Page 78 - Education in a Digital World

National Policymaking 65

Some commentators have noted a distinct homogeneity across much of this
policymaking activity, with the educational technology policy agendas of many
countries appearing to conform to an ‘unusually common’ set of characteristics
regardless of otherwise varied national contexts (Zhao et al. 2006). Indeed, while the
educational technology policies of Jordan, Ethiopia, Brazil and Rwanda are not
wholly indistinguishable from each other, there has certainly been a strong ‘family
resemblance’ between state policies the world over. For instance, most countries’
initial forms of educational technology policymaking shared a common focus on
introducing computer equipment and internet connectivity into classrooms and
establishing system-wide programmes of teacher training and development. These
initial efforts tended to be followed by policies seeking to address issues of pedagogic
practice and thereby stimulate ‘bottom-up’ demand for technology-based learning
and teaching amongst teachers, parents and school administrators. In all these forms,
most of the educational technology initiatives that emerged since the 1980s shared
the characteristics of being well funded, focused on increasing the availability of
digital technologies in schools and targeted carefully at a limited set of measurable
outcomes. More often than not, they also involved the amendment of school curricula
to require teaching and learning through technology, as well as the introduction of
sets of measures to ensure that teachers had the knowledge and skills to make use
of digital technologies in their classrooms. As such, there would seem to be a
number of common ‘operational components’ underpinning most countries’ edu-
cational technology policies – i.e. pedagogical and curricular change, content
development, technical support and relatively high levels of funding for technical
resources (Kozma 2008).

National Histories of Educational Technology Policymaking

In one sense, then, it is tempting to account for individual national policy pro-
grammes as simply part of a wider harmonised ‘global policy convergence’ towards
technology and education (see Jenson et al. 2007). Following this line of argument,
any specific educational technology policy could be seen as replicating a wider
prevailing “international circulations of ideas” about technology and education
reform, rather than marking a particularly national response (Halpin and Troyna
1995). Yet from a comparative perspective, the development of different national
educational technology policies must be understood as historical, and thereby
rooted in very different social contexts. As Rizvi and Lingard (2010, p.15) note, all
“policies exist in context: they have a prior history, linked to earlier policies, particular
individuals and agencies”. We therefore need to consider the development of these
different national educational technology policies and strategies from a more
detached, critical and certainly more historical standpoint. As Robin Mansell
(2004, p.102) suggests, this involves fostering an “understanding of pressures towards
the commodification of [educational technology] and its consequences for the way
in which power is distributed through the material conditions” of individual