The construction of educational computing: the computer in Australian government policy texts 1983-2000

Since 1983, the Australian government has promoted the use of computing technologies in school education as essential for young people and for the nation. Policies have been developed to initiate, coordinate and intensify their use in schools across the states and territories. The study sought to examine the basis of political support for computing in schools. Why was the computer regarded as necessary for school education? The penetration of the computer into Australian society is explored as well as the factors that have given rise to governmental programs to equip schools with computers. A wide-ranging review of relevant literature, in particular, the policy literature, establishes a context for the study. To illuminate aspects of the Australian experience, the development and use of the computer in the United States is considered. The study is situated within a theoretical framework that draws on a conceptualisation of policy as a contested process, nested within institutional frameworks that have a profound effect on policy outcomes. A critical discourse approach is employed to analyse three Australian government policy texts from 1983, 1996 and 2000. The texts have been chosen for critical analysis and comparison because they advance rationales and preferred practices for the use of computing technologies in Australian schools across a period of almost two decades. The aim was to investigate discursive representations of the computer in the texts. The dominant economic discourses within the three policy texts reveal that successive Australian governments have connected computers in schools with the potential to improve Australia's international competitiveness through the enhancement of students' technological skills. Students will thus be prepared for a future workforce in which computing technologies are pervasive. At the same time, encapsulated within these texts is the dream of a local computer-based industry, one in which schools will be both the consumer and the market. In the past decade, the policy frameworks related to the use of computers for educational purposes have marginalised the voice of teachers. Their ability to define publicly appropriate educational uses of computing technologies has been limited. The study suggests that teachers will continue to come under pressure to employ computers in their classrooms in ways that are determined outside the profession. Future research that vi explores how teachers deal with increased government direction would illuminate the degree to which policy has had an impact in the classroom. This analysis of the Australian government's promotion of computers over almost two decades contributes to understanding how their place in schools has become accepted as the norm. The use of critical discourse analysis in the study has revealed embedded meanings whose origins have been forgotten but which nevertheless continue to exert influence. Winner of the Mollie Holman Doctoral Medal for Excellence