Page 76 - Education in a Digital World

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EDUCATION, TECHNOLOGY AND

NATIONAL POLICYMAKING

Introduction

While many commentators continue to predict the ‘death’ of the nation state,
it would be unwise to overlook the influence of national governments on educa-
tional technology. As Andy Green (2003, p.86) observes, “governments still seek
to manage their national systems – indeed, in some ways, more actively than
before … they know that education remains one area where they still have some
control”. This chapter therefore considers the influence of national policymaking
and policy institutions on the educational technology arrangements of different
countries. In particular we examine the political economy of national educational
technology governance and explore the inter-relationships between educational
technology policymaking and the economic, social and cultural fortunes of
individual nations.
This approach implies the development of a historical perspective on the formation
of educational technology policymaking. As such we need to look back to the
emergence of national information technology policies during the 1980s, when
governments and politicians in industrialised countries were keen to capitalise on
the kudos of being seen to ‘do something’ about new forms of microelectronics and
computer technology. The use of digital technology in educational settings then
gained a heightened policy prominence during the mid-1990s with the mainstream
emergence of the internet (see Ham and Cha 2009). From that time onwards,
digital technology and ‘new media’ have attracted the sustained attention of public
policymakers in developed and developing countries alike. This chapter considers
what part such policymaking activity has played in shaping the use of technology in
education around the world – not least in terms of setting an agenda for what
‘educational technology’ is and what values are associated with it.