CHAPTER
ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background of the Study
Tackling youth unemployment
is also a priority of the Scottish Government. It has set a target to reduce
the proportion of young people who are not in education, employment or training
by 40% by 2020, and Curriculum for Excellence aims to support all children and
young people to develop essential skills they will need to live and work in the
twentyfirst century.
To help pursue its ambitions, the Scottish Government has
developed initiatives to support and encourage the use of digital technology in
schools, with the vision that ‘Scotland’s educators, learners and parents take
full advantage of the opportunities offered by digital technology in order to
raise attainment, ambition and opportunities for all’. One of the main elements
of this work to date has been the delivery of Glow, an online learning
environment that provides access to a variety of digital tools and resources,
funded by the Scottish Government and made available to all schools across
Scotland[1].
Education Scotland recently
published a report on the digital technology area of Curriculum for Excellence,
which found that ICT is ‘used as an enhancement to learning’ but is ‘on the
fringes of the main purpose of tasks or lessons’[2].
In some of the 40 case study schools which provided the findings for the
report, inspectors found that ICT can have ‘a much more significant influence
on learning which motivates learners and encourages career ambitions using
technologies’ but the extent of change in the use of technologies in schools
‘has been modest at best’.
The report concluded that
there was more work to be done to place digital technology ‘at the heart of
learning’ in Scotland, and that it had confirmed ‘beyond doubt that our
children and young people need digital skills and technologies to be given an
absolutely central role in the learning process – no longer an enhancement or
‘bolt-on’, but a foundation and a primary consideration for any planned
learning.’
The Scottish Government has commissioned this literature
review to explore how the use of digital technology for learning and teaching
can support teachers, parents, children and young people in improving outcomes
and achieving its ambitions for education in Scotland.
This study is intended to
help inform the development of a strategy for digital learning and teaching. As
a consequence its overall aims are to:
• Identify evidence of the
ways in which digital learning and teaching supports improved outcomes for
learners and teachers/schools;
• Identify the conditions that
lead to successful implementation of digital learning and teaching so that the
Scottish Government’s strategic support is founded on what works and will
inform any advice to local authorities and schools.
The specific objectives of
the literature review are to:
• Identify the impacts that
digital technology has on learning and teaching in both primary and secondary
schools; and
• Identify how digital
technology can support and contribute to five specific educational
priorities:
1.
Raising attainment,
2.
Tackling inequalities and promoting inclusion,
3.
Improving transitions into employment,
4.
Enhancing parental engagement, and
5.
Improving the efficiency of the education system.
For the purposes of the literature review digital technology
is defined as any process in which the teacher or learner uses digital
equipment such as a computer (or a smart phone, tablet, MP3 player, or console)
to access digital tools such as learning platforms and virtual learning environments
(VLEs), and/or digital learning resources (such as lessons, tests, learning
aids and games) to improve their knowledge and skills. For teachers this can
also be to improve their pedagogical approaches and their assessment of
learning. The other definitions used in the literature review can be found in
Annex 1.
The report is structured to draw out the evidence of the
impact of digital technology on each of the specific educational priorities set
out above. The method is described in more detail in the next section, then
sections 3-7 present the findings for each of the five educational priorities.
This is followed by a consideration of the evidence about successful
implementation of digital learning and teaching in section 8 and conclusions
about the impacts of digital
learning and teaching activities and what this means for the development of a strategy to help to achieve these in section
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