The Interactive Whiteboards, Pedagogy and Pupil Performance ...

Yet if there is little doubt in policy circles that the technology “works”, then it is also
clear that simply equipping schools with the hardware and letting them sort out for
themselves what to do with it is not enough:
“The massive improvements we have seen in the basic ICT-enabled
infrastructure for learning now need to be paralleled by a transformation in the
use of ICT as a powerful tool for learning, teaching and institutional
management - enabling the learning process to be enhanced, extended and
enriched. This will require every school to become `e-confident’.”
(DfES 2003b, p 16)
The difference in use: the search for the ingredients, which deliver good practice with
ICT.
Although policy-makers may have identified some clear patterns in the available
data, it is far harder to tease out precisely what underlying factors actually explain
any improvements associated with ICT use. As the authors of The big pICTure
comment on the findings from ImpaCT2 Attainment:
‘It did show .. That generally something positive happened to attainment in the
case of (relatively) high ICT users ... There could be a range of reasons for this
- it may be that ICT use served as a general motivational trigger for learning, it
may be that pupils who utilised ICT learning opportunities were more likely to be
keen learners, or it may be that exposure to ICT in subject learning in itself
helped reinforce subject understanding, or a combination of reasons..... like all
good studies, it raises as many questions as it answers and suggests directions
for future research’ (Pittard et al, 2003, p6-7)
This uncertainty has been addressed in different ways. A small quantity of
government-funded research has explored whether there is a correlation between
gains in attainment associated with ICT and the kinds of factors identified as
important in the school improvement literature more generally, such as school
organisation and leadership. Might these have a decisive impact, either positively or
negatively, on the quality of ICT use in particular settings? Becta’s secondary
analysis of the national statistical data falls into this camp (Becta, 2003a, 2003b).
Other strands of government-sponsored research have focused on pupil or teacher
perceptions and experience of different aspects of the technology in an attempt to
identify the conditions which might favour its high or low use and the quality of its
application (DfES, 2001). Key variables explored include: the amount of access
teachers or pupils have to the relevant resource; their familiarity with the available
hard and software; their confidence in and competence with the technology; and
their perceptions of the value and relevance of the technology as well as its impact.
Some of the earliest research focused on a perceived technology gap between home
and schools; as well as between different segments of the pupil population (Hayward
et al, 2002; Somekh et al, 2002). The capacity of the new technology to be
intrinsically motivating or helpful to specific subsets of students has also been
explored (Hayward et al, 2002; Passey et al, 2003). In addition, the government has
commissioned and published four substantial literature reviews grouped under the
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