Rethinking the design approach to digitally enhanced curriculum development: a postscript

Abstract

In this postscript, we want to share a few ideas that have arisen from our joint reading of the papers in this special issue. We do this in the sense of keeping the debate open to further interpretations. The ideas, therefore, are tentative and we would welcome further communication with scholars across the world. Our first observation relates to the ‘ubiquity’ of digital processes now available in the classrooms of the richer parts of the world (and increasingly in low-income countries as well). We appear to have moved beyond the question of ‘does investment in digital technologies represent value for money?’ towards a situation that takes for granted digital affordances in the formulation of curriculum and the practice of pedagogy. There might be discussion about the particular systems to be used in schools and colleges but few seriously question whether the technological changes and opportunities that exist generally across society should not be available for educational purposes. Rather, the focus of technology integration in classroom has shifted to figure out which combination of technologies and teaching strategies would maximise their effect on student learning outcomes. To those involved in teaching and learning on a daily basis, this might seem self-evident but in the wider policy environment this transition is important. For the last few decades, the debate about ‘digital’ has been dominated by the value for money agenda. The pressure on digital advocates was to prove that ‘digital made a difference’ and digital in that sense was often equated with kit and high costs. In order to ‘leapfrog’, for example, low-income countries used ‘digital’ interventions to catch up with richer countries. Much energy was expended trying to establish causal links between provisions of equipment and learning outcomes. This often proved disappointing to those providing the investment as the literature analyses in some of the papers demonstrate. Digital was not, and is not, a magic bullet and it was and is na€ıve to suggest it could be.