Analysis of emerging trends affecting the use of technology in education Analysis of emerging trends affecting the use of technology in education Research to support the delivery and development of Harnessing Technology: Next Generation Learning 2008–14 University of Oxford (Department of Education), Nottingham University (Learning Sciences Research Institute, LSRI), Sero consulting, Kable (part of the Guardian media group) and Oakleigh Consulting Ltd, for Becta September 2008 http://www.becta.org.uk page 1 of 39 © Becta 2008 Research report Becta | Analysis of emerging trends affecting the use of technology in education Table of contents Table of contents ...................................................................................................... 2 The trends identified – a summary ......................................................................... 3 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 3 Why these trends? .................................................................................................. 4 Emerging trends and the Harnessing Technology strategy ..................................... 5 The trends in detail .................................................................................................. 8 Consumption of multiple technologies by young people .......................................... 8 Increased dependence of young people on mobile technologies for social networking ............................................................................................................. 10 Increased parental encouragement of their primary age children’s educational uses of computers in the home ...................................................................................... 13 Increased use of TV-on-demand by young people in the home ............................ 14 Young people’s incorporation of Web 2.0 technologies into their lives .................. 16 The impact on curriculum and pedagogy of capital building programmes ............. 17 The changing demands of workplace skills ........................................................... 18 Economic, social and technological drivers transforming education and training .. 19 Challenges to the pedagogical role and professional development of teachers and other enablers of learning ...................................................................................... 21 The development of mobile, ubiquitous and contextual computing ....................... 23 Growth in online spending and access to services ................................................ 25 Migration from traditional procurement channels to online procurement ............... 27 Preference for free ICT resources over one-off purchases or subscription models .............................................................................................................................. 28 Preference for peer-to peer-approaches to disseminating innovative ideas and practices relating to ICT ........................................................................................ 29 Conclusions and next steps .................................................................................. 30 References .............................................................................................................. 31 Appendix A: 24 broad trends identified in the pedagogy and curriculum research .................................................................................................................. 37 Appendix B: Research teams and projects ......................................................... 39 September 2008 http://www.becta.org.uk page 2 of 39 © Becta 2008 Research report Becta | Analysis of emerging trends affecting the use of technology in education The trends identified – a summary Introduction In April 2008, Becta launched a major research programme to support the Harnessing Technology strategy.1 The research covers the education and training system as a whole: children’s services; schools; further education, skills and regeneration (FESR); and higher education (HE). This publication is a consolidation of work carried out to identify and analyse the major trends relating to each area of the Harnessing Technology research programme. This report presents an overview of the trends identified, why these trends are important, and how they relate to the ongoing research work. This report comes at the half-way point in the first year of research. Becta will publish further trends analyses at six-monthly periods throughout the three-year research programme. The focus of much of the research up to this point, apart from work on pedagogy and the curriculum, has been on the schools sector and young people. Later trends analysis will cover the whole education and training system. Research related to the learner and the learner’s context identified four emergent or potential future trends: • Consumption of multiple technologies by young people • Increased dependence of young people on mobile technologies for online social networking • Increased parental encouragement of their primary age children’s educational uses of computers in the home • Increased use of TV-on-demand by young people in the home. The research identified 24 core trends (listed in Appendix A) affecting the development of learning technology relating to pedagogy and the curriculum. From the core trends, six cross-cutting trends emerge, which are the: • growing use of Web 2.0 technologies by young people • development of mobile, ubiquitous and contextual computing • impact of widespread capital building programmes • demand for increasingly technological skills in the workplace • economic, social and technological drivers transforming the character and organisation of education and training • challenge to professional development of the teaching workforce. The factors affecting pedagogy are not isolated from each other. There are inter- relationships between the factors, and they can have combined effects; for example, 1 See Harnessing Technology: Next Generation Learning 2008–14. September 2008 http://www.becta.org.uk page 3 of 39 © Becta 2008 Research report Becta | Analysis of emerging trends affecting the use of technology in education mobile computing can support new modes of social learning through Web 2.0 applications. Research relating to trends, undertaken as part of the business processes for delivery, focused on resource access. We identified four trends that will have an impact on the education and training system: • Online spending and access to services is accelerating in consumer purchasing, private sector business procurement and delivery, and public sector procurement, access to and consumption of resources. • The school sector is in the midst of a migration from heavy dependence on traditional procurement channels to online procurement channels. • Decision-makers in education and training increasingly favour free ICT resources over one-off purchases or subscription models. • Peer-to-peer approaches are emerging as the preferred means of disseminating innovative ideas and practices relating to ICT. Why these trends? Research on the learner and the learner’s context primarily raises questions about potential new trends in terms of young people’s uses of technologies in the home and elsewhere away from school or college. These trends are potentially important for two main reasons: • The trends were encountered in the secondary research but not so far in the primary data-gathering. The research team therefore needs to be alert to what may become more significant during the course of the project. • The members of the research team perceive some signs of a growing trend in what they have heard from the young people in their primary research, and want to check this impression against evidence from other sources. In the research on pedagogy and the curriculum, trends are defined as ‘persistent patterns of changing practices in a domain’. The analysis of the trends takes account as far as possible of all factors that may have an impact on the Harnessing Technology strategy, whether they come from wider social trends, government policy, within specific educational developments, or behaviours afforded by technological innovation. The trends may be either drivers or inhibitors for the vision set out in the strategy. Outside the education and training system, innovations in business processes and new technologies that support procurement have consistently signalled both the willingness and capability of organisations to move ahead with modernisation. In the research on business processes for delivery, it became apparent that procurement is central to the successful delivery of improved business processes through new technological innovations, particularly because it relates to access to resources. September 2008 http://www.becta.org.uk page 4 of 39 © Becta 2008 Research report Becta | Analysis of emerging trends affecting the use of technology in education Emerging trends and the Harnessing Technology strategy The diagram below shows how the emerging trends will contribute to – or in some cases impede – the system outcomes identified in the Harnessing Technology strategy.2 Harnessing Technology goals Trends Confident system leadership and innovation Improved personalised learning experiences Technology confident effective providers Engaged and empowered learners Enabling infrastructure and processes Consumption