The Construction of the ICT Curriculum in Iceland

M. Allyson Macdonald and Thorsteinn Hjartarson LEARN 2003

Constructing the information and technology education curriculum in Iceland:

Is there a rift in the North Atlantic?

M. Allyson Macdonald and Thorsteinn Hjartarson

Iceland University of Education

Reykjavík, Iceland

Talk presented at the LEARN conference, University of Helsinki, December 2003

Paper revised August 2004

Abstract

This study is in progress and is concerned with the social construction of the information and communication technology (ICT) curriculum in Icelandic schools in recent years. It attempts to take up the challenge of finding a coherent approach and resolving tensions within traditional and reconceptualized perspectives in curriculum and exploring some of the tensions in the field. Ideas from curriculum and concepts of culture arising from applications of activity theory and other sociocultural theories will be invoked in the analysis.

Questions of the following kind are asked: How was and is the curriculum being constructed? To what extent can curriculum making in Iceland be traced to approaches in Europe and North America? How are specialists constructed? What cultures are emerging in schools and who holds power? This study forms part of the LearnICT project in Iceland, which is a three-year project funded in large part by the Research Council of Iceland.

Key words: curriculum, social construction, information and communication technology

INTRODUCTION

One day last winter one of us asked her 13 year old son about the content of his time-tabled 80 minute lesson on “information studies”. His answer was “Nothing”. When asked what he meant, he said that he hadn’t had access to a computer. With further probing it appeared that the task for the day had been to write a step-by-step description of an activity in such a way that somebody else would be able to read the description carry out the same activity. The actual writing took place with paper-and-pen and the description was to be typed into a computer using a word processing facility. This incident is symbolic and provocative. What meanings do pupils attach to such activities? What was the intended outcome of the activity? What constructions of the curriculum are being formed in such lessons?

This paper is concerned with the construction of the information and technology education (ITE) curriculum in Icelandic schools.[1] An array of discourses has evolved for understanding curriculum that has brought new understandings to curriculum studies (Pinar et al., 1995, Goodson, 1997). Some contradictions are explored here.

In 1999 a revised national curriculum was presented to Icelandic schools. The previous national curriculum for compulsory schools was released as one book of about 200 pages (MESC 1989). One page was assigned to computers in education and about three to four pages to workshop practice (carpentry and metalwork). Ten years later these topics had grown into a booklet of 84 pages, prescribing a new subject, called Information and technology education (ITE) [2] for compulsory schools, and was one of twelve such booklets. What processes of construction had occurred between 1989 and 1999 and are occurring now?

We will begin by giving an overview of modern Iceland and key events in education, followed by a short discussion of some curriculum issues. Next is a short section on methods used in this study. Interpretations emerging from the interviews and curriculum text are then presented and discussed.

RECENT CONTEXT

National level

Iceland has a gross domestic product per capita of almost US$30.000, a life-expectancy of almost 80 years and a population of almost 300.000 people. It is a high-tech country with its citizens being quick to invest in any new information technology (IT). In 2004, 77% of rural homes and 82% of urban homes had internet connections. In the 16-24 year age group 97% are internet users, in the 65-74 age group 33% and among old-age pensioners 29% use the internet. The overall number of individuals using the internet is higher in Iceland (81%) than in any other Nordic country or in Europe. Internet use is also widespread in the business sector, where 97% of companies have access to the internet, and 70% have their own web-sites (Statistics Iceland, 2004). The Independence Party (Sjálfstæðisflokkur) in Iceland has led the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture (MESC) since the early 1990s. This party has been part of a coalition government since 1991, first with the Social Democrats (Alþýðuflokkur) and from 1995 with the Progressive Party (Framsóknarflokkur).

A governmental committee on education policy set the stage for many of the changes implemented from 1995 onwards when a new Minister of Education was appointed (MESC, 1994). The minister was a keen advocate of using information technology and was in 1995 the first cabinet minister to have his own home-page, including a diary which he updates almost daily. A key policy document The power of information was prepared at his request by a special committee on information technology (IT) (MESC, 1996). Another group prepared at his request a policy document on the revision of the curriculum (MESC, 1997a).

In 1996 the minister initiated his largest project, the preparation of a new national curriculum for pre-schools, compulsory schools and secondary schools, a project which lasted until 1999 (MESC, 1999a). He appointed a project manager in early 1996, subject coordinators were employed from mid-1996, preparatory groups with members from a range of backgrounds were set up to prepare the appropriate overall goals for each subject, and later workgroups to provide aims and objectives. In several cases the chairmen of the preparatory groups were academics from universities. Subject coordinators chaired the workgroups. The preparatory and the work groups worked simultaneously on the curriculum for both compulsory and secondary schools in an attempt to ensure some continuity and progression.

Workgroups were instructed to prepare sets of final goals for all subjects, and measurable aims for 4th, 7th and 10th grades and secondary schools. Objectives for most subjects were also written for each grade. National assessments are carried out in Icelandic and mathematics in the 4th, 7th and 10th grades and in Danish, English, social studies and science in the 10th grade. Pupils in the 10th grade can choose whether or not to take the national examinations; this choice is exercised more often in social studies and science than in the other subjects.

The information and technology education (ITE) curriculum

In August 1997 the ITE preparatory group presented its proposal under the title Goals for information and technology education in compulsory and secondary schools (MESC, 1997b). In all 17 meetings had been held from March to July. Carpentry had become Design and construction (similar to CDT i.e. craft, design and technology in some English-speaking countries) and was to be found in the ITE curriculum and not with the other creative arts and practical subjects. Other innovations were goals for the areas of Library studies (later renamed Information studies) and Innovation and application of knowledge. It was suggested that these two areas be cross-curricular.

The workgroup elaborated on these goals with some minor changes in emphasis and presented the National Curriculum for Information and technology education in four sections – information studies, innovation and application of knowledge; design and construction, and the prerequisite, computer studies (MESC 1999b). Detailed objectives are presented for the use of computers up to the 10th grade and for information studies up to the 4th grade. Many other workgroups had been given instructions to include the use of ICT in the aims and objectives of other subjects.

Developments at school level

By the late 1990s the transfer of compulsory schools from national government to local authorities had more or less been completed in accordance with a new law from 1995. Many local authorities supported initiatives to encourage the use of information technology: schools country-wide upgraded their computer facilities, school districts were using the number of children per computer as an indicator of investment, and facilities were being upgraded within schools. Teachers were being sent on courses to upgrade their IT skills.

The school system is small with about 45.000 children aged 6 to 15 enrolled in about 180 compulsory schools, of which about half have fewer than 100 pupils and only a handful have over 600 pupils. There are over 3000 teachers in the compulsory system, with average age a little under 40. Nearly 20% do not have teaching qualifications though some are well-qualified in other areas. Each school prepares a school curriculum based on the national curriculum using any number of ways to do this, but new salary agreements with the teachers’ union in 2000 gave school principals more independence and more control over non-teaching time spent in school by teachers and this appears to have influenced approaches to curriculum development.

Some funds available for development projects were used to encourage projects using IT in an innovative way in the late 1990s. From 1999-2002 three primary and three secondary schools were designated development schools by the Ministry and received special funding to try out new approaches in the use of ICT. In the largest local authority two schools were designated mother schools in information technology.

CONSTRUCTING THE CURRICULUM

Curriculum perspectives

There are many ways of approaching the study of curriculum. Understanding curriculum as institutionalized text is what Reid (1998) calls the Dominant perspective. Here we might consider the process of constructing the curriculum as a rational process, from planning to preparation to implementation. Other approaches, for example, historical, political, racial, gender, phenomenological, postmodern, biographical or aesthetic, belong to the Reconceptualist perspective that emerged in the 1970s (Pinar et al., 1995). Put simplistically Reid suggests that the Dominant agenda has been more about the setting of aims and objectives and the selection of appropriate learning experiences whereas the Reconceptualist agenda has concerned people and education. What proponents of the Reconceptualist perspective wanted to do was to “put the person back into the curriculum”, their main concern being educational principles, rather than learning experiences. Several tensions exist between the two perspectives.: is curriculum-making a sequential or a simultaneous process? How does the ‘intended’ curriculum become the ‘actual’ curriculum? Whose voices are heard in or above the cacophony of construction?

Reid (1998) and Pinar et al. (1995) suggest that the Dominant perspective has its roots in the late 19th century in the United States, in part as a reaction to curricula based on what it means to be educated, associated with European traditions, though it also involved American philosophers such as John Dewey. Reid (1998) suggests that the geographical affiliations of the two perspectives are in part because Europe has a history of a “collectivist cultural tradition” with high school courses based on disciplines. In America the issues are about individualism and this is evident in high schools where students can pick and choose from a range of credits.

Johannesson, Geirsdottir and Finnbogason (2002) have written about governance discourse in Iceland in the late 1990s, including discourse on the national curriculum. All three have earlier looked at curriculum issues in Iceland (Finnbogason, 1995, Geirsdottir, 1996, Johanneson, 1993). They found that there was the implication in institutional texts that the 1989 curriculum had not been clear enough in its statement of learning objectives. They noted that in the preparation of the 1999 curriculum policy-makers had encouraged an emphasis on the individual and his or her needs, as well as on their independence, the possibility of stronger individuals, the need for a strong base in Icelandic and mathematics, the development of foreign language skills, the diagnosis of special needs and the necessity of ‘information technology’ as ‘a tool in every school subject’. Their study indicates a tension between individualism and common learning objectives in the construction in the curriculum.

Jackson (1992) has suggested two versions of what it means to be a curriculum specialist. The specialist as consultant moves toward or is nearer practice, but Jackson is concerned that no special knowledge or vision is brought to the curriculum task, except perhaps as a deliberator, as one who invites deliberation by others in the system. The specialist as generalist is more likely to be situated in the academy exploring the role of theory in curricular affairs. What was the role of specialists in the revision of the curriculum?

Curriculum forces and pedagogical practice

Robertson et al. (2003) have been carrying out work in the InterActive project in Bristol on what they call “force fields” in educational situations and the way in which using information and communication technology (ICT) can disrupt pedagogical practice (Figure 1). Their analysis is built on theories developed by Bernstein on competing discourses. They say:

Some of this disruption relates to the specific properties and path dependencies of ICT as it is manifest in pedagogical spaces. Some of it relates to the competing discourses or “force fields” which operate in the context for classroom practices. Once examined these pressures seem to show that the addition of ICT into a learning environment cannot be understood by explanations that suggest we have person plus a tool…… Rather our work suggests that ICT seems to rupture more fundamental arrangements and as a result changes the relationships and relations these dimensions carry. (p. 5)

Their framework offers a means of analysing curriculum construction. Robertson and her colleagues have used it in their classroom studies to consider pedagogical practice involving ICT. In this paper we look particularly at the ‘voices’ of policy and the ‘voices’ of the pupils in the construction of the ITE curriculum. We note at this point though that the Robertson framework challenges the notion of a sequential process of curriculum construction and/or development and gives us the opportunity to consider the views and experiences from outside the classroom which are brought to bear on any curriculum.

Figure 1 Force fields in the construction of the ICT curriculum (adapted from Robertson et al. 2003)

Voice of policy – official Voice of the teacher – professional

initiatives and programmes and curriculum interests