Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Ministry of Education recommended that the New Zealand Government support ICT
initiatives within school communities and provide associated professional development for
teachers so as to ensure that all students, at all levels and in all subjects, would benefit from
information technology. Eight years on (1998), the Ministry of Education released a national
strategy to support ICT use in schools. This strategy saw funding provided for at least 50%
of the costs of approved capital projects associated with implementing ICT in schools. In
1999, additional funding, comprising a one-off grant of NZ$M24.716 and operational funding
of NZM$10 per annum, was made available to all state and integrated
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schools. The schools
were eligible to apply for grants, provided that they prepared an ICT plan and that this plan
met the criteria set by the Ministry of Education.
One of the key initiatives at this time in the endeavor to help schools plan how they
would implement and manage ICT and use it to facilitate the integration of learning
technologies into teaching and learning was the provision of one-day workshops titled
Principals First: First Principles.
The underlying principle of the workshops and their
associated planning guide (Ministry of Education, 1999) was that learning technologies
should support each school's overall learning vision. The guide held that effective integra-
tion of learning technologies into teaching and learning required schools to develop “a
shared understanding of teaching and learning; a comprehensive learning technologies plan;
and re-engineering of teaching and learning and of school administration processes” (pp. 1-
3). For most schools, achieving these aims would be a complex undertaking, encompassing
educational and administrative areas.
The most common action taken by principals following their attendance at the work-
shops was the preparation of a strategic ICT plan. Eighty-six percent of the primary principal
attendees and 75% of the secondary principal attendees indicated that they had done this
(Information Technology Action Group/ITAG, 2000, p. 39). The funding that the schools
received on the basis of these plans was invested in various aspects of ICT development,
including networking, hardware and software acquisitions, and staff development. However,
recent reports (ITAG, 2000; Education Review Office/ERO, 2000; Knezek & Christensen,
1999) indicated that ICT planning and implementation have not progressed beyond these
early stages of technology adoption, which are characterized by teachers learning how to use
ICT and gaining confidence in that use, to the later stages of adoption, characterized by
adapting and creatively using ICT within new educational contexts, such as strategic
planning and management. It is this concern that prompted our decision to undertake our
investigation of ICT planning maturity in schools with a view to developing a mechanism that
would allow school staff to pause, assess the current status of ICT implementation and usage
within their schools, and then, where necessary, plan ways of ensuring that these technolo-
gies would be used to the best pedagogical and administrative advantage.
HOW WE CONDUCTED THE STUDY
We used an interpretive case study approach, guided by hermeneutic principles (Butler,
1998; Klein & Myers, 1999), to examine the status of ICT planning and its integration with
educational strategic planning in eight New Zealand state primary schools.
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We considered
this approach the best for providing the type of “rich” qualitative data that we deemed
necessary to gain insight into each school's commitment to ICT and the extent and nature
of its implementation of ICT.
