ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the shaping of schools, schooling and the digital age at a macrolevel of analysis. As outlined in Chapter 3, the social shaping of technology can involve a wide number of influences. It therefore follows that the use of digital technology in schools is influenced by a variety of stakeholders and interests long before it enters the classroom setting. This chapter examines the influence of state policy-making and policy institutions on schools technology. In particular, it explores the construction of digital technology use within recent state policy programmes and initiatives. Of course, the topic of technology use has long been a focus for public sector policymaking. The 1960s and 1970s saw the governments of many (over)developed industrialised nations react to concerns over the ‘white heat’ of technological development with a range of ‘high tech’ public policy drives – especially in areas of public life such as energy, transport, health and education. With the rise of ‘micro-electronics’, countries such as the UK and US saw the launch and re-launch of often indistinguishable national educational technology policies and local initiatives throughout the 1980s, with governments and politicians of all political persuasions keen to capitalise on the kudos of being seen to ‘do something’ about new information technologies. While continuing to be a comparatively high-profile area of state policy-making throughout the 1980s, educational technology gained a heightened importance with the emergence in the mid-1990s of the internet into mainstream societal use (as compared to previous relatively niche application in scientific and military domains). From that time onwards the field of educational technology (and schools technology in particular) has attracted the sustained attention of policy-makers, figuring ever more prominently in the education policy agendas of countries around the world. This chapter considers what role this high-profile policy-making activity has played in the shaping of schools and schooling in the digital age – not least in terms of setting an agenda for what schools technology is and what values are associated with it.
