This web page was created in partial completion of requirement for the course Education, Technology and Society taught by Professor Douglas Kellner at the University of California, Los Angeles. It is intended to be used only as a catalyst for dialogue and discussion on trends in education reform in the United States in light of continuously emerging new technologies which may or may not find their way into our public schools. We have provided our own discussion, as well as links to sites that may help supplement or illustrate some key points in this discussion.

I. Introduction:

Analyses of the management of technology in public schools usually note its lack of impact on the day-to-day values and practices of students and educators-teachers unions leaders, teachers, and administrators. This is generally construed as an implementation failure, or as resulting from a temperamental shortcoming on the part of educators or technologists. It is predicated on the tacit assumption that technology, particularly computer technology, is a short lived educational tool, meaning that it can only impart an educational lesson in a short amount of time rather than in an ongoing practice. It is also predicated on the notion that the impacts of technology are only in the practical means of learning rather than on the theoretical means of learning. This exposé proposes that technology use in the classroom is not a solitary educational lesson: that its values and practices are ongoing; but that a failure of educators' use of technology is that their own resistance to using technology does not allow for an alteration of the look-and-feel of schools. What results is a model of technology use in the classrooms that sees the school organization as a culture of continual contestation against the use of technology. The basic question that must be asked of teachers unions leaders and administrators, arguing for increased teaching skills, is to what extent are they willing to collaborate in the preparation of their own students for employment in the age of increasing technological interdependence?

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II. The Culture of Schools as Management Information Systems:

Schools by their very nature are systems for collecting and transmitting information. Systems theorists have identified three functions of educational systems. First, schools are considered a socialization ground for political and economic processes which help to produce human capital. Second, skill training facilitates the distribution of labor. And, third certification through schools provides the foundation for modern societies- meritocracy. But, structural functionalists fail to provide an explanation for how schools are to prepare the individual to evolve and function in the age of technology. The functionalist assumption is that under normal efficiency, with simple exposure to technology all benefit.

However, a dysfunction of the school system that results is a failure to explain and resolve the use of technology as a tool for teaching as well as for learning. In the Parsonian functionalist tradition resistance toward the use of technology in the classroom would result from a cross-cutting pressure derived from the changing culture of schools as information disseminators and the schools as information creators. In the resulting structural differentiation, the educational system is seen as the principle agency of selection and socialization and therefore the principle cause of resistance toward technology. Since schools do not exist in isolation from influences from society, this approach is inappropriate as a resolution to the societal demands for a highly educated population in the age of information technology.

Though the argument has often been made for introducing technology into classrooms, proposing both efficiency in teaching and enlightenment of students, it has continually been touted to be only a temporary tool, and not a tool that can transform education. Teachers and their union leaders have consistently shown to be, if not shy of using computer technology, outright resistant to using the new technology. They ague, as do school administrators, that students need to learn computer skills for their benefit in qualifying for the job market, but seldomly do they look at computer technology as an integral part of their own training or teaching. Technology use becomes not a burden but a fear for those resisting its use in the classroom.

When schools are called upon to perform more efficiently, teachers, their union leaders, and the school administrators look to each other to blame or credit the management of schools. When communities insist that their students be prepared to perform with high training in computer technology, school districts expend great sums of money to bring in highly qualified computer instructors, and technology, but they expend very little money in training the current workforce to use the new technology. At times communities have even been called upon or have voluntarily donated computer equipment and trainers, and while some teachers do get on board the training, it is the school leadership and union leadership that is consistently resistant in learning the use of technology. Often, it is the staff working for this leadership which performs the automated tasks to bring the school around to increased efficiency. What remains unchanged is the culture of resistance toward technology in schools.

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III. The Organization of Schools:

As organizational entities, schools- including teachers, teachers union leaders, and administrators must be less than impressed by the technologists' promises of greater school management efficiency or optimized student achievement. What appears to outsiders as progress and development in teaching tools can, to the school organization, be felt as undesirably disruptive if it means that the culture must change its values and habits in order to implement it. The truth is, in fact, that to some educators, the changing of teaching values makes them feel as though technology will replace them as valued teachers. Further, educators also fear that embedded in a change in habits is a definitive threat to job security if technology does replace a pedagogical tool.

The greatest misnomer for educators is further perpetuated in technophobes that insist that schools and libraries as we have known them will cease to exist. This was a prevalent notion that Clifford Stoll purported in Silicon Snake Oil. What the organization of schools should be looking to is how to prepare teachers to teach the future workforce to function efficiently and critically outside of schools.

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IV.  Organizing Teachers as MIS Directors

Teachers unions, as the bargaining and contracting representatives of teachers, should be more actively involved in promoting technological training for teachers and students. As organizations teachers unions must contend with the fact that their members enter the profession as volunteers. Teachers unions then are pitted not only with having to respond to public demands of introducing technology to classrooms but more specifically to improving the teaching skills of a complex set of volunteers.

Further, teachers unions aside from fluctuating between answering to the public, as well as answering to their membership, seek to improve education and thus must find ways to accommodate and even capitalize on the technological innovations advanced by others. Union leadership has, whether by design or intuition, had to find an explanation for the teachers' resistance to technology. They have had to creatively find a way to calculate the risks between the internal functions of the membership organization using technology and the external function of the union as an interest group in the business of producing a well trained workforce. Moreover, in accommodating reform proposals from educational consultants, teachers unions can serve to intensify teachers' identification with technology, or risk missing the point altogether if they miss the link to technology's interactive functions.

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V. Tomorrow's Job Market:

The next question to address here is whether technology has a legitimate role in public education from normative and historical perspectives. I would argue that technology does have a role in defining social responsibility but it is limited in projecting student achievement. Further, technology use in classrooms cannot be touted as a response to social inequality. Mere access to information and technology does not change the structural binds nor social cultures that lead to inequality, injustice or even a sense of moral obligation. Access to information can be crippling if an individual cannot mobilize for action. Conclusively, managing access to information must be a learned process that includes critical reflection of the information. Teachers are the invaluable source in providing this sort of coaching for students but they too must be trained and encouraged to manipulate information responsibly and with foresight on its impacts in productivity of their students.

This argument has not been argued amongst teacher educators though it has only been marginally addressed in business ethics, and it is in the context of the business argument that I would like to impose on the current discussion of the use of technology in the classrooms. When technology is viewed as a means to improve the "quality" of the workforce through its education and training, public schools then become a center for business investment and involvement. If business and other community centres are increasingly involved in the education of students then teachers and students must be prepared to present a viable product, a proof of learning and teaching. The discomfort that this gives traditionalist educators is not new; we have seen educators and social policy advisors argue against the treatment of students as merely human capital for economic function. The response in the business sector must be then, one that provides an ethic of "managing" the human use of technology as an integral part of social as well as economic productivity. The managing of the human use of technology must be viewed as cooperative learning and cooperative teaching.

Cooperative learning groups in the public school system are not new functions or pedagogical tools. Dewey and other pioneers of contemporary American education have long argued for cooperative learning models. What has happened in education with the advent of technology is that technology is not seen as a viable means for framing growth because it is not necessarily a cooperative pedagogical tool. In some respects I would argue that Dewey's intent in speaking of "framing growth" is more related to what critical pedagogists would call reflection. If and when an individual reflects on her/his own experiences and what is being taught, then growth is visible. It is visible to the individual and to the environment of the individual but it is not measurable nor adequately assessed as growth by anyone other than the individual.

Schools are in the business of preserving and transmitting information and authority and they do so both within the community of schools as well as in the public arena. What the community must begin to consider is what impact the negative coverage of schools is having on students self esteem. In TQM, organizational success is predicated on treating employees as responsible, creative participants. Public schools become functioning corporations, at least in the sense that they recognize the humanity of their students interaction with technology. The argument I make in drawing a parallel into TQM and business ethics is that, though students and teachers are not employees of corporations and other potentially hiring institutions, an ethic of cooperative learning and teaching must be a responsibility of all, and that coverage and criticism of schools must consider the impacts that the negativity has on students' learning.

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VI. Resources on the Internet that can help Educators Forecast Job Preparation

For information on the distribution of jobs over the 1994-2005 period from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Tomorrow's Jobs 1997 please see the BLS, Tomorrow's Jobs Homepage located at: http://stats.bls.gov/oco/oco2003.html

For more reading on how technology is changing the way we associate, point your web browser to Marshall McLuhan's website at http://www.mcluhanmedia.com/mmclm003.html

"What Role can Technology Play in the Classroom for At Risk Students?" http://scrtec.org/forums/prodev/messages/16.html

For tips on "Influencing Classroom Technology Decisions" http://cscwww.cats.ohiou.edu/~announce/20232847MAY.html

For links to campus policy and classroom management at other universities http://www.itp.berkeley.edu/ITP/cdug/classrooms/ClassroomWeb.html

For links to Advanced Technology Auditoria and the Middle Technology Classrooms http://www.indiana.edu/~iss/cta/manuals.html

Education Jobs Home Page http://www.nationjob.com/education

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VII. Technology as a Communicative Tool for Democracy

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VIII: Future Work on CD Rom- Classrooms and Technology

Classrooms and Technologies > > > > >

Technologies in the Classroom	=> Preparing for Employment => Transforming Education => List Items

There are 3 resource items connected to this link.

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1. Information on CD Rom= http://www.ed.gov/
2. Information for Teachers =
• Teacher Union Membership-http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/turn/turn.html, http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/utla/turn.utla.html,  http://www.nea.org/, http://www.aft.org//index.htm
3. Job Forecasts- Tomorrow's Jobs= http://stats.bls.gov/

This web server is located in the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. These pages were initially designed by Xochitl Perez (xperez@ucla.edu); the server is maintained and administered by the UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies. Please feel free to email suggestions to:

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