Teachers as agents of change blending research and practice and thoughts on future teacher professional development opportunities

Abstract

Over the last few decades we have witnessed huge investments in educationaltechnology and a plethora of policies, initiatives and programmes that sought, orproclaimed, to harness technologies to improve and transform learning and teaching in the classroom. Whilst there have been some remarkable successes, wemust retain a critical perspective in examining the extent to which such aims havebeen met (Benyon & Mackay, 1989 & 1993; Fisher, 2006; Selwyn, 1997 & 2011),where weaknesses and barriers have arisen (see for example, Balanskat et al.,2006), and where future opportunities may lie (see also, Kirkland & Sutch, 2009;Hammond et al., 2009).