Policy of IT in Education: In the context of HKSAR

1. Policy of IT in Education:In the context of HKSAR March 12, 2013 Lecture 8 J. Wan

2. Introduction • Part 1: • Policy details of IT in Education of HKSAR • Part 2: • An analysis of the policy of IT in Education from a sociological perspective • Economic • Political • Cultural • Social – more on L10

3. Policy context of IT in Education • The rise of network society leads towards • a global and knowledge-oriented society • & exerts great impact on steering • education reforms • Anchoring at the frontier of a knowledge society, a lot of countries have formulated their own policies for the development of IT in education, the pioneering nations are …

4. National master plans for IT in education: Pioneering nations United Kingdoms Canada Netherlands United States Japan Singapore Australia

5. Policy context of IT in education • global knowledge-oriented society • education reforms • IT in education steering tapping into

6. Global policy context • 1999 UNESCO study group on “learning without frontier” released a report on IT • 2000 G8 meeting in Okinawa 1st major summit placing emphases on IT in education • 2005 WSIS Tunis Commitment of the World Summit on the Information Society • “Ministers underlined the importance of information and communication technologies (ICTs) for advancing quality education. They reaffirmed their commitment to promoting the more effective use of ICTs in education, in accordance with the G8 Okinawa Communique on the Global Information Society and the Tunis Commitment of the World Summit on the Information Society.” • (Statement 6) • 2006 G8 ministerial meeting on education in Moscow addressing the importance of ICT for advancing • quality education

7. Policy context of Hong Kong • 1980s Computer Studies for senior secondary • 1997 Education Commission Report No. 7 • for quality education • 1998 1st policy strategy • “Information Technology for Learning in a New Era: Five-year Strategy – 1998/99 to 2002/03” • 2004 Computer and Information Technology • 2004 2nd policy strategy • “Empowering Learning and Teaching with IT” • 2008 3rd policy strategy • “Right Technology at Right Time for the Right Task”

12. Policy context of HKSAR • In spite of the early introduction of IT to schools, the utilization of IT in education has not yet been confined until 1997, the year of political changeover. • After the delivery of the maiden policy address of the first HKSAR chief executive in October 1997, the policy document, “Information Technology for Learning in a New Era: Five-year Strategy – 1998/99 to 2002/03” (EMB, 1998) was launched in 1998.

13. Vision • Normative statement: • “To make Hong Kong ‘a leader, not a follower, in the information world of tomorrow’ ” • (EMB 1998, Forward page).

14. Objectives • “To turn our schools into dynamic and innovative learning institutions where students can become more motivated, inquisitive and creative learners.” • “To link up our students with the vast network world of knowledge and information to enable them to acquire a broad knowledge base and a global outlook” • “To develop in our students capabilities to process information effectively and efficiently” • “ To develop in our students the attitude and capability for independent life-long learning” • (EMB 1998, p.1-2)

15. 1st/Five-year strategy: laying down the foundation for the policy of ICT in education in Hong Kong, with focus on the development of physical infrastructure of IT in schools & IT training for teachers

16. Policy context of HKSAR • The policy aligned with the recommendations of the Education Commission Report No. 7 (EMB, 1997) to improve the quality of school education by providing the correct infrastructure which aimed at promoting quality school culture and education. • Since then, a series of IT events and programs has been launched and implemented in schools under the four designated domains, guiding schools to make decisions about infrastructure acquisition, curriculum change and staff development:

17. HKSAR: Policy of IT in Education • 4 designated domains of the five-year strategy (EMB, 1998): • Access and connectivity • Teacher enablement • Curriculum and resource support • Community-wide culture

18. 2nd strategy: steering the focus mainly towards the enhancement of student learning, the empowerment of teacher pedagogical innovation & as well as the enhancement of school leadership with information literacy and technology

19. 3rd strategy: taking the advantage of web technologies with focus on the human factors to further the integration of IT in teaching & learning with the support from parents

20. HKSAR: Policy of IT in Education • The HKSAR government has hitherto made massive investments in technology to support schools’ information work. ICT now accounts for a big share of the total school expenditures on capital equipment.

21. Status of IT in Education • Expenditure of 3 strategies for school sectors: • a million-dollar multimedia laboratory in almost every aided school • broad-band internet access • professional development training programmes • additional personnel for curriculum development and technical support

22. 多媒体学习室 艺术活动中心

23. 多媒体学习室

24. 多媒体学习室

25. Major source of IT funding: Quality Education Fund • QEF was established in January 1998 with an allocation of HK$5 billion. • The establishment is one of the major recommendations of the Education Commission Report No.7 . 

26. Status of IT in Education • League table in the domains of IT infrastructure/ computer ratio • 1st in Asia • 4th among the world • IT teaching support and educational technology • 2nd in Asia • 4th among the world (Law et al., 2008)

27. Status of IT in Education • The total expenditure of the 3 strategies has made the policy of IT in education at a grand scale in monetary terms. • The provision of excellent infrastructure for connectivity to support IT in education presents a straight forward set of challenges to the schools, as demonstrated by the major evaluations of the policy (EMB 2002, World Bank 2006)

28. Status of IT in Education • The government thought that computers would be a good idea and so they were poured into schools, effectively saying to teachers • “Now use them!” • “25% IT components in each subject across school curriculum” • These accounts rely on the rational-choice model of policy implementation: • “A good design of policy with the support of resources, its implementation will have no problem.”

29. Status of IT in Education • The vast majority of schools have tapped the potential of IT • (EMB 2002, 2005, 2007a, 2007b, EdB 2012): • to enhance teaching and learning and • to modernise the way in which schools are run and organised

30. Professional development for teachers • Provision of centralized IT training for teachers • Benchmarking of teachers’ IT competence • 4 levels: • BIT – basic level • IIT – intermediate level • UIT – upper-intermediate level • AIT – advanced level

31. Evaluation of the 3rd strategy (EdB, 2012) • Conclusion: • “The study showed that the Third ITEd Strategy has carriage of significant progress in terms of the seven review areas which indicated schools are ready for a paradigm shift towards the mode of student-centred e-Learning.” • (EdB 2012, p.9 & 120) • The terms “paradigm shift” appeared four times in the sections of summary of findings (p.9), major recommendations (p.8), recommendations (p.120) and conclusion (p.120) with no definition of the term given.

32. Questions • What kind of paradigm shift does it refer to? • Is it possible to make such a shift sustainable ?

33. Evaluations of the policy of IT in education (EMB 2002, 2005, 2007a, 2007b, EdB 2012): • The 3 strategies of IT in education has addressed more on the “what” side rather than the “how” and “why” sides.

34. Implications for ITEd policy • Real challenges: • Practice • To embed IT within teaching and learning at policy level as well as individual level (teachers and students) • Partnership with stakeholders • Research & innovation • Evidence-based policy approach: New knowledge and skills to be developed in a cognitive perspective

35. Additive manufacturing/ 3D printing:Oxford Performance Materials (OPM) have developed the Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) process, one of many new 3D printing technologies, used to fuse small grains of the material into complete parts.

36. Google-Adidas talking shoes: with accelerometer, gyro, pressure sensor and speakers for coaching running

37. Why policy of IT in education? • The causality • between • global-informational age & • lifelong-learning education reforms…

38. Global-Informational Age and Lifelong-Learning Education Reforms: In Search of the Causality(Tsang, 2005) • Education reform and the legitimation crisis of the competition state • Education reform as economic project of competition state to solve the economic crisis elicited by the erosion of the economic nationalism and to enhance nation competitiveness in global-informational economy and to elevate the employability of the national labor force • Education reform as part of the administrative project of competition state for reforming the public sectors of the welfare state, in which public schooling system is the major sector

39. Global-Informational Age and Lifelong-Learning Education Reforms: In Search of the Causality(Tsang, 2005) • Education reform and the legitimation crisis of the competition state • Education reform as political project of competition state for nurturing politically empowered citizenship in post-materialist politicking bases • Education reform as cultural project of competition state for resolving of the cultural nihilism of postmodernism and moral panic of consumerism • Education reform as social project of competition state for socially inclusion and bridging digital divisions between the globally mobile and the locally immobile, the have and the have-not, IT literate and the illiterate, etc.

40. Are these statements true for the policy of IT in education in the context of HKSAR?

41. Context of global-informational age • As the network society (Castells, 1996) has been emerging, the ways of working, studying, teaching and collaborating differ from the past in the 21st century. The changes are connected with technological advancement and the emergence of knowledge society. • The deployment of IT transforms the way of knowledge acquisition and brings new requirements in the cultures of work and study.

42. Hope city project in Ghana: IT Revolution in Africa Ghana has launched a project to build a $10bn (£6.6bn) IT hub near the capital, Accra, within three years. It would include an IT university, a residential area, a hospital, as well as social and sporting amenities

43. SpaceTop 3D see-through computer:Allowing people to interact with machines in the same way they do with solid objects, making computing much more intuitive

44. Hyper-connected world: Cloud services by Amazon cloud drive, Google drive & Apple iCloud

45. New spatial logic • The cyber communication in the network society diminishes spatially localized social interaction… • A new spatial logic – space of flows This opposes to the • historically rooted spatial organisation – space of places

46. Compression of time & space • The technological infrastructure that builds up the network defines the new space. • Space organises time in the network society. Space and time are being transformed under the combined effect of IT paradigm, and of social forms and processes induced by current processes of historical change. • Such spatial and temporal compression is resulted from the permeation of the network logics and the converging and integrative capacity of IT (Castells, 1996). • Friedman (2006) describes that the human history has migrated to its third phase of globalization – empowerment of individuals to act globally. The dynamic in such Globalization 3.0 is “the newfound power for individuals to collaborate and compete globally” (p.10). This condition provides greater inter-cultural interaction between people across the borders of countries and continents, giving rise to the informational-global economy and to the polarization of globally mobile capitalists and locally immobile workers.

47. Phase globalization 1.0 1492 - 1800 ~ Columbus globalization 2.0 1800 - 2000 globalization 3.0 2000 – to date Driving force country-globalizing company-globalizing individual-globalizing “flat-world platform” Globalization (single ecosystem, single community)Friedman (2006)

48. Economic consequences • The fact is that the information technologies are now driving the economic engines in most of industrialized world. The intense digitization of daily life challenges seriously the entire world. • The combination of spatial dispersed and global integration has created a new strategic role for the deployment of IT in education.

49. Economic consequences • Having gone through the two industrial revolutions in the 18th and 19th centuries as well as the IT revolution in the aftermath of the Second World War, the significance and role of technology in the economy and in society has become extremely important over the past decades. • Supplanting capital and labour by information and knowledge as factors of production in the 1990s, the latter considered being the key to success lies in the knowledge-based economy. Under the wave of education reform, schools and governments enthusiastically embrace all that technology has to offer, thus, the role of IT in shaping learning activity (Castells, 2001) in school lives has become more and more prominent.

50. The social rationale: Students should be prepared to deal with IT in order to become well-informed citizens The vocational rationale: Students should be prepared to become knowledge workers (Drucker, 1960) in a global context. The pedagogical rationale: IT can improve and enhance the teaching and learning processes. Are these normative statements taken for granted? Reflection 1: Why IT in schools?