ABSTRACT
As many of the examples considered in Chapter 6 have illustrated, a prominent theme emerging from this book is the importance of the politics of schools technology. In particular, the past three chapters have framed the use of digital technology in schools in terms of a set of negotiations and struggles between various actors – from the organisational concerns of schools to the interests associated with state policymaking, the IT industry and other professional and technical communities. In this spirit, the present chapter now goes on to consider how these negotiations and struggles continue (and, if anything, are intensified) at the ‘micro-level’ of the classroom. The chapter focuses on the contested nature of digital technology use for the individual teacher and individual student – paying further attention to the issues and tensions that arise when digital technologies enter the classroom setting. As Ivor Goodson describes:
there is an ongoing tension between what is planned, designed, created and strategised: and the play of unintended consequences, heterogeneous networks, illfitting financial and technological strategies and disorganised response . . . Even the most of tightly planned interventions, is always fluid, contested, disrupted, subverted and appropriated – in short diverted – to a greater or lesser extent (Goodson et al. 2002, p.7).
