The Future of Education

Edition 14

Accepted Abstracts

Teaching with ICTs: Two Public Schools in Stellenbosch and the ‘Digital Divide’

Leya Mgebisa, Stellenbosch University (South Africa)

Abstract

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have been painted as the catalytic engineer to advance teaching and learning in South Africa. They aim to introduce an effective and consistent innovation to increase learner attention span, cognitive independence and heightened a teacher’s and overall a school’s critical engagement with the curriculum. With all the interactive potential that ICTs bring, they may also bring isolation; a disruption to the familiar care relationship between teacher and learner, loss or uncertainty over society’s identity of the teacher to teach in the classroom and create a further resource divide between well-resourced, fee paying independent public schools and underresourced, non-fee paying state-dependent public schools in Stellenbosch. Through case study research I conducted semi- structured interviews with teachers which elicited that the convergence of information technology and communication technology in South Africa’s education system creates an opportunity to prioritise the identity of the teacher in the mass appeal of technological change and be cautions of not advocating a technological determinist position that overlooks the socio- economic inequalities still present in South Africa’s public schools, particularly in Stellenbosch.

Keywords: ICTs, public schools, South Africa, digital divide, education;

References: 
[1] Department of Basic Education. (2004). White Paper on e-Education: Transforming Learning and Teaching through Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). Government Gazette no. 26734
[2] Conole, G., de Laat, M., Dillion, T., & Darby, J. (2008). ‘Disruptive technologies’, ‘pedagogical innovation’: What’s new? Findings from an in-depth study of students’ use and perception of technology. Computers & Education, 50(1), 511-524.

 

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