L&T Blog W4- Technology in education

Dear WA,

I hope everyone is well! This week for Bitesize Research, I was interested to look more closely at the UNESCO Global Education Monitoring report for 2023, which this year was focussed on technology in education. This resulted in lots of headlines about mobile phones in schools during the summer holidays.

Objectives: To understand the impact of technology in education. 

Summary: 

• The study states that there is a lack of good, impartial evidence about the impact of technology in education, insofar as much of the evidence is commissioned by educational technology companies.

• It states that educational technology has opened up lots of opportunities - particularly for students with SEND and during the pandemic, but that these are unequal across the world.

• There is some evidence of the impact of technology on outcomes for specific types of learning - including, for example, practice and fluency for primary mathematics. The authors argue that future studies of educational technology need to be focussed on the learning outcomes primarily. 

• There is some good evidence that even proximity to a mobile phone has a negative impact on learning insofar as it is highly distracting for students.

• The authors argue that the following should act as a way of determining the appropriateness of educational technology for government policymakers as well as educators themselves:

• 1) Is it appropriate for our local context? This includes looking at teaching the basic skills to use technology well and using evidence-informed approaches to educational technology.

• 2) Is it leaving anyone behind? This includes looking at whether all students can have equitable access to the benefits provided by educational technology, including disadvantaged students and students with SEND

• 3) Does it support sustainable futures? This includes establishing a broad set of digital competencies which enable students to benefit from technology’s potential in terms of citizenship and employment. 

How does this impact me and my practice?: Some reflections arising from this that might be helpful to consider are: 

• How am I currently using technology? What evidence do I have of its effectiveness?

• What would I like to see WA students doing with technology in the future? How can I change my practice to support this?

Please do get in touch if you would like to talk further about this - I’d love to hear from you!