The Interactive Whiteboards, Pedagogy and Pupil Performance ...

slate.
The pace of the lesson is slow, with each IWB slide comparatively sparsely filled out.
The technology and its possibilities for use are exploited here to transform the
pedagogic space of the classroom, and encourage conceptual thinking.
Summary
Each of these teachers uses the potential of the IWB in different ways and to
different ends. The value of the pedagogy cannot be determined by counting the
number of features of the IWB that are used. Nor is it straightforward to assess the
contribution the technology itself makes to a particular teacher’s pedagogy. Thus the
third teacher uses the IWB to achieve what she once taught by using an OHP in a
similar way.
Both the case study and survey data suggest that technology use varies within as
well as between departments; that there is no single way of exploiting the technology
which should automatically be preferred in all contexts; that teachers need to be
aware of a range of ways of using the technology, and have opportunities to discuss
with colleagues which kind of use is most beneficial or appropriate for what kind of
topic. Such open-ended discussion should enable a department to consider when it
is most appropriate to use the technology to support, extend or transform existing
practice. The IWB can justifiably be used to achieve any of these.
Use expands with familiarity. Those teachers who were most adventurous in their
use had had access to the technology for longest and had often been given specific
departmental responsibility to develop subject teaching via the IWB.
5.5 The Capacity of IWBs to Transform or Accommodate to
Existing Pedagogic Practice
IWBs received an overwhelming positive reception from the teachers interviewed as
part of the case studies and who responded to the teacher survey. At least in part,
this may be due to the fact that, unlike other new technologies that have been
introduced into schools, IWBs have the capacity to be ‘absorbed’ into the space of
the classroom without challenging the existing status quo. In many instances,
interactive whiteboards were seen by teachers to fit:
• The spatial logic of the classroom – the board and teacher ‘at the front’;
• Existing pedagogic practices;
• Transfer and transmission models of learning’
• Whole class teaching and learning context of secondary school.
The capability of IWBs to fit the existing ‘from the front’ pedagogic space of the
classroom allows some teachers to:
• Embed the IWB within their existing knowledge and practices;
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