Schools and teachers do not respond clearly enough to pupils’ and parents’ wishes for stronger integration of ICT in teaching and learning

The vast majority of parents and pupils respond very clearly: It is important that the schools and the teachers actively integrate ICT in teaching and learning practices and in general in the daily life of the school, including the school’s co-operation with the pupils’ homes. School management and teachers, however,demonstrate a more hesitant and less focused approach to the use of ICT.

The study shows that 96% of the parents participating in Elearning Nordic 2006 have made it clear that they find the use of ICT in the schools’ teaching very important (see Chapter 4). The pupils too make no secret of the fact that they would like to use ICT more in their learning activities. Still – and in spite of large and ambitious competence development initiatives – as many as one in three teachers feel restrained by their own perceived lack of
competences from using ICT more in their teaching and in their pedagogical design of school work and learning activities.

Home-school co-operation is one area where ICT can deliver immediate and tangible benefits to all stakeholders: parents, pupils, teachers, school management and municipal school administrations. However, Ramboll Management experiences that many schools and municipalities seem to be unaware of the potentials, and except for a few outstanding best practice examples, the impact of ICT on home-school co-operation is limited in the four Nordic countries. E-learning Nordic 2006 shows that both parents and school managers feel that ICT still not has delivered on its potential. There is only limited impact on areas such as:
• Parents’ information level about school activities
• Parents’ involvement in their children’s schoolwork
• Parents’ ongoing dialogue with the school and their children’s teachers.

Ramboll Management assesses that school managers and municipal school authorities need operational guidelines on how to use ICT to strengthen home-school dialogue. Such a dialogue will also help schools to be able to respond more actively to the parents’ wishes for a more integrated, pedagogical approach to ICT. Ramboll Management recommends that to address these challenges, the following measures should be considered:
• Promote the use of ICT for home-school co-operation to
school managers and municipal school authorities through
best-practice examples
• Identify users’ needs for co-operation tools: What do parents
need, what do pupils need, what does school management
need?
• Set up operational (editorial and functional) guidelines for
the school’s use of ICT vis-à-vis the parents
• Identify factors which must be addressed in order to ensure
that ICT will not marginalise socially and/or educationally
disadvantaged groups of parents
• Teachers and school managers urgently need to develop a
more pedagogically open and pro-active attitude to the use
of ICT and to enter into a dialogue with the parents and the
pupils about their expectations and their ideas.

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