New Technologies and the Cultural Ecology of Primary Schooling:Imagining Teachers as Luddites In/Deed

Abstract

This article's concern is with discourses of innovation, and it makes some instructive connections between techno romanticist discourses across two "irevolutions ": the industrial revolution at the dawn of the 19th century and the information revolution at the close of the 20th century. Its central question is this: Given the proliferation of futurist and neophilic rhetoric about the "digital revolution" and the wonders of computer-mediated learning, how can we explain teachers' less than enthusiastic participation in bringing about changes involving computers? This article draws on data from a 2-year study of the implementation of new technologies in 12 elementary schools across the province of British Columbia. In broad strokes, it is a study of failure, for what it does is document in some detail the very great divergences between what teachers actually do with computers in their classrooms and the enthusiastic claims and exhortations of educational administrators and policy makers with respect to the educational benefits of new technologies.