interest. Both male and female participants described males as "more interested in computers and machines in general." Typically, respondents did not follow through this argument by accounting for the differing levels of interest. As one teacher told us,

I sort of feel that for females . . . technology seems to be kind of difficult. . . more difficult than for males. If there's going to be trouble with any of the machines, we go to a male to get help. So myself, too, I find that. I guess I've just sort of accepted it. I haven't really thought about it as why it is that way. I just sort of think males have always been more interested. (female, Primary 3)

Another teacher said, "It just so happens that the people that are most interested in computers in the school are male teachers" (female, Primary 2). Many of the female participants described their own experiences of technological incompetence, often defined in terms of not being able to "get inside the computer" and make repairs or adjustments in the case of breakdowns. As one teacher remarked,

My fianc6 is a software engineer. He knows a lot about software but also about hardware and how a computer works. He said, "You don't know anything about inside there, do you?" And I said, "No, I don't." Teachers don't touch that kind of stuff. There's only so many hours in a day, and teachers feel very overwhelmed. (female, Primary 3)

Female teachers also related their perceptions of computer coordinators deliberately withholding their technological expertise. One female principal said, It's like, when he talks about how many megabytes and RAM and ROM and I think . . . give me a break. I don't know what you're talking about. Now I just say, "Excuse me, I am going to sit down and do this, and you can show me what to do, because I know if you tell me all the steps I can do it myself." But they've got the lingo down pat, and it's just another way . . . it's a really subtle way of them holding back their expertise by confusing us.

Another teacher argued, "It's almost like we're being controlled in how much we can learn about technology, because if teachers know too much, that would muddy the waters about who really is the computer expert in the school" (female, Primary 1). Female computer coordinators, very much in the minority, indicated in their discussions of gender that they often found themselves in positions where they were compelled, as if "against all odds," to prove their technological competence. As one of them explained, "Female computer coordinators really have to prove that they are computer experts. I think you sort of have to work your way into it. I had done hypercard and a few other things, so I was accepted . . . as someone who knew, maybe, something about computers anyway."

Notwithstanding their protestations to the contrary, male computer coordinators and principals alike seemed to have very clearly gender-differentiated conceptions of male and female technological competence. A male computer coordinator, for example, described boys as "avid and skilled" and girls as "knowledgeable." He said,

Boys are in the lab all the time playing games-Stratego, War at Sea, battle games.... They would be in there until 6 o'clock at night if I'd let them. They'd be in there at sun-up if I opened the lab for them. I'd say one of those boys would be one of the most skilled.... John helps teachers get their report cards formatted and do all that stuff. He'll also mess up my hard drives so badly [that] I've had to boot him out of there. I mean . . . deviously skilled. . copying software on me. Pirating the school software after it's all locked up with security programs that he can bypass.... There's two or three girls who . . . they're all fairly equal. I wouldn't use the word "skilled.". . I'd use the word "knowledgeable" more than "skilled" for them.

Some male computer coordinators actually described gender-differentiated pedagogies for teaching technological skills, for example,

If I'm teaching a new application in a class that has mainly boys, I'll explain more the why and the reasons behind the program. If the class is mainly girls, I'll say, well, just do this this and this and don't worry about why or how it works; don't worry about the logic behind it.

Most respondents, again despite denying any significance to gender, went on to note systematic differences in the usage of educational technologies by male and female students. As one teacher said, "All the boys seem to really like the computers, and not too many girls are really keen. That's not a hardand-fast rule, but it seems to be the way it is (female, Primary 2). A male computer coordinator observed, "During the lunchtime and after-school programs in the lab, I've noticed that the girls just aren't there. It's basically a lab full of boys." More respondents (77%) named boys rather than girls as the resident computer experts. Interestingly, however, most noted that until they had been asked about a possible relationship between technological expertise and gender, they had not considered the issue to be significant. As one female principal remarked, "Well, I guess who we ask when there's a computer problem is a boy in Grade 6. It's very subtle, really subtle. I don't know what this has to do with gender, because I wouldn't think that we would discriminate in the primary or anything."

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS AND EDUCATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE

My discussion has not been aimed at making us all neo-Luddites. (Apple, 1986, p. 174)

Main NTaPP findings include the following. First, prior to the onset of this project, site-based teachers had little or no experience-from either schoolbased in-service or preservice courses-pertaining to the educational uses of new information technologies such as computers and video cameras. Second, teachers' working conditions were negatively affected to a much greater degree by the time demands of implementation processes, including the requirement for participation in in-service activities, than was the case for computer coordinators and principals. Third, teachers were much more inclined than computer coordinators or principals to question the appropriateness of integrating new technologies and to speculate on their most productive uses. Fourth, school-based personnel designated as computer experts typically had access to vastly inadequate resources to function effectively as facilitators of integration processes and aims. Fifth, the only evidence that might support an argument concerning positive outcomes was that, so far as the teachers were concerned, (a) computers seemed to have a positive effect on students' motivation, (b) children appeared to enjoy computer-mediated writing a great deal more than pencil and paper, and (c) parents liked computer-generated report cards (in a period of public parental dissatisfaction with assessment practices in British Columbia). Sixth, implementation decisions (e.g., inclass vs. laboratory-based placement of computers) seemed to be governed by administrators' perceptions of efficacy rather than by teachers' instructional practices, pedagogical preferences, or judgments about educational effectiveness. Seventh, evidence of gender-based inequities and of stereotyping included the following: (a) male teachers (and students) were routinely designated as the computer experts, independent of their actual levels of skill; (b) female teachers refused technicist discourses, whereas male teachers embraced and ventriloquated "computer jargon"; (c) male computer coordinators and male principals viewed as unproblematic teachers' (and their own) acquisition of technological competence; and (d) students' beliefs about technological competence were as gendered as those of their teachers. Only when it was pointed out to them empirically were school personnel able to acknowledge their gendered assumptions and practices with respect to technological expertise, and even then, most participants appeared unwilling to attempt to intervene directly to bring about more equitable conditions.

Speaking more generally, we seem to have found in the divergence between teachers' and administrators' espoused views of the impact of computers on primary schooling a type of theory-practice gap, with administrators and so-called computer specialists in the school arguing the theory position and classroom teachers being resistant to following sound and innovative educational prescriptions in practice. Even more interesting is that the two positions are hierarchically, not laterally, situated. Most interesting of all, the educational value of making more and wider use of new technologies in the classroom is taken for granted far more often by principals and coordinators than by classroom teachers.

At the level of professional discourse, we saw teachers ventriloquating neophilic sentiments, even as they acknowledged deep reservations about the educational value of technology in the classroom. We also observed how, in the official pro-technology discourse of the ministry, the district, and the administration, actual technological conditions and consequences were invisible, and the computer turned out to be the subject of the discourse. As Smith (1990) explains, "The textually organized relations of ruling" are what technology policy documents are made of, and it is these that inform the professional discourse on educational technology among educational administrators. But what these documents describe, Smith's work suggests, might not bear much resemblance to what classroom teachers get to experience. So it is here. We have had to distinguish between the computer of technology policy documents and actual classroom technologies. Actual classroom technologies-in-use are televisions and videocassette recorders more often than computers, and rarely are these the types of powerful machines depicted on television and in computer magazines. Our interview transcripts show that whereas ministry officials, principals, and computer coordinators are likely to be referring to one type of object, teachers may be referring to another. But it is not only the referent of this polysemous speech that differs significantly between these two seemingly disagreeing groups of research participants, that is, teachers and administrators. As Smith shows in her work on the "documentary practices of power," texts manage and organize lived reality in ways that often are at odds with the lived actuality of those whom the text organizes, just as teachers' access to and experiences with educational technology, as described and prescribed in educational policy documents, may be virtually unrecognizable in the language and descriptions of the texts themselves. It is difficult, in that case, to say that here we discovered a disagreement between administrators and teachers; rather, it is closer to the truth to say that we discovered they were not talking about the same thing.

Like the Luddites, NTaPP project teachers' day-to-day practices, and therefore the integrity of their culture of work, were intruded on, and only in a few aspects were enhanced, by uses of new technologies, and so it comes as no surprise that we did not witness the type of widespread and enthusiastic adoption of novel processes and tools that administrators and educational authorities whose goals are guided by current technology policies would like researchers to see. As Goodson et al. (1991) argue in their report of a 3-year study of the implementation of computers in two Ontario secondary schools, "The introduction of computers sets off a culture clash: a clash between cultures of teaching, subjects, personal styles, and cultures of computing" (p. 9). The main findings from Goodson et al.'s socioculturally oriented study of computer use in schools was that teachers invested considerable effort in the preservation of their craft and in maintaining the ecological stability of their professional culture. One might argue that teachers overwhelmingly opt for technological innovation only insofar as the new tool enables the preservation of professional agency with respect to technique.

The closest we saw teachers coming to a "convivial" (Illich, 1973) relationship between technologies and teaching cultures was, as mentioned, in relation to uses of word processing software associated with in situ "whole language" literacy pedagogies. However, where new tools structured teachers' practices in such a way as to substantially interfere with existing patterns of division of labor, allocation of resources, and social relations as well as (and perhaps above all) conceptions of educational value, resistance clearly was in evidence and adoption was marginal at best. Resistance to technological innovation, construed as "Luddite," undoubtedly is a valuable indication of a perceived (and often real) threat to the cultural stability of a particular community of practice. It is interesting, in this regard, to contrast Lord Byron's sobering account (see Noble, 1995, pp. 154-158) of the actual impacts of mechanized looms on the professional culture of weavers at the dawn of the industrial revolution, with the rhapsodic and prophetic panegyrics to Babbage's analytical engine (precursor to the computer) produced by his daughter, the Countess Ada of Lovelace. Ada, who worked closely with Babbage, saw this new technology as a source of marvels, and expounded with neophilic delight about the seemingly endless potential of the digital processor to effect positive outcomes and solve enduring and socially valued problems (see especially Toole, 1992). Byron's plea on behalf of the Luddites was made, after his travels to the areas most affected by the introduction of mechanized looms, to the House of Lords in a maiden speech designed to rally support against a bill to introduce the death penalty for "machine breaking." Only 20 years later, Ada's technoromanticist account of Babbage's "calculating machine" was produced specifically to garner funding from the British Parliament for the continuation of the development of technological innovation and not in relation to any real or concrete evidence of benefit.

Whereas class was likely the most significant factor positioning the Luddites' culture as at risk as a function of technological innovation, it undoubtedly is gender effects that situated the NTaPP teachers, nearly all of whom were women, outside the locked gates of the computer culture and with no likelihood of gaining access. As Acker (1994), Walkerdine (1990), and others argue, gender politics structure the culture of the elementary school along the lines of the heterosexual nuclear family, with women's labor ideologically tied to an identity as nurturing and long-suffering mother, toiling within inflexible and overwhelming constraints on time, freedom of movement, resources, and intellectual autonomy, and as such, perennially alienated from embracing an identity as an innovative pedagogue. Likewise, research on women and the culture of computing (Benston, 1993; Bryson & de Castell, 1994,1995,1996; Haraway,1991; Schofield,1995; Sutton,1991; Wajcman, 1991; Whyte, 1986), as well as historical studies of the role accorded to women during periods of technological innovation (for a classic, see Marvin, 1988), clearly demonstrate that a significant aspect of the development of technological expertise is its confinement to a male preserve (Cockburn, 1985).

There is much we can learn from the adoption of a sociocultural frame for interpreting teachers' resistance to technological innovation. First among these, as Freire (1970) pointed out long ago, new practices need to be created as an integral part of, and be developed from, a coherent and contextualized set of relations to knowledge, knowers, and knowing that reflect and value teacher agency and voice as well as recognize and nurture the very means of community survival as a non-negotiable condition of school-based practical innovation. What we think this study has shown is that there is a range of identifiable respects in which the implementation of new technologies-in the form in which, and under the conditions with which, they were made available to these teachers-made teachers' own (hard-won) initiatives and reforms impossible and made the classroom and its focus and organization increasingly inhospitable to learning-not just the students' learning but also, as we have seen, the teachers' learning as well. In other words, technology as it was made available to these teachers eroded in identifiable ways the cultural foundation of the classroom community, de-skilling teachers, alienating and misleading learners, and reorienting the focus of both from process to product, a focus that could not be more diametrically opposed to the pedagogical orientation of most of the teachers and of the new Primary Program policy that had only recently been implemented, to the satisfaction of the many teachers who had been its strongest and most determined advocates. In understanding these teachers' unenthusiastic responses to implementing new technologies in their classrooms, then, it would be a mistake to construe preservation and protection as motivated by a general anti-technology ideological orientation because it would be misguided to ignore the fact that, to the extent that schools are indeed learning communities, they also are selfstabilizing. It is, after all, an enormous cultural shift for teachers to make from a community predicated on the enduring character of knowledge, the value of its accessibility and availability to all, and its relative autonomy from market forces to a new organization of educational work enabled, shaped, and materially driven by commodity fetishism, as of necessity computer culture has been since its inception. Whether or not, and to what extent, the school or the teacher can be productively retooled by the computer, the fact remains that actual schools and teachers have not had much contact with it, nor are they likely to given the actual resources, both material and human, to which public school classrooms have access. The most disturbing fact of all is that inaudible in our study of the discourses of participants about the implementation of new technologies into the primary classroom was any substantive consideration of what might be gained educationally from so radical a transformation of school culture. In this respect, it is greatly wished that teachers prove to be more "Luddite" in/deed.

Coda

As photo opportunities go, this one was perfect. Except it was mostly a sham. While their husbands talked affairs of state in the Oval Office, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Aline Chretien ventured into a poor Black neighborhood [Burrville] where, through the wonders of technology, they watched the students of twinned schools in Washington [D.C.] and Ottawa share their hopes on a live, audio-visual Internet hookup. But soon the screens would go blank and be carted away, leaving Burrville's students taking turns on their single slow computer before the Chretiens finish[ed] their state visit today. ("Leaders' Wives," 1997, p. )

[Footnote]
NOTES
[Footnote]
1. Barthes ( 1973), making use of the example of Einstein's brain, argues that the invocation of a mythological signifier refers not to the signified but rather to an ideologically saturated field of meaning and is productive of discursive effects that bear no necessary or obvious relation to
[Footnote]
the actual and material object so signified. Butler (1990) makes a similar argument about the discursive production of gender and gender effects. 2. By resistance, we are here relying on Acker's ( 1994) definition. Acker argues that teacher resistance involves a dialectical and often contradictory tension produced by possibilities for agency, on the one hand, and constraints on power and opportunities for lack of conformity to initiatives imposed from above, on the other. 3. ETC was a quasi-independent organization (vis-a-vis the Ministry of Education) dedicated to exploring and encouraging productive uses of new technologies in British Columbia schools. ETC was created in 1990, and in 1994 it was amalgamated with the technology branch of the Ministry of Education. 4. The proposal was coauthored by Mary Bryson and David Robitaille, with Bryson as principal investigator. The following tale, told "out of school" (Bryson & de Castell, 1994), provides a peep show glimpse of the relationship between Bryson and ETC, the organization with which she was intended to collaborate:
[Footnote]
I was in the second year of a university-based tenure-track job and in charge of a largescale research project ($100,000+) where we were looking at how female elementary school teachers modified (or didn't) their practices in relation to the implementation of new technologies. A large group of teachers, students, and faculty had convened at the university for hardware and software demonstrations by representatives of the "major vendors" (including IBM, Apple, and Commodore/Amiga). Despite my senior institutional status as "principal investigator," I noticed from "the word go" that the reps invariably directed all of their attention to the male participants. "So what's new?" I mused, frothing in a very familiar silent anger. A White male IBM rep began his presentation by recounting a story about a so-called "old native woman" and the marvel of her composing a grocery list using a word processor. I found the story patronizing, racist, and completely unsuitable for the context. At the end of the day, in a one-to-one chat, I told him that I found the story "problematic" and that it had really interfered with my ability to judge his product. The rep was, well . . . completely livid. He told me in no uncertain terms that I "had no business sharing my opinion with him" and that he had "never heard such garbage." The next day, I was called into a formal meeting with representatives of the governmental funding agency that had provided the research grant. I was in big trouble. I was a "public relations disaster." The agency was "considering taking the grant away." Never in my professional life had I heard of a grant explicitly being withdrawn for reasons of PR value. Stunned, I stammered an explanation for my conduct, pointing to the university's nondiscrimination policy and my obligation to "educate." Finally, I found myself crying-big, salty, and very embarrassing tears. It proved a persuasive gender display. I was given a second chance-but for what? (field note, September 1990)
[Footnote]
Although not an official participant, Suzanne de Castell provided advice and encouragement throughout the duration of the NTaPP project. In 1993, Bryson produced a final report (Bryson, 1993) that was summarily buried by ETC and never (as had originally been planned) circulated, either to the participating schools or to elementary schools across the province. Rather, an "officially approved" and buoyantly optimistic account of the project's outcomes (Poy, 1993) was published by ETC and distributed widely. Bryson was disconsolate, and the data sat in her office for the next 4 years, until de Castell rallied to her aid and offered to "collaboratively write it up"-which we did.
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[Author note]
AUTHORS' NOTE: This research was supported by a grant to the first author by the British Columbia Educational Technology Center and by a grant to both authors by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. We also acknowledge the insightful comments made by reviewers. However, we take full responsibility for the views reported here.


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