Reflecting on the OECD Irish Research

What could we apply in schools?

Background

On September 30^th the Irish Department of Education and Youth published 3 working papers from the OECD and the Knowledge Centre for Education, based in the University of Stavanger in Norway, on the Impact of Digital Technologies on Students’ Learning. The Department commissioned the OECD to carry out a literature review and a peer learning event (PLE) on the Impact of Digital Technologies on Student Learning as part of the OECD’s Resourcing School Education for the Digital Age Project. It is important to realise that these papers are informed by a literature review and a peer learning event, and there was no research conducted with Irish teachers and students in creating these documents.

Some high level reflections

The research is timely and attempts to compare ongoing digital education implementation activities in Ireland with Estonia, France and Sweden. While this is useful, it also highlights that ‘borrowing’ practices from other jurisdictions is always challenging, yet there are some interesting take-aways that can inform current and future practices in schools. The reports are balanced in that they articulate where digital education approaches have been successful, while also highlighting the challenges of ‘integrating’ digital technologies into school activities.

At a macro level the following findings appear noteworthy:

• Digital education is complex. Yes, but we need to be clear what it looks like and in the Irish context the Digital Learning Framework attempts to describe what this might look like in the context of school improvement.
• Moderate, purposeful use of digital tools can boost student learning. This is a key finding that needs some unpacking and I will return to this below.
• The reports cited the DigitEfekt Study from Estonia, which reported that it is what you do, not how much access you have or provide to digital technologies, that counts. Therefore it is what we do with the digital technologies we have that is important.
• Only 43% of educators in OECD countries report being confident in using digital technologies pedagogically. This then raises issues around how teachers can make critical decisions in relation to:
  • When to use digital technologies and when not to use them?
  • What technologies they should use?
  • How they and their learners should use these technologies

It also points to need to equip all in education with digital skills so they can become more digitally literate.

• There is growing awareness of the potential for learners to get distracted when using digital devices. This raises questions around how these technologies are used in classrooms and if they are appropriate for the selected tasks.
• Equitable access is a major challenge in all jurisdictions, and one that will increase in the future with the arrival of AI, and technologies such as GenAI.
• The need for more impact data. The reports highlight that other countries are already collecting data on the impact of digital technologies in education and this an area Ireland could do more in.

While there is nothing really new here, the reports are a timely reminder of the current challenges in ‘integrating’ digital technologies into the curriculum and lives of schools. It is worth remembering that the DLF was created for this very purpose, to help clarify what digital ‘integration’ might look like, specifically in the context of Looking at Our Schools. The report suggests that it would be timely to update this document and that would seem a very practical thing to do in light of this research.

Some practical take-aways

Irish schools have been using digital technologies since the 1980s and we have had a digital strategy for schools dating back to 1997. We were one of the founding members of EUN SchoolNet and our schools are engaged in some or all of the 5 areas listed in the report, The impact of digital technologies on students’ learning: Results from a literature review:

• Programming and robotics
• Media production and literacy
• Gaming
• Extended reality (XR) and simulations
• Artificial intelligence (AI) and learning analytics

Schools that participated in the Schools Excellence Fund Digital initiative were engaged in many of the above activities, apart from AI as it had not arrived in schools in 2018. Many schools continue to engage in these activities today and the report dedicates a chapter to each area and they can be read as stand alone chapters.

For each area I will share the relevant table in the report, as it provides a high level summary for schools engaged in these activities, and if you want more, you can delve into the relevant chapter.

How might you use these tables?

Each chapter provides a deep dive into each of the five areas. The summary tables can provide schools and teachers with a summary of the ‘successful processes’ and the known ‘challenges’ of using these particular digital technologies. They can inform ‘critical discussion’ around the following:

• What issues or problems are we attempting to address?
  • Is it to deepen student intrinsic motivation or is to free you teacher time?
  • What technologies might be useful for particular tasks?
• The issues to consider in deploying or ‘integrating’ these technologies into the school?
  • It provides schools with a range of issues to reflect on to plan for, if they are going to use some or all of these technologies
  • They can support the creation a plan of action, one that is holistic, and informed by research

The findings in these 5 chapters could be extended in the future by evaluating specific Irish case-studies in each of these areas. Imagine learning how Irish post-primary schools are using digital technologies to support digital literacy across the school. By building on this research the Department can go deeper and share the successful processes and challenges of these, and other approaches, in Irish schools.