17.1. The place of technology in education: an old issue that is still relevant today

Each new technology is seen as full of promise in terms of educational change: whether it is to enable more massive teaching or – on the contrary – to individualize more, to promote accessibility or to learn more easily, there is no shortage of opportunities. Thus, in 1922, Edison already envisioned cinema as a means of revolutionizing education by considerably increasing the effectiveness of learning (Lebrun 2007). Nevertheless, research generally highlights that technologies which have been really and sustainably integrated into education are rarer than expected, and that they are generally those that conform to pedagogical practices prior to their emergence (Marquet and Dinet 2003; Papi and Glikman 2015).

Education thus seems to evolve more slowly than society as a whole. Indeed, despite political incentives that most often take the form of equipment financing, it is often noted that the use of technologies in the classroom is less common. The non-use of ICTs is generally explained by their lack of relevance (Kellner et al. 2010; Smith 2010; Tsatsou 2010), perceived risks of their use (Chaptal 2007; Larose et al. 2002), the instrumental conflicts that hinder them (Papi 2012) or the fact that the ideologies they represent run counter to the values promoted by individuals (Jauréguiberry 2014; Ritchel 2011; von Pape and Martin 2010), hence the succession between waves of hopes for techno-pedagogical innovation and the prevalence of rather traditional conceptions of courses and educational practices (Cuban 1983; Glikman 2002).

However, the fact that digital technology is tending to become widespread in modern societies¹, in most activities of daily life – both professional and social – for everyone from an early age, seems likely to break with the simple logic of introducing technologies on an ad-hoc basis and bring about a real change. To what extent, then, does the place taken by digital technology lead to changes in education?

Research shows that the social uses of technologies do not naturally translate into educational practices (Baron 2014; Fluckiger 2008; Papi 2015). We thus hypothesize that, although so-called digital technologies occupy an increasing place in society and are the source of pressure to integrate them into education, a generalization of digital technology can only take place within the framework of mechanisms (Papi 2014) that include not only technical but also pedagogical and well-articulated institutional dimensions.

We propose to introduce avenues for reflection based on two case studies in order to put forward a number of elements that make it possible to highlight certain obstacles and levers that are characteristic of the place of digital technology in education. We will therefore start by briefly describing the two projects concerned.

17.2. Field and survey methodology

Since 2007, programs called Innovative Schools have emerged, supported by Microsoft, which (in order to find out the effects) has funded research coordinated by Stanford Research Institute (SRI) International in collaboration with researchers located in the 12 countries in which a school was involved in this program. Each selected school wanted to improve education according to the learning considered necessary in the 21st Century, and could adapt this program according to its own objectives and the local and national constraints encountered. To do this, they were exposed to the “6i process” (Figure 17.1).

This process is similar to a project management process in which the needs or problems encountered are used to think about solutions, implement them and then evaluate their effects iteratively according to the limits or new challenges encountered. In France, the primary school selected to participate in the program had the objective of working on the organization of the school, its infrastructure, and the interactions between teachers, pupils and parents. In order to study the changes at work in this particular school, in 2009, we conducted interviews with the Microsoft manager, the school principal and teachers who agreed to participate in the research: seven interviews in total. We also conducted three focus groups with students and observed 10 courses from different disciplines and levels.

2007 also marked the beginning of a provincial strategy for the deployment of digital technology in elementary and secondary education in Ontario. Indeed, the provincial Ministry of Education then decided to develop online education at the secondary level and the use of digital educational resources in elementary and secondary schools. To this end, teams were created within the ministry, and institutions were solicited to produce resources or support schools that had a provincial Learning Management System (LMS), which provided access to a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE); the Ontario Educational Resource Bank (OEB); and the Ontario Learning Community (OLC). From the mid-2010s onwards, the deployment of digital technology has been gradually linked to the desire to change education in order to promote the development of “21st Century skills” (critical thinking, creativity, communication, collaboration, learning to learn, global citizenship), again linked to digital technology, in that techno-pedagogical devices are considered so integrative that technology and pedagogy no longer seem to be considered separately². In 2017, we conducted a survey to get an initial overview of the situation 10 years after the implementation of the e-learning strategy. To this end, we conducted interviews (46 in total) with people working in the Ministry of Education, consortia, school boards and schools (principals and teaching body). We also had the opportunity to observe two courses and participate in two meetings lasting a few days aimed at training and sharing within the community.

In both surveys, we were the only participating researchers, which allowed us to have a good knowledge of the fields that were explored. All the collected data were processed manually, according to the themes emerging in terms of techno-pedagogical practices and activities, leadership, training and support.

17.3. Towards techno-pedagogical evolutions but not without limits

The two cases studied are very different from each other. Indeed, on the French side, only one school participated in this project (the other eleven schools being located in other countries) supported by Microsoft and studied by the SRI. It should also be pointed out that Microsoft did not finance the equipment of schools and did not provide technology, but only supported the implementation of the 6i process. On the Ontario side, elementary and secondary schools across the province were encouraged to evolve with a variety of material and human resources at their disposal. In addition, the two surveys are eight years apart. However, there are many common points observed regarding the deployment of digital technology and the evolution of techno-pedagogical practices.

17.4. The development of active pedagogies that integrate digital technologies

In both cases, we found that students are encouraged to acquire the knowledge identified in the curricula, while developing 21st Century³ skills through activities that made them work more in groups and use a greater variety of technologies than in traditional teaching. Many educational activities thus involve the consideration of various online resources⁴, applications and technologies in a variety of situations.

For example, with regard to written and oral language knowledge and skills, in the French primary school, students were invited to report on the dance performance in which one of their classmates participated by reporting, in groups, using the media of their choice (press article, radio interview, video). The work thus covered both the language and the use of technologies and applications related to the chosen medium (word processing, video editing or audio recording application, etc.) and involved developing collaborative skills between the students within each group. Similarly, in an Ontario elementary school, we were able to witness diction and writing work through a reading and transcription application. The students worked in pairs and answered questions by, when necessary, reading aloud the novel they were working on in class so that the quotations could be written automatically. After that, it was necessary to check that the transcription was correct. In both cases, students were encouraged to use technologies to facilitate written or oral language work, learning to work together, spreading out in different parts of the classroom so as not to disturb their classmates.

Observation of these activities, as well as others not mentioned here, has shown that, as research in the field has always demonstrated, the use of ICTs is far from innate, so much so that teachers must intervene to explain how applications that are more or less easily mastered by students work. It has also been observed that the unexpected or misunderstood behavior of some applications has caused astonishment, even amusement or irritation, and that some unrest has sometimes gripped the students concerned. Finally, for these and many other exemplary activities, it is important to note that it is not so much a question of pedagogical innovation as such, but rather of using modern technologies to rethink active pedagogy. To take just one example, the idea of having students write a press article did not wait for word processing. It was already in use in Freinet’s pedagogy, with handwritten text that was later printed using old mechanical printing systems. However, current technologies offer new contributions in the sense that they not only enable a task to be carried out, but can also assist the teacher in certain functions.

Indeed, word processing can draw attention to potential errors to encourage verification before the teacher reads the text; similarly, the voice dictation system allows the student to identify his or her speech difficulties and seek to improve them without waiting for his or her reading turn, or being intimidated into doing so in front of the whole class. This allows teachers to devote more time to providing personalized support to groups or individuals. The pedagogical differentiation valued in both cases seems to be able to take advantage of digital technology in many ways. However, the introduction of a new application or technology arouses great enthusiasm, involving classroom management work to restore calm and redirect students’ interest towards pedagogical activity, while waiting for its use to become commonplace. Thus, either such uses are repeated and gradually integrated into teaching and learning practices, or they remain exceptional and act as diversionary moments before being abandoned.

17.5. Non-generalized practices

Although different uses of technologies were developed in pedagogical situations that are often more active than in front-line teaching methods, it should be noted that this never concerns all of the practices implemented in a course or school. In other words, if the teachers who are most likely to give us interviews or welcome us into their classrooms implement original or even innovative practices, by including digital technologies, other teachers retain their ways of doing things or change them more slowly. It appears that, in an a priori surprising manner, some seem to have little knowledge of the dynamics at work, namely the 6i process in the French case or the “e-learning strategy” in the Ontario case. Others are more informed, but do not use what is available to them. For example, in Ontario, some teachers seem reluctant to connect to the VLE and have students connect with an identifier; they find this environment less user-friendly than others to which they had previously become accustomed. However, some seem to make partial use of it to satisfy a specific function, such as the students’ work submissions portal. It would seem that non-usage thus does not come so much from a critical conception of the use of technologies in education such as the one potentially developed by researchers (George 2014), as from the perceived lack of relevance.

Thus, the overview actors point out that the VLE and the Ontario Educational Resource Bank (OERB) are used much more in high school, because of the access they offer to online courses, than at elementary level, where Google or Microsoft applications seem more attractive. In fact, the stakeholders interviewed report that, even though EAV and OERB are used less in elementary school than in high school, a variety of platforms or applications are called on, such that more pedagogical activities that include technologies are used in elementary school than in high school. One reason for this may be that in primary education, a teacher takes care of an entire class, which makes it possible to work in the form of projects integrating different subjects and technologies. We also observed this in the French case, where some activities were not only multidisciplinary, but also included students of different classes and ages in groups, allowing them to work harder on the skills they needed, which would seem difficult to envisage in secondary education.

17.6. Barriers and levers to the widespread use of digital technology in education

Although the added value of ICT uses in educational practices has not been scientifically proven, political will to develop them is often asserted, but often results in incentives or even financing for equipment that is used rarely or does not bring pedagogical change, as highlighted by research on the subject (Glikman 2002; Jacquinot-Delaunay 2008; Lebrun 2007; Linard 2003; Mangenot 2015; Marquet and Dinet 2003). In fact, techno-pedagogical innovations seem to be difficult to impose from above and generally come more from teachers from whom they will more or less spread, as Charlier et al. (2006) point out when talking about “enclave”, “bridgehead” and “anchored practice”. However, while the obstacles and reticences to changes in pedagogical practices and the inclusion of ICTs have often been studied, as we were able to highlight in the first section by referring to some work on non-use of technologies, the elements that are favorable to them are more rarely identified. Indeed, even though, in the two cases presented, generalization is not yet complete, it seems possible to identify key elements that have contributed to the emergence and some diffusion of new practices.

First of all, in order to not confine ourselves to individual practices, it seems favorable that the encouraged developments should be part of a clearly defined and defended vision at the institutional level. In other words, in order to not confine oneself to policies of less pedagogical importance, it is necessary to rely on a finely thought-out vision of education, taking into account all educational actors and phenomena, ranging from curriculum design to the evaluation of learning, including privileged pedagogical approaches. This implies starting by determining the real needs of education stakeholders and, in particular, of teachers, as well as the existing mechanisms and their limitations. This is what French schools were invited to do as part of the 6i process and what the Ontario Ministry of Education did by conducting a province-wide survey. Starting from the needs encountered in the field can help to somewhat limit the influence of industry on policy and, consequently, on equipment policies. However, some influence remains to the extent that industries in the field are seeking to create needs. In the French case, Microsoft was at the root of an initiative to support the emergence of new techno-pedagogical practices, in the hope that they would lead to the opening of new markets for these products. In the Ontario case, the training events of the various educational stakeholders were also venues for the presentation stands of various companies promoting their educational products.

Moreover, whatever the expected changes, it seems essential to involve the actors concerned from the outset so that they do not suffer the evolutions, but generate them themselves and can modulate them according to their knowledge of the field. Thus, within the framework of the French school, the principal and some teachers voluntarily submitted their applications to participate in the “innovative school” program. For the province of Ontario, the guideline is provided by the Ministry of Education, but it is Ontario’s current teachers who are recruited for a period of time and trained to create educational resources that will be posted online, to teach online or to participate in the training and coaching of other teachers.

In fact, much more than the material investments made on an ad-hoc basis, it is in the field of support training that real investments seem necessary. These surveys show that regular support for school principals and the teaching body is essential if they are to change their techno-pedagogical practices, as Landry’s work on media education in Quebec (Landry and Basque 2015) also highlights. This training can be envisaged in a multifaceted way during the initial training of teachers, then throughout their careers through moments of in-service or virtual training, participation in events promoting the sharing of practices or individual support for schools and teachers in their projects, in and outside the classroom, by other teachers who are experts in techno-pedagogical practices. Such training would also benefit from being accompanied by the development of a critical conception of these same practices so that they are not generalized beyond the framework in which they are relevant, as Craig and Amernic (2006) note regarding the use of slide shows.

17.7. Conclusion

While digital technologies are present in most everyday environments and activities in modern societies, their place is often more modest in education. In fact, teachers have not often been trained in their pedagogical uses, and their imagined and valued potentials are not apparent to the eyes of practitioners for whom they do not necessarily seem relevant. Similarly, young people, who are more familiar with these technologies than previous generations, do not transpose their social habits of research, communication, collaboration, etc., into their learning practices. The development of teaching and learning practices integrating digital technologies is therefore not self-evident and does not seem to be decreed either, as evidenced by the narrow scope of equipment policies, but involves complex mechanisms supported by a strong institutional vision and commitment as well as solid and critical teacher training to ensure sound practices.

Indeed, while various elements contributing to techno-pedagogical developments have been identified, the question of their relevance remains, insofar as there is a clear lack of research demonstrating – using generalizable data as evidence – the benefits of certain techno-pedagogical practices on learning. Beyond the idea of the generalization of digital technology in education, it is therefore necessary to question the carriers and scopes of such ambitions.