Michael Trucano from the World Bank captures a few key ideas on worst practices in ICT use in education: “The criterion I used for selection was simple: The given worst practice was easily observable in multiple prominent initiatives, with (one fears) a high likelihood of re-occurrence, in the same or other places.”
The list reads like a brief discussion of common sense in ICT use. However, I’ve seen these “worst practices” produced at school, provincial, and national levels. Why? The main reason, I believe, is due to the lack of maturity of definition of ICT in education as a field of study. Elearning/online learning/ICT is a nexus field pulling from many disciplines: technology, learning/psychology, government, networks, strategy/change theory, etc. Experts advising change often come from one of these fields and present a myopic view of how to implement ICT, rather than an integrated view that accounts for all of the interacting elements.
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I can’t even count the number of people calling themselves “instructional technologists” that think throwing new tech around will magically fix all educational problems. I totally agree that this is inherently an interdisciplinary area – but the bigger question is how to encourage people to think of it that way rather than just talk about it.
As a faculty member in psychology, I’ve made several interdisciplinary reaches into other fields, and most people SAY they want more perspective. But the reality is that as soon as some generally accepted conclusion/perspective from their field is challenged/supplemented/complimented/anything, they want to wash their hands of the whole thing. Expertise is a fickle thing.