Individual and shared development

In the face of future developments it is important that school strengthens certain qualities in the pupils, which on the one hand relate to their individual development (including the utilisation of personal skills, proficiencies and potentials, the ability to analyse situations, exploit information, select information, to take an independent stance etc.), and on the other hand relate to their human and social development (including respect for others, the ability to function in a group, the ability to work together with others etc.) in order that, through the acquisition of skills and proficiencies, they are placed in a position where they can engage the tasks of a future society.

Opening up of the teaching environments

The central factor in opening up of the teaching environment is the teachers and their attitudes to the enterprise of school, including its tasks and the criteria for evaluating quality which are applied. The European community needs to develop a school where the frequency of drop-out and segregation is drastically reduced and where the individual competence of pupils is increased.

In order to achieve this it is necessary for teachers through their thinking and teaching practises to, on the one hand, orient themselves towards the criteria for openness (mentioned in document 1), and, on the other hand, to anticipate criteria relating to competence and quality in the society of the future.

The school head is a very important factor in this whole process. The attitude of the head teacher and backing towards the teachers in their reorganisation process will promote this development considerably.

A development of this kind can be achieved through the teachers' and administration's knowledge and experience, which an appropriate in-service training can help to build up. In-service training is therefore seen as a necessity in order to ensure and accelerate the development.

The decision-takers, the central administration and research institutes

In order to achieve the above-mentioned development in the school administration and in the teacher team, it is necessary for the teachers to realise what is expected of them, and it is here that the initiatives taken by central bodies in the education system play a large role.

This involves in particular mediating expectations, visions, research findings etc., as one cannot just assume that the teachers will as a matter of course keep themselves posted with regard to the international literature and research on issues of school and related sociological perspectives.

Teachers might find research findings rather inaccessible, because many of these are published in a foreign language, or because the format of the reports and the way they are presented seems confusing, or because it can be difficult for teachers to assess perspectives for daily teaching arising from the findings.

If one takes as an example the IEA survey on reading, it can be seen that the authorities and research institutes in some countries have done much in the way of "translating" the findings of the survey and indicating new pedagogical possibilities in school, and as a consequence of this one can also see changes in the teacher's pedagogical considerations and changes in the practise of the school.

It thus appears that reactions by the teachers to comparative international surveys are not expressed to any noticeable extent unless a dialogue is entered into between teachers and experts outside the individual schools.

The teacher's role

The teacher’s role in the learning process is changing as new technologies are introduced into the classroom. Teachers are not being replaced by technology, but their role is changing from that of presenter of information to that of co-ordinator of learning resources. In addition, they serve as facilitator, manager, counsellor, and motivator. Their new role frees them to work more independently with individuals and small groups while leaving the formal presentation to another medium. Teachers help pupils find and process information from many sources.

If education systems were previously like sorting offices, they now need to become learning networks. No longer can the teacher selectively teach those who conform to a norm. Her role now is to create and maintain inclusive networks of learners. These networks will operate at many different levels, incorporate a range of ICT applications, and will be responsive to the learning styles and needs of all learners.

Teachers themselves will be learners at their own level of the network - open and distance learning will facilitate this and will show them how they can apply new approaches with their own learners.

ICT and reading taken as an example of new knowledge to be converted into practice

Literacy, reading and writing, is probably the most important tool for pupils’ learning. Therefore it is vital to find out what pupils need to master when they want to make use of different texts and information given on the Internet or other multimedia resources.

It is no longer as important to learn considerable amounts of information by heart because the particular information is easily accessible in a latest edition. Pupils have however to be able to find out when particular information is needed and how reliable and good it is for what they are looking for. Critical literacy is therefore of importance in collecting and processing information.

The time which has normally been used for learning all kinds of information is better spent on collecting and handling information needed for gaining new knowledge which is important for the work the pupil is doing in school or of personal importance. Reading skills, reading comprehension and critical reading are all of importance for the individual who wants to use ICT effectively.

Instead of seeking to use the computer to replicate existing structures, teachers have to see the networked computer as a new kind of medium altogether and one which shapes the age in which we live.

It demands a realisation that:

• text on the computer is not the same as printed text;
• writing an e-mail or hypertext document is fundamentally different from handwriting on paper;
• 'searching' on the World Wide Web, or on-line database is different from looking for facts in an encyclopaedia
• discussing ideas in a computer conference has completely different qualities from face to face discussion
• there is now a blurring of ‘genres’ - traditional boundaries between text, pictures, sounds and film no longer hold. Concepts as basic as ‘beginning’, ‘middle’, ‘end’, or even ‘author’ now have quite different meanings.

These changes have been made possible by the networking of computers. They also facilitate a mode of use in which didactic, teacher- or software-centred approaches give way to a socially constructed view of learning. Knowledge can thus be viewed not as something supplied by the teacher, but as something that is constructed by each learner. It is an approach which demands a different kind of teacher development too, one which does not involve teaching teachers something they don’t know, but re-working or re-conceptualising what they do know.

It can be argued that today there are thus three distinct forms of ‘literacy’ which must be attained by teachers and pupils alike:

• Reading literacy - the ability to construct meaning from a written text, and to create written texts that convey meaning.

"Reading literacy" expresses the idea that pupils acquire the basic ability and develop this into being able to read all kinds of printed texts and write a varied language about a broad range of topics. In addition the pupils will learn different reading strategies and achieve competence in assessing when they most advantageously might utilise a certain reading strategy in connection with a concrete text and for a concrete purpose. Examples of reading strategies could be close reading (reading for learning), reading selective points (in order to locate certain information), skimming (in order to form an overview) etc.

In work with this basic, traditional reading instruction it will be an advantage for pupils in their concurrent work with the computer and ICT that they gradually learn these different strategies and become accustomed to a high level of linguistic accuracy. This will be of help to them when working with the computer and ICT.

• Computer literacy - the ability to operate a computer and a basic software ‘toolkit’.

"Computer literacy" stands for the development of the faculty of using the computer as a tool, i.e. using the computer, working with educational programmes, word processing etc. In other words pupils need to become familiar with the way in which tools can be made to perform so that they can, in a wider perspective, ask questions and carry out searches on the Internet, send electronic mail and communicate with each other via networks.

• Network literacy - the ability to use electronic networks to access resources and to communicate with others.

The basis for any successful communication is that one expresses oneself clearly and comprehensibly. If one asks imprecise questions, one receives imprecise answers. "Network literacy" is an expression describing the process of utilising information on the Internet. This process necessitates the development of special working methods, as one has to:

• plan a task before carrying out an information search
• select an information source
• choose a search string and formulate a question
• assess, select and process the responses to the search
• present the result of one's work

Whilst teachers are highly competent with the first of these forms of literacy, their relative lack of skills (and experience) in the latter two prevents them from fully utilising the potential of ICT to change their classrooms. For many pupils (who have grown up with the technology) the opposite may be the case. This juxtaposition may lead to a view among pupils that school is not relevant to their lives, and also means that many pupils fail to make the most of their abilities.