LEVERAGE News 4

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LEVERAGE News No 4, July 1998

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From the workplace to the classroom: innovation, reform, and resistance in the communication age
Mark Warschauer, from the University of Hawai'i, provides a summary of his keynote address from the LEVERAGE conference
Efforts at educational and technological reform in the classroom mirror changes taking place elsewhere in society, especially in the workplace. In this paper, I first examine the overall socio-economic framework which is shaping technological reform. I then discuss and compare research which has been conducted on the impact of new technologies in the workplace and in the classroom.
Economic change, work, and education
The nature of work and education has changed dramatically in the last 200 years. We can examine this period in three eras: the agricultural era, industrial era, and informational era. During the agricultural era (until the late nineteenth century in the United States), the majority of the population worked on farms. Little formal education was required, as farming was learned through personal apprenticeship. Education, which focused on rote learning, oral recitation, imitation of 'correct' speech and writing, and memorisation, served to enforce the aristocratic mores of society (de Castell and Luke, 1986).
During the industrial era (from the early twentieth century until about the 1970s in the US), the majority of people worked in manufacturing. Factories were organised according to a Fordist model of a strict vertical hierarchies, minute divisions of labor, and individual compartmentalised skills. Schools too came to be influenced by the same model, with students learning decontextualized functional sub-skills through programmed instruction in large classes (de Castell and Luke, 1986).
In the informational era (from about the 1970s in the US), increases in productivity depend on the use of science and technology to manage the quality of information (Castells, 1996). The archetypal workplace is the office, and work is increasingly organised on post-Fordist principles of horizontal networks, teamwork, a flexible division of labour, and just-in-time production and distribution (Gee, Hull, and Lankshear, 1996). Informationalism requires a new learning mode emphasising collaborative inquiry and systems thinking (Reich, 1991).
Thus both schools and workplaces need to reorganise to reflect more effectively the imperatives of today's society. And both need to make effective use of technologies as part of this reform process. This becomes complicated, however, by the changing role of technology from the industrial to the informational era. Previously technology served principally to automate (remove processes from human control); today, though, technology also serves to informate (Zuboff, 1988), that is, to provide a deeper level of information to a broader array of people (thus to give people more control).
Technology-based reform in the workplace
Zuboff (1988) studied eight companies (in factories, mills, and offices) for five years to determine the impact of new 'informating' technologies on work relations. She found that companies that did not reform their organisational structure in correspondence to the power of new technologies suffered serious problems, as workers, once they had access to more information, insisted as well on having more power and control. As Zuboff explains, 'the informating process sets knowledge and authority on a collision course' (p310).
Kling and Zmuidzinas (1994) postulated four types of transformation that the infusion of computer technology could bring about in a company: metamorphoses (abrupt change to a new paradigm of social organisation), migration (gradual shift in the direction of a new type of organisation), elaboration/reinforcement (strengthening of an existing organisational paradigm), and stability (no change). They then studied 40 companies over a three-year period to see the actual impact of new technologies. The results were about evenly divided between migration, elaboration/reinforcement, and stability, with no cases found of metamorphoses. According to their research, there were five factors which affected which kinds of change took place: managerial ideologies, the strategies adopted for implementing reform, the social organisation of work groups, the occupational power of work groups, and the degree of integration of technology.
Technology-based reform in the schools
Researchers on technology and school reform have found almost the exact same phenomena. Cuban (1986) conducted a review of 100 years of technology-based reform involving film, radio, and television. He found that new technologies were often heralded as being revolutionary in impact, but were implemented in a top-down fashion and only effected education marginally.
Sandholtz, Ringstaff, and Dwyer (1997) conducted a ten-year study of computer technology in five schools. They found that computer technologies did have a big effect in situations where schools and teachers were able to implement broader innovations, including student-centred learning and team-teaching. This entailed a lengthy process of teachers working together to develop new beliefs and attitudes toward how students learned. Teachers who maintained traditional beliefs found the changes frustrating and reverted to lecture-style teaching; they encountered resistance though from students who were used to student-centred approaches.
I found similar results in a two-year ethnographic study of four computer-intensive language and writing classes in three colleges in Hawai'i (Warschauer, 1997). Teachers implemented uses of technology that were consistent with and reinforced their own approach to the teaching of language and writing. For the three teachers who were in favor of student-centred learning, the transition to using computers went fairly smoothly. The teacher who had a more structural approach, emphasising discipline and control in the writing process and classroom, had more difficulties in integrating new technologies, as students resented using computers for non-communicative structural work and exercises. This was another example of informating technologies failing when not accompanied by empowering processes.
In summary, new technologies can contribute to making schools better prepared for the age of information, but only if they are introduced along with broader reforms of social organization. Steps that can help in the introduction of technology-based reform include:

a focus on broad educational goals, rather than technical issues;
an examination of the overall educational context which shapes how technology is used (including how testing is carried out, how much time teachers have for planning, etc);
an emphasis on taking into account teachers' beliefs (and working teachers with teachers to examine and develop their beliefs);
an emphasis on full integration of technology with the curriculum and teaching goals (rather than seeing technology as an add-on); and
efforts to build broad social support for change through the inclusion of technical support, release time for teachers, ongoing training, and professional reward for effective use of technology.
The infusion of computers will not turn a bad school, or a bad company, into a good one. But computers can play a very important role in workplaces and schools which are willing to engage in necessary reform.
References
Castells M, The rise of the network society (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1996)
Cuban L, Teachers and machines: the classroom use of technology since 1920 (New York: Teachers College Press, 1986)
de Castell S and A Luke, 'Models of literacy in North American schools: social and historical conditions and consequences' in S de Castell, A Luke and K Egan (eds), Literacy, society, and schooling: 87-109 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986)

Gee J P, G Hull and C Lankshear, The new work order: behind the language of new capitalism (St Leonards, Australia: Allen and Unwin, 1996)
Kling R and Zmuidzinas, 'Technology, ideology and social transformation: the case of computerization and work organization' in Revue Internationale de Sociologie, 2: 28-56 (1994)
Reich R, The work of nations: preparing ourselves for 21st century capitalism (New York: Knopf, 1991)
Sandholtz J H, C Ringstaff and D C Dwyer, Teaching with technology: creating student-centered classrooms (New York: Teachers College Press, 1997)
Warschauer M, Electronic literacies: language, culture, and power in online education. Manuscript submitted for publication (1997)
Zuboff S, In the age of the smart machine: the future of work and power (Basic Books: New York, 1988)