T’aint what you do (it’s the way that you do it): ICT and creativity in the primary school classroom

Abstract

This paper reports on one strand of a PhD study that examines newly qualified teachers’ use of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) to support teaching and learning in Scottish primary classrooms during the first two years of their career. Preliminary data analysis indicates that some of the new teachers are creative, innovative users of new technologies who have embedded ICT effectively into their classroom practice while others remain reluctant users. This paper looks at some of the factors that differentiate the creative from the reluctant. Three levels of influence are discussed, and the interactions between them. They are the national/authority level, the school level and the individual or personal level. Some necessary, although not in themselves sufficient, conditions for creative use of ICT are identified as well as some desirable ones.