John SirajBlatchford Jon Dawson

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Training needs and opportunities in the UK
John Siraj-Blatchford Jon Dawson
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Research on Education and Training shows the
availability of technology alone cannot bring
about radical change while some (potentially
effective) technologies are embraced (by
educators) others are resisted The use of
technology in classrooms is found to be socially
contextualised, interacting with the
institutional and organisational cultures of
schools and reflecting elements of the prevailing
social relations in and around the context of
use (Editorial) Issue 5, April 2003) edition
of New Perspectives for Learning
http//www.pjb.co.uk/npl/npl5.pdf
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From UK research experience we also know that
when we report our research findings these need
to be anchored in concrete teaching
contexts Teachers will not take up attractive
sounding ideas, albeit based on extensive
research, if these are presented as general
principles which leave entirely to them the task
of translating them into everyday practice
their classroom lives are too busy and too
fragile for this to be possible for all but an
outstanding few. What they need is a variety of
living examples of implementation, by teachers
with whom they can identify and from whom they
can both derive conviction and confidence that
they can do better, and see concrete examples of
what doing better means in practice. Black and
William (1998)
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• Kinderet in the UK has aimed to identify and
  understanding the theoretical and practical needs
  of early childhood educators in terms of their
  use of ICT and to work in collaboration with them
  in developing resources to support their
  colleagues.
• The Kinderet survey was applied in 2004 to
  identify
• The personal and professional characteristics of
  
• respondents
• How ICT was applied to the Curriculum
• The availability and application of ICT
  resources
• The training needs and preferences of
• practitioners

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The personal and professional characteristics of
respondents
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While it might have been assumed that years of
experience and the age of the respondents would
have been a good predictor of varying opinions of
the value of Information and Communication
Technology (ICT), this does not seem to be the
case. No significant correlation was found been
age of respondent/length of service and either
their confidence in or their concerns for ICT.
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91.9 of respondents felt ICT was an important
or very important area of the curriculum and
only 38 felt that they had been provided with
sufficient training to provide it. Where
individual respondents were less motivated this
might have been an indication that the technology
was being used inappropriately.
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How ICT was applied to the Curriculum

• The respondents were asked what objectives they
  had for the use of ICT and they were also asked
  separately what they felt that children learnt
  from there use of the tools.
• Interestingly their responses were quite
  different.

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Areas of the curriculum that practitioners felt
ICT could contribute to the most.
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Why do we use technology? What do children learn
from technology? The references to social skills
referred exclusively to issues of co-operation
which suggests the need to raise practitioners
awareness of the importance of children talking
together and developing their collaboration
skills.
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The availability and application of ICT resources

• the criteria used to select computer software

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In the UK ICT education includes all those new
technologies that handle information and support
communications.
e.g. cassette recorders, traffic lights,
telephone, video, bar code scanners and
programmable toys.
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Pixie A programmable Toy
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Cash Registers for socio-dramatic play
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Digital Cameras
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Cassette Player/Recorders
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Computer Workstations
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Interactive Whiteboards
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The training needs and preferences of
practitioners