E–Learning, Volume 2, Number 2, 2005

‘Mindstorms’ and ‘Mindtools’ Aren’t Happening: digital

streaming of students via socio-economic disadvantage

NEIL ANDERSON
James Cook University, Townsville and Cairns, Australia

ABSTRACT This article considers the possibility that school-based uses of new technologies might
actually exacerbate the educational disadvantage of already disadvantaged social groups – particularly,
learners from low socio-economic status populations. It draws on some recent international studies
that indicate how minority, poor and urban students may be less likely to receive exposure to
computers for higher-order learning than their economically and socially advantaged peers, and to
have teachers who have received professional development on technology use. Work by Papert and
Jonassen, among others, is used to indicate principles and directions that attempts to integrate new
technologies into pedagogy will need to observe if issues of educational disadvantage are to be
addressed successfully. An example of an attempt to implement such principles and directions in the
author’s own work is presented.

Information and Communication Technologies,

Equity and Disadvantaged Students: faith and doubt
Claims about the importance of equity in relation to information and communication technologies
(ICTs) in education rest on the presumed benefits that access to these new technologies brings to
learner outcomes and achievements within formal educational settings. If, however, there are
reasons to believe that new ICTs do not provide demonstrable benefits for students in terms of
educational outcomes, then learners who are already disadvantaged in socio-economic, personal
disability, cultural difference/marginality or gender terms will not be further disadvantaged with
respect to educational outcomes through inequitable access to ICT resources. There would
doubtless be other grounds for concern about inequitable access, but formal learning outcomes
would not be among them.
New digital technologies are valuable resources for students’ academic and social
development. Nonetheless, it is crucial to acknowledge that simply making these new technologies
physically available more equitably will not by itself lead to better outcomes for students. It may, in
fact, contribute to undermining academic standards (at least the easily measured standards) for
students who already face conventionally recognised disadvantages. As obvious as this may be to
those familiar with the relevant debates and/or with substantial experience of actual uses of ICTs
in schools, the fact remains that parents, politicians, policy makers and many ‘pedagogues’
continue to cling to the strategy of putting computers in classrooms as the ‘approach most likely’
for redressing educational disadvantage.
Educational researchers are increasingly providing counter-arguments against this quick fix
mentality. A recent British survey found that although competency in using computers and
associated technologies had improved, there had been little transfer or application of this learning
to (other) subject competency. They also noted massive differences between the best and worst
ICT implementations. Disappointment was expressed at the small number of examples found
where the computer was used to extend students’ creativity. As far as ‘special education’ was
concerned, it was reported that the use of ICT was insufficient to have had palpable impact on
student achievement (Office for Standards in Education [Ofsted], 2004).

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A report from six Asian countries – Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South
Korea and Thailand – details the struggle these countries (with the exception of Singapore) have
faced to provide the kinds of ICT resources and teacher professional development that make a
difference to learning outcomes (UNESCO, 2004). It is worth noting that their increasing ability to
provide a reasonable level of ICT resources comes at a time when these countries have high-profile
policies for educational change and identify ICTs as capable of realising these changes. Each of the
six countries has explicit goals to move away from teacher-centred transmission style education
and toward emphasising student-centred learning, fostering problem solving, thinking skills and
creativity, and promoting knowledge creation and application. These are lofty goals that policy
makers assume ICT will support. Yet, here again the plans are based on the potential of ICT to
better enable these changes to occur, and not on a demonstrated capacity of ICTs to do so.
Not everyone, of course, has been enthusiastic about the promise of new technologies. With
the mass uptake of ICTs in the West during the 1990s, critics like Kroker & Weinstein (1994) in
Data Trash and Shenk (1997) in Data Smog decried the blind acceptance of new technologies and
critiqued commonly cited advantages of ICTs, including the World Wide Web. Shenk (1997, p. 15)
pinpointed the phenomenon of information overload, claiming that:
at a certain level of input, the law of diminishing returns takes effect; the glut of information no
longer adds to our quality of life, but instead begins to cultivate stress, confusion and even
ignorance. Information overload threatens our ability to educate ourselves, and leaves us more
vulnerable as consumers and less cohesive as a society.
Elsewhere, Stoll (1995) observed that the internet can contribute to a loss, rather than a gain in
productivity.
Lately, even the term ICT has come under attack from leading educators like Seymour Papert
(2004). The term evolved from IT or information technology in recognition of the emergence of
communication features within computer driven technologies. Papert (2004), however, sees this as
emphasising narrow features of the technologies; of, in effect, regarding them as repositories for
information and enhanced communication. For Papert (2004), the emphasis should be on such
qualities as the potential to extend the ability of humans to solve problems creatively; to serve as
what Jonassen (2000) thinks of as ‘mindtools’. Papert (2004) believes it is these latter aspects of
school computing that are most beneficial to socio-economically disadvantaged students.
Independently of critiques like Papert’s (2004), although resonant with them, it has become
common to speak of ICTs used in school settings as ‘learning technologies’. This, however,
positions ICTs within education as an altogether different phenomenon to new technologies
outside the classroom, as well as to other technologies inside and outside the classroom. This
undercuts the educator’s important role of enhancing connections between what happens in
classrooms and what happens in the world outside classrooms, especially with students who have
‘disengaged’ from schooling.
It is unlikely that a single descriptor for new technologies that encompasses all its uses and
potentials could be found. I would argue that it is useful to have a single term commonly accepted
by educators and those outside of education systems alike. This is precisely what has happened
with the term ‘ICT’. Accordingly, I will use the term ICT throughout this article, whilst
acknowledging that it does not adequately describe some of the features of new technologies that
are crucial to successful practice within educational settings, especially developing creativity,
extending students’ ability to solve problems and offering new ways of solving problems that do
not exist without the new technologies.
Issues of terminology aside, a bottom line is that for more than a decade educationists and
researchers have advocated using ICT extensively in classrooms based on the ‘potential’ of these
new technologies. This potential has been promoted in very different ways. Some writers have
described actual and possible practical implementations. At the other extreme, other writers have
bordered on religious zeal. Numerous authors have likened the infatuation with technological
development in Western societies to religious fervour. In The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace (1999, p. 30),
Margaret Wertheim relates the popularity of the web to a desire to live outside of the material
world, eloquently describing it as ‘the digital re-enchantment of the world’. She goes on to say
‘whether or not champions of cyberspace are formal religious believers, again and again we find in
their discussions of the digital domain a religious valorisation of this realm’ (p. 256).

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Wertheim (1999) recounts a typical ‘over-the-top’ endorsement of ICT by Diane Ravitch.

According to Ravitch, ‘we’ll be able to dial up the greatest authorities and teachers on any subject,
who will excite our curiosity and imaginations with wonderful video and dazzling graphs and
illustrations’ (1995, p. 28). Similarly, in The Religion of Technology (1999), David Noble attributes the
physicist Richard Seed with arguing that ‘God intended man to become one with God. We are
going to become one with God. We are going to have almost as much power as God. Cloning and
the reprogramming of DNA is the first step in becoming one with God’ (p. vii). Likewise, some
educators see ICT as a type of magic elixir, whose mere presence will remedy the problems
associated with schooling in areas affected by socio-economic disadvantage. This accounts for some
large outlays in terms of hardware for ‘special programs’ with little thought to pedagogical
considerations.

Weighing the Evidence: different approaches to use

The polarised positions of fervent ICT supporters and severe critics sampled here correspond to
two of the scenarios developed by Chris Bigum and Jane Kenway (Bigum & Kenway, 1998) in their
discussion of ‘the ambiguous future of schooling’ (see also Anderson, 2000). They referred to these
positions, respectively, as ‘boosters’ and ‘doomsters’. Both camps can call on educational research
evidence to support their views. Findings exist in quantitative and qualitative research alike to
support either stance (Hodas, 1996; Becker, 2000; Cuban, 2000). ‘Knowledge’ about the effects of
ICTs on educational outcomes can be described as being at best patchy. I would argue that these
results reflect a fault in earlier research, whereby the type of ICT use was not considered to be an
important variable and, at times, was ignored altogether. This tendency is evident in much writing
on equity issues in education, where studies of equity and ICT typically involved counting
computers, the overall technology budget and calculating the number of hours students spent on
computers, with little thought being given to differentiating between different ways in which the
technology was used (Anderson, 1993).
New evidence (Wenglinski, 1998) clearly shows that the ways computers are used has a
profound effect on student outcomes. The extent is such that in one model spending more time on
computers engaging in drill and practice activities leads to a deterioration of educational outcomes,
whereas a different model involving high-order thinking and problem solving leads to increased
outcomes (Wenglinski, 1998; Jonassen, 2000). Understanding what is at stake in the differences here
and acting upon this understanding is the key to promoting equity in the use of ICT in schools for
groups of students with disadvantages. Indeed, it underlies the argument in this article for ensuring
both equitable resources for students and the use of models that have been identified systematically
as being conducive to the scholastic and/or intellectual development of students.
During the past 10-15 years researchers have gathered some powerful evidence that ICT use
in schools is associated with greater opportunities for scholastic achievement on standardised tests
(Wenglinski, 1998) and enhanced opportunities to develop problem-solving skills (Jonassen, 2000),
provided that the technology is predominantly used in ways that involve higher-order thinking and
problem solving. It is important to move away from the earlier debates about whether ICT
enhances learning in significant ways to new discussions about the most effective way to use these
technologies in education. Some authors, notably James Gee (2003), are concerned that the ways
we use ICTs and educational programs in general actually stream students from disadvantaged
backgrounds into particular levels of employment. Gee (2003, p. 194) concedes that this may be
‘too cynical’ but the evidence gathered from a large and rigorous national US study supports his
claims.
In articulating these concerns, Gee (2003, p. 193) explains that:
the new global high tech economy called for lots of service workers in addition to lots of
knowledge workers. The service workers needed good communication skills and a willingness to
be compliant but often didn’t need specialist knowledge. Thus some schools, the more
advantaged ones with more economically advantaged learners, would prepare future knowledge
workers via a thinking curricula while others – the less advantaged ones with less economically
advantaged learners – would prepare service workers and the remaining industrial and manual
workers in the new capitalism via skill and drill on the basics.

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Is Gee’s (2003) claim ‘too cynical’, or is there in fact evidence that ICT use follows different models
with one model leading to more service workers from disadvantaged schools and a different model
producing more knowledge workers from economically advantaged schools? Wenglinski (1998)
used the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data collected in the USA in 1996 for
his analysis. This data included information about students’ use of ICT in schools and their
academic achievement in mathematics along with other results. The participants included 6627
fourth-graders and 7146 eighth-graders. Structural equation modelling was used as one of the
techniques to show whether there was a relationship between various technology use
characteristics and educational achievement. Further analysis then looked at academic
achievement, technology use and particular student characteristics such as race, rurality and socio-
economic disadvantage. Two very important findings in relation to ICT were as follows:
(1) ‘Professional development and higher order thinking are both positively related to academic
achievement (in relation to ICT)’ (p. 29);
(2) ‘Using computers for drill and practice, the lower order skills, is negatively related to academic
achievement’ (p. 29).
After providing persuasive evidence for the existence of this divide Wenglinski (1998) applies his
findings to differential uses of ICTs in schools. He concludes that:
minority, poor, and urban students are less likely to receive exposure to computers for higher
order learning, and poor and urban students are less likely to have teachers who have received
professional development on technology use. Thus, where technology matters, there are
significant inequities; only where technology does not matter have these inequities been
successfully erased. (p. 29)
The NAEP data revealed that the combination of teachers receiving professional development in
ICT and using computers for higher-order tasks was ‘associated with more than one-third of a
grade level increase’ (p. 5). Unfortunately, this combination was common in advantaged schools
but rare in schools affected by poverty.
This large-scale and carefully designed and implemented study suggests that Gee’s (2003)
concerns are far from mere reflexes of cynicism. Rather, they reflect what daily experience is for
many students in socio-economically disadvantaged schools. Wenglinski’s (1998) study is not
concerned with whether the different approaches and their associated results stem from systemic
strategies to ‘stream’ students within economic role parameters. Whether some conscious or
subconscious strategy is at work here is largely beside the point, because the effects are the same;
hence, the emphasis earlier in my argument on the importance of actively striving to apply
demonstrably successful models of ICT use in classrooms and not relying on merely counting machines
and hours spent on computers as the means for pursuing and reporting equity in relation to ICTs in
schools.
It is self-evident that wealthier countries and wealthier schools within countries will have
higher levels and intensities of ICT resources, and that those students in wealthier countries and
wealthier schools will have higher levels of home ownership than students in less wealthy
countries and less wealthy schools, respectively. For this reason, investing in ICT plant appeals to
‘common sense’ as being a plausible strategic approach to addressing equity concerns on behalf of
disadvantaged learners. What is not so obvious, and certainly not self-evident, is the fact that these
same ICTs can be taken up pedagogically in ways that are entirely different and have qualitatively
and quantitatively different learning outcomes for students. The use of statistics by education
systems can mask this crucial dimension of pursuing equitable outcomes, by reducing equity to a
matter of reporting increasing numbers of computers in ‘disadvantaged’ schools and increasing
number of hours that students are engaged with computers. This is a convenient means for
glossing larger problems.

Conditions of Intelligent Use

Patently, to use computers at all and, especially, to use them ‘intelligently’, there are necessary
levels of resourcing to be met. This explains the emphasis on ‘affordability’ in many critics’ work.
Dertouzous (2001, p. 20), for example, argues that:

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the rich, who can afford to buy new technologies, will use them to become increasingly more
productive and the outcome is inescapable. Left to its own devices, the information revolution
will increase the gap between rich and poor nations, and between rich and poor people within
nations.
While such arguments about differential levels of economic resources tell only one part of the
story, levels of ownership are an integral part of the equity mix. Reports from the USA, Australia,
the United Kingdom and Asia establish beyond question that schools in economically
disadvantaged areas do not have the same level of ICT resources as schools in areas serving higher
socio-economic groups. Likewise, students in economically disadvantaged areas have
correspondingly lower levels of home ownership of computers, internet access, etc. Students in
economically disadvantaged areas rely more heavily on the school’s ICT resources than do students
in more affluent areas and, as Wenglinski (1998, p. 29) found with his large study in the USA,
‘students who use computers at home demonstrate higher levels of academic achievement’.
The lack of home ownership in low-income groups also partly accounts for the finding of the
Smerdon Report (Smerdon et al, 2000) that teachers in advantaged schools use ICT more to
communicate with colleagues and parents. The Smith Family Report (McLaren & Zappala, 2002)
also reported on similar disparities in Australia, where low-income families were found to have low
levels of home ownership as well as low levels of access to the internet. They cited Manktelow
(2001) as being disappointed that ‘Australia has another great dividing range. In the age of the
information economy, modems – not mountains separate the population’. In Canada, Reddick et al
(2002) found that by 1999 about two-thirds of upper-income families had home access compared to
one-quarter of low-income families. In Asia, even geater disparities can be found, although reliable
statistics are harder to come by. Home ownership of computers in Hong Kong can be sorted
according to the type of housing status. For example, in villages the level was 2.2%, in housing
schemes 14.3%, in public housing 31.7% and in private housing 50% (Ure & Kuen, 1996). In
Thailand the government has been concerned about lack of home computer ownership in less
affluent homes and has introduced the ‘ICT PC Project’ whereby 1 million low-cost personal
computers (PCs) have been sold to the general public at a discounted price made possible by
government subsidy. In Singapore, families from low-income groups have been invited to attend
ICT training sessions and many of these families have been chosen to receive free PCs if they
attend the sessions and show achievement.
This obvious disparity in ownership of ICT resources means that many students living in
areas affected by socio-economic disadvantage have only one ‘shot’ at using ICT to enhance their
educational development, and that ‘shot’ is at school. If the schools in these areas adopt less
beneficial – if not positively harmful – models of ICT use, as evinced in Wenglinski’s (1998) large
study, this amounts to ICTs being used as tools that actually widen the gap between ‘haves’ and
‘have nots’. Given that powerful models for effective use of ICTs have been advanced by educators
like Seymour Papert since the time desktops first became available in the 1960s, it is imperative that
teachers, schools and education systems ensure that such models are adopted.

Seymour Papert and Powerful Computing

More than 20 years ago Papert (1980) established that the main benefit of computing in education
lay in its capacity to stimulate the mind – albeit only if ICTs are used in particular ways. His bold
prediction that one-to-one computing would become common by the present day was derided. Yet
his most insightful observation was that ‘there is a world of difference between what computers
will do and what society will choose to do with them. Society has many ways to resist fundamental
and threatening change’ (Papert, 1980, p. 5). Papert’s (1980) fears that computers would not be used
in ways that engaged students at high intellectual levels have been realised.
Papert (1980) likewise envisaged computers as powerful media for enabling cultural change
and for addressing issues and factors of isolation and other forms of social disadvantage.
Computers, said Papert (1980, p. 4) ‘can be carriers of powerful ideas and of seeds of cultural
change [and] can help people form new relationships with knowledge that cut across traditional
lines’. With others at Massachusetts Institute of Technology he designed the LOGO computer
language as a new means for students to take control of computers, rather than being controlled by

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them – as they were with drill and practice or tutorial software. He saw advantages in particular
uses of ICT, such as programming, that supported activity-based learning and not only involved
higher-order thinking and problem solving but also led to increased opportunities for students to
develop metacognitive processes. Papert (1980) described components of LOGO, like the turtle, as
‘objects to think with’. He argued that within the objects and their functions there was ‘an
intersection of cultural presence, embedded knowledge, and the possibility for personal
identification’ (p. 11).
LOGO is still used around the world in many elementary and secondary schools. It has
evolved to be more colourful and graphically stimulating in such versions as Microworlds. While
LOGO has undoubtedly had some impact within formal education its use is still marginal by any
measure. It is, of course, utterly dwarfed by the massive use of drill and practice and tutorial
software, particularly in schools serving economically impoverished communities.
More recently, David Jonassen (1996) has applied many of Papert’s ideas to other software
applications. Programming is not an area many educators are keen to engage with. Consequently,
applying the general ideas proposed by Papert provides one useful strategy for trying to change the
culture of classrooms. In a manner reminiscent of Papert in 1980, Jonassen (1996, p. 3) begins his
book Mindtools by lamenting that ICT is not typically used in classrooms in ways that lead to
intellectual engagement, and proposes a positive alternative, namely:
I recommend a significant departure from traditional approaches to using computers in schools. I
promote the idea of using selected computer applications as cognitive tools (which I call
Mindtools) for engaging multiple forms of thinking in learners.
He defines mindtools as ‘computer-based tools and learning environments that have been adapted
or developed to function as intellectual partners with the learner in order to engage and facilitate
critical thinking and higher order learning’ (p. 9). Throughout his book Jonassen (1996) offers
practical examples of how databases, spreadsheets, concept mapping, expert systems, Microworlds,
visualisation tools, multimedia and computer mediated communication tools can be used as
‘mindtools’. He emphasises the ways some ICT applications can be used for ‘productivity’ tasks,
like tying a set of text or creating a spreadsheet. He differentiates such uses from ‘mindtools’,
however. For Jonassen (1996), mindtools are used in ways that lead to higher-order thinking. He
argues that these tasks should be ‘authentic’; that ‘learning tasks are situated in some meaningful
real-world task or simulated in some case-based or problem based learning’ (p. 11).
Notwithstanding problems involved with descriptors like ‘authentic’ and ‘real-world’,
Jonassen’s (1996) underlying principle seems to me to be sound. (Many school-based tasks could be
described as ‘authentic’ within their own context. Likewise, ‘real-world’ implies that the classroom
or school is part of some imaginary world. When students go from teacher preparation into
classrooms, they often describe the classroom as ‘the real world’ in comparison to the presumably
‘unreal’ world of tertiary education. Some workplaces and situations outside of schools have
particular ways that make sense only in that particular environment and are just as ‘real’ or ‘unreal’
as classroom contexts.) Classroom activities are often more effective as contexts for learning when
they are linked to aspects of students’ lives beyond the classroom and build productively on
learners’ needs, prior experience and interests. An even better proposition might involve ICT
activities embedded in tasks considered to be important by the community and carried out in
community spaces (Lankshear et al, 2000; Bigum, 2002, 2003). According to Lankshear et al (2000,
p. 158), principals should provide incentives for teachers ‘to develop effective links with other
schools and community organisations, with a view to sharing expertise and resources [and]
undertaking collaborative projects involving integration of new technologies’. Carroll (2000, p. 116)
sees an opportunity for schools to become ‘nodes’ of a broader network and maintains that:
we must recognise that schools and classrooms are becoming nodes in networked learning
communities. We must begin to think about how to organise learning in networked
communities and not limit learning within the boundaries of the classroom and school buildings.
Gee (2003, p. 192) speaks of ‘affinity groups’ where members ‘bond to each other primarily through
a common endeavour’. It is up to principals, teachers and students to explore ‘common
endeavours’ that will bring communities and the world outside the classroom closer to classrooms
or to bring the ‘classroom’ to the community.

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ICTs and Poverty: issues and response

Issues of socio-economic disadvantage and ICT tend to dominate the community debates along the
lines of the ‘digital divide’ discussions in the USA, where statistics have been used to demonstrate
the differential between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ in terms of home ownership of equipment and
access to the internet. Van Dijk & Hacker (2003) point out that the gap in home ownership of ICT
resources based on income was acute during the 1980s and 1990s but has now closed to some
extent. However, they cite evidence that the gaps in skills and use are increasing. It is also important
to remember that poverty is more than merely a lack of money and that other factors come into
play apart from merely income and what ICT resources can be afforded. A task force set up by the
Schools Commission (cited in Connell & White, 1991) identified five dimensions to poverty,
namely:
• inadequate family or community income;
• vulnerability to changes in the labour market and economic dependence;
• lack of organisational power and being excluded from collective resources;
• damaging social and physical environments;
• cultural marginalisation.
Dealing with poverty demands a close examination of organisational structures that may serve to
further disadvantage some children and advantage others. Connell (1993) claims that the total
‘social investment’ in the education of economically advantaged children far outweighs the effect of
any compensatory funds directed to poor children. To maximise the effect of funds directed to ICT
in disadvantaged schools, it is necessary to ensure that benefit is gained by target groups and that
whole school change is encouraged and effective models of ICT are employed. Unless these
conditions are met the use of ICTs in many schools serving disadvantaged populations will amount
to just one further dimension of poverty – a condition that helps maintain the vulnerability of
already disadvantaged students to changes in workplaces, and that marginalises them from the
qualitatively different ways that advantaged groups use ICTs.
A small-scale example of using ICTs along lines captured in Papert’s (1980) and Jonassen’s
(2000) ideas of ‘mindstorms’ and ‘mindtools’ that had a measurable positive impact on learning
outcomes of disadvantaged learners can be provided, based on work by this author (Anderson,
1999, 2001). An initial pilot study (Anderson, 1999) involving one student with intellectual
disabilities assessed in the ‘mild to moderate’ range suggested that using ICTs in accordance with
constructivist concepts and principles could overcome impediments to academic success that had
previously seemed insurmountable. The approach and techniques used in the pilot study were also
subsequently used successfully with a larger group of similar students who had experienced long-
term failure despite extra ‘expert’ remedial help. Mirroring the work of Papert (1980), Jonassen
(2000) and others, this program stressed the importance of engaging students in higher-order
intellectual engagement notwithstanding their formally assessed ‘mild to moderate’ intellectual
disabilities.
The outcomes of this project illuminate the larger argument in this article in quite powerful
ways. All participants had become disengaged with formal schooling, had experienced long-term
failure despite additional one-to-one efforts of remedial teachers, had not developed even basic
reading skills and had built up diverse ‘blocks’ to school-based learning. In order to measure any
potential effects of the intervention rigorous data collection of student outcomes associated with
the development of verbal communication skills and reading skills and the development of new
ICT literacies was built into the design. Verbal communication skill development was assessed by
videotaping peer tutoring sessions (where the participants were the tutors) at regular intervals
during the intervention and recording and comparing performance on seven key indicators.
Reading performance was monitored by the use of two standardised reading tests administered
across the sites by the same qualified guidance officer (pre and post testing) and developing ICT
literacies were assessed by the collection and review of portfolios (Anderson, 2001).
Within entire Australia-wide cohorts of students with measures of learning disadvantage
equivalent to those participating in the intervention study, only very rarely do individuals manage
to attain formal measured reading ages by the end of elementary school. By contrast, all of the
students involved in this intervention study based squarely on a ‘mindstorm’ and ‘mindtools’

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pedagogy achieved formal reading ages and became engaged in learning in a manner that was
sustained during their final elementary grade levels and into secondary school. Significant wider
development of verbal communication skills and computer skills was demonstrated by all
participants in the study. This group of students had effectively been marginalised by conventional
practices of dealing with students with intellectual disabilities by over-emphasising skill-based
development in the basics while ignoring the development of creativity, problem solving, higher-
order thinking and metacognition. This parallels the ways that many students impacted by poverty
are treated.
Advocates of ICT use in schools have often emphasised the potential of ICT for improving
curriculum offerings across the board by integrating new technologies across the curriculum, and
thereby providing inspiration to teachers and motivation to students. Despite our best intentions,
however, if we fail to employ effective models of ICT use we may actually end up maintaining
students’ current disadvantages – if not exacerbating them – rather than contributing to enhanced
learning outcomes.

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NEIL ANDERSON is Acting Head of the School of Education at James Cook University in
Australia. He has a PhD in education focusing on the application of new technologies from
Queensland University of Technology, and has published widely in the area of learning
management systems, equity and ICT and the use of ICT in rural and regional communities and
developing countries. His forthcoming book, Equity and Information Communication Technologies in
Education, is being published by Peter Lang. He is currently a chief investigator in an Australian
Research Council-funded study investigating factors associated with low participation rates of
female students in senior secondary school ICT subjects that provide access pathways to
professional level careers within the ICT industry. Correspondence: Neil Anderson, School of
Education, James Cook University, Cairns Campus, Cairns, QLD 4870, Australia
(neil.anderson@jcu.edu.au).

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