ICT Use in Secondary Education: Schooling Necessities and Needs for Human Resources

Abstract

This chapter investigates school dynamics with ICT. To what extent computers are a significant tool in the classrooms to achieve a teaching task? Do teachers have an equal access to equipment? What is the influence of organizational factors on teachers’ utilizations of technologies? The chapter presents a study of four French middle schools involved in a national endowment program on digital textbooks. In this context, teachers and pupils have a relatively better access to technology and digital resources than in other French schools. Interviews were conducted in three of our school samples with eight teachers and managers, and a questionnaire was filled by 89 teachers in all the schools considered. The analysis of dataset collected tends to show that, in these contexts, ICT usage is not a major concern for teachers. Above all, leading pupils to success is the main goal and technologies are not a reliable medium to do so. Uses of technologies by teachers in the classrooms seem to be determined by the quality of infrastructure and equipment reliability. Gender and seniority appear as discriminating factors in the perception of technologies’ availability. Teachers in charge of pedagogical uses of ICT in each school are almost exclusively sought for technical support.