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current whole-class teaching strategies. The relatively fluent adoption of interactive
whiteboards has, however, led to some changes in pedagogy.
Teachers' pedagogy and interactive whiteboards
The research literature shows clearly that some marked changes in pedagogy have
occurred following the introduction of interactive whiteboards into UK classrooms.
Somekh et al. (2007: 162) claims that interactive whiteboards have 'changed the ambi-
ance of classrooms significantly' and the clarity of teachers' presentations has 'greatly
improved'. However, technology does not necessarily affect pedagogy or teaching
style. McCormick and Scrimshaw (2001) argue that technology enables teachers to
teach more efficiently (as well as having the potential to be transformative), but in
essence teachers' pedagogy has hardly changed. Additionally, Kennewell (2004: 61)
found that the introduction of technology into schools during the past twenty years
or so has 'had relatively little effect on the way teachers teach'.
Somekh et al. (2005) perceptively noted that whole-class technologies such
as interactive whiteboards fit well with whole-class teaching approaches, which
explains why pedagogy remains relatively unchanged. Consequently, teaching fre-
quently remains didactic as opposed to encouraging greater learner autonomy and
teachers continue to control the interactive whiteboard, whereas in fact pupils want
more opportunities for themselves to control and use the board (Fraser 2011; Hall
and Higgins 2005). Interestingly, Fraser's (2011) research on pupil voice and tech-
nology found that when interviewing learners (about what they wanted regarding
technology in the classroom, in schools in the Midlands) they frequently requested
less teacher talk and more hands-on experience with technology. Similarly, Hall and
Higgins (2005) found in their sample of 72 pupils across six local authorities in the
north and south of England, the same desire for more access to the technology.
With interactive whiteboards it seems that teachers have not changed their teach-
ing style, in that it still has teachers leading from the front. Instead, new technologies
become subsumed seamlessly into traditional classroom practices, so new possibilities
become lost amid old routines (Deal 1999). It may be a new pack of cards, but they
are shuffled in the same ways, which leads us to question what is required for radical
change in practice in terms of pedagogical innovation. As,
. . . it has been found that interactive whiteboards tend to reinforce estab-
lished styles of whole-class teaching - sometimes extending the teacher's
'whole-class mode' unproductively rather than promoting new, innovative
teaching approaches.
(Higgins 2006, cited in Koenraad 2008: 15)
Interestingly, this finding is corroborated by teachers. In the UK and America teachers
have reported that the benefit of the interactive whiteboard is that they can do the
same activities (Farrell 2004; Gatlin 2004, cited in Somekh et al. 2007) - for example,
using the interactive whiteboard to conduct 'initiate-response-feedback' stimulus at
the start of a lesson. Consequently, 'patterns of pupil-teacher discourse were largely
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