Project Details
1/03/2011 - 31/07/2012
Funder: British Academy
'Micros in Schools': mapping the origins of
educational technology as a field of public policy (1979-1990)
This project aims to examine the development of public
policymaking in the area of educational technology between 1979 and 1990 -
therefore mapping the emergence of the policy field throughout the three
Conservative administrations of the time under Margaret Thatcher. This is an
important yet overlooked period of technology policymaking - laying the
foundations for the extensive schools ëICT' push from the mid-1990s to the
present day. From the introduction in 1981 of government subsidies for a
ëcomputer in every school' to the inclusion in 1988 of IT as a core component
of the National Curriculum, this period saw the emergence of the UK as a
leading nation in terms of educational use of technology.
This project will provide a critical perspective on
the formation and implementation of these policies. Through a series of
interviews with key policy actors and interests of the time, the project takes
a ëpolicy sociology' approach that is historically informed and rooted in the
qualitative social science tradition. In particular the project seeks to
describe the power relations and ideological agendas that underpinned the
development of Conservative ëed-tech' policies during the 1980s, as well as
analysing the relationships and continuities between these past phases of
policymaking and more recent forms.
By taking a ëpolicy historiography' approach the
project therefore addresses a series of key research questions:
How did educational technology first become
understood as a ëpolicy problem' and, then, as a prioritised domain of public
policymaking?
Who were the key driving influences and
actors involved in these policy cycles (across the public and private sectors),
and what were the relationships and actions between them?
How was the constituency of the educational
technology ëpolicy community' formed, and how did dominant networks and
alliances of interests emerge?
What bearing did these processes have on the
nature and form of subsequent cycles of education policymaking during the 1990s
and 2000s?
These questions will be addressed through an ëelite
study' of the policy-making processes of the time - what Gale (2001) terms a
ësituated study of policy formation'. In-depth individual interviews (n=25)
will be conducted with key actors and interests involved in the formation and
implementation of the 1980s' educational technology policy initiatives and
programmes.
These interviews will result in a set of rich and
detailed accounts of the policy process over the 1979-1990 period. To date,
such an analysis has been lacking from the educational policy and educational
technology literatures - despite the significance of the period for later
phases of policymaking (not least New Labour's £5billion ëICT in Schools'
programme). As such the significance of this research project is not solely
historical. By seeking to identify the (dis)continuities between different
periods of policy formation and implementation, the project also seeks to
account for the present - and likely future - forms of policymaking: not least
the
key questions of which agendas and interests have
tended to be advantaged and disadvantaged by these arrangements. In this manner
it is intended that the research findings will also inform understanding of
past and present policy formation in the field of educational technology,
allowing for the identification of continuities and discontinuities between the
policymaking of the 1980s and the present.
