Professional Documents
Culture Documents
policy.
One policy has been dominating the Scottish education environment since 2002.
Excellence (CfE) has been hailed as "one of the most ambitious programmes of
address the entire school age range from 3 – 18; unlike previous, more
piecemeal reforms which targeted specific stages within this range (Standard
this policy, its origins seem to have come from the national debate on
seek the views of the public on what matters to them in terms of education in
Scotland (Learning and Teaching Scotland b, 2009). The national debate gave
rise to a set of key priorities (The Scottish Executiveb, 2003) which offered a
starting point for the new curriculum policy. The new curriculum policy appears
to have a running mate, in the form of Glow; the national intranet for Scotland’s
technologies in education within these key priorities, in spite of the fact that
much of the rhetoric around this parallel policy development, claims that CfE and
the question, is this a marriage made in heaven or are these two uneasy
strand of the CfE policy that I would like to focus for the purposes of this
assignment.
GLOW is the world’s first national intranet for education. It started life as the
Scottish Schools’ Digital Network (SSDN) and its ambitions were impressive: it
transform itself to exploit the pedagogical riches the new information age has to
elaborated in the following extract from the Draft Specification paper for the
“The national intranet will help to breakdown barriers to learning that exist and
communicate in real time with people across the country and across the globe.
Social barriers will be lowered by the facility to bring young people together from
all walks of life. Pedagogical barriers will be eased by the immense capacity that
the intranet will provide for sharing of practice, ideas and experience. And
as a process policy, since because of its very nature, it can only exist as a policy,
conception, and many, many more in its implementation. I will come back to this
issue and further develop later , but as far as official policy goes, Glow and
Curriculum for Excellence are interconnected – they are one and the same thing:
“Glow is not a separate development from CfE but a core element of support
does differ from CfE in many ways which will be explored in the course of this
paper, starting with their respective origins. Unlike the new curriculum policy
which borrowed structure and other elements from elsewhere, Glow does appear
CfE, on the other hand, makes no particular claim to be progressive, but rather
Humes, W, (2010) the authors argue that an ahistorical lack of reference in its
aspirations of the earlier developments in the policy and reduces freedom and
England in 1904 and 1988. The inclusion of RME, technology, Gaelic and the
changeover the course of a century ; six other traditional curricular areas retain
their identity at the heart of learning, namely English, Maths, Science, Social
Science, Modern Language, and Expressive Arts. The structure of the curriculum
England and Wales which are similarly composed of sequential levels, divided
into outcomes which are in turn subdivided into achievement objectives. While
globalisation, and this will be considered later in this essay, this particular
example indicates a fairly conservative approach to policy borrowing since the
The problem setting moment, (Trowler, 1998), the intial spark that started the
Glow fire would therefore be the need to develop the necessary technological
(1998) this need was identified and acted upon by Government, and involved a
Glow has its origins in the National Grid for Learning Scotland (NGfL Scotland),
which started in 1998 (SSDN Statement of Requirements). The National Grid for
Learning was an initiative designed to ensure that the educational benefits of ICT
are available to all sectors of education and beyond and was underpinned by the
2000). There is obvious divergence in the evolution of one single policy within
two countries here: the NGfL in England having been closed down in 2006,
regional National Education Networks (NEN) (see fig 1) which do not appear to
be interconnected. Glow apparently belongs to the NEN, but there are no obvious
signposts or indicators to it either on the National Glow site, or after log in. The
NGfL Scotland’s evolution into what is now GLOW seems to have taken a more
innovative and coherent course in that unlike the fragmented National Education
Network, it has provided a shared platform for participation from every local
Since the initial launch of the NGfL Scotland there has been a proliferation of
devices such as Nintendo DS; interactive white boards [IWB], desktop computers
to name but a few) and the simultaneous lowering costs of these instruments
which can be used in schools. Although the NGfL Scotland development was
given a fairly short expansion time, (having being instigated by the Government
ICT training for teachers form ther New Opportunities Fund (NOF), contributed to
Requirements) The initial developments in Glow date from 2002 , so the scope
for development of the NGfL and its subsequent influence on the future policy
such as Glow, although not insignificant, was limited in terms of time allowed.
In contrast to their disparate beginnings, the policies of Glow and CfE have
education as a driver for policy change. Levin, (in Priestley, 2002), identified six
resources
5. A marketization of education
Ozga (2007) and they go beyond the level of nation to occupy the “global
education policy field” ( Lingard, et al 2005 in Lingard and Ozga, 2007). They
support the common agendas across many nation states highlighted in
develop human captial for the information age and for national economic
identified within CfE (3 for example: the Scottish Government allocated extra
argued by Holligan and Humes (Glasgow Herald, 2009) will serve the
interests of the business sector rather than any broader conception of the
public good. This is an area where the linkage between the two policies
development of the skills these young people will need as operators in the
Implementation of Glow
policy, which only comes into existence if teachers implement and enact upon
it, and mediate it for their learners; unlike CfE which will exist in the tangible
form of the curricular area policy folders as distributed by Learning and
Many factors have influenced the implementation of Glow, and it might now
the British Council, SQA; (SSDN statement of requirements) etc. In the future
listed above is to be issued with their own log in and with then be linked in a
Given the nature of this policy, its dimensions, the numbers involved, the
model (Kelly, 2004) since local management and leadership at authority level
in every area of Scotland was a key feature of the process. The policy career
of Glow would follow a similar path to that based on Saunders (1986) and
Reynolds and Saunders (1987) in Trowler (1998); moving from the national
one; how they engage with and enact upon it. LTS appointed a Glow team:
training and support for local authorities. Leadership overtly sought to create
lead- agents for the policy. Leadership therefore was devolved via the Glow
mentors, who were offered training and support from the national GLOW
team. A pluralistic approach was encouraged at this stage with regard to how
the policy was enacted: local authorities decided how best to implement the
work for) adopted a gradual, phase-in of schools, whereby log in details were
issued to small numbers of schools at intervals until all staff could participate.
Equally, a blanket distribution of log ins to all staff from the outset could have
information to confirm this method of roll out may indeed have been
the policy rigorously at this stage through resistance to the sign-up invitation,
they hold the capacity to operationalise the policy values (Bell & Stevenson,
2006) in its intended environment, and it is in the classroom where teachers,
with varying levels of enthusiasm, skill and interest, attempt to mediate the
policy that perhaps this policy has been contested to the greatest extent.
(2006) suggest is the means by which teachers may mediate a policy and a
represent the goals of the policy – the purposes that apply to all involved. In
this regard, the partnership between Glow and CfE might be construed as
working well: one providing the vehicle for delivery of the other. There is also
consistency however with his assertion that even when the goals are
(Kennedy, A. Adapted from Brain et al. (2006); Reid (1978); and Merton (1957) ,
2010)
Although there is great encouragement to integrate Glow into learning and
enthusiasm to use ICT, and perhaps most importantly, their evaluation of its
usefulness to their practice. As well as teacher disposition, there are other structural
and cultural characteristics which will influence a teacher’s motivation to use ICT.
Recent research (Wallace, 2010) suggests that many teachers have adopted the
between contructivist teacher beliefs and use of technology for teaching and
learning purposes. This suggests a related improved engagement with the policy
implementation at whole school level goes, she claims the majority of teachers
do not feel that their school has a clear sense of direction for how GLOW could
exists amongst all teachers as to its purpose. There is also the danger that some
teachers (and leaders) may engage with the policy for administrative purposes
more managerialist agenda of accountability, and many may not engage at all.
Of course many teachers have successfully engaged with Glow and are using it
attitude to, and comptence with ICT. If social media provide the fora for the
debate, those who do not use these tools can become excluded from it. Conlon,
Impact of Glow
There is as yet, little research on the impact of Glow in schools, although there
are encouraging signs that this may improve with the emerging research by
projects like for example Edonis (Noble, 2008). In addition, Richards, (2008)
grade biology using Glow and found that attainment improved with regular use
of Glow. Richards does however qualify her findings against the scale of the
finances of the project and the paucity of research into the impact of ICT
generally.
Further to this, more recently in her blog, Richards compares the policy to the
hypothesis that in spite of the positive gains she found in her own classroom,
there is little use of GLOW to enhance learning and teaching in any meaningful
sustained way. She also raises criticisms of Glow’s reliability and functionality;
both of which are crucial to its implementation. A further criticism she makes
which has also been sporadically exercising the media, is the issue of
accountability in justifying the considerable amount of public funds involved, and
A further criticism Conlon (2008) makes is that the discourse surrounding Glow is
focused exclusively on the benefits to be derived from it; it has been one-sided in
nature and fails to take account of the opportunity costs involved. This one-
sidedness he attributes to the fact that the stakes have been raised so high
around Glow that talk of risks and threats become unmentionable. He claims the
schools. In this way, Glow could be seen as a policy by numbers (Lingard and
Ozga, 2007), the data stored and gathered on it constituting a new form of
technology of governance. However this view fails in any way to take into
account other pedagogical aspects of Glow, notably its potential for collaboration
multiple versions of collaboration; at one to one or class to class level, and the
potential learning opportunities within this one aspect are significant. Conlon’s
The more expanded view of learning being planned and executed collaboratively
off line, then shared in Glow with a wider audience is missing in this
interpretation.
itself, on account of its rapidly changing nature. It is fair to say however, that
since leadership change at the end of 2009 there has been a more consultative
ongoing debates such #Glowbetter (Glow National site 2010), giving teacher
participation in debate via web 2.0 tools such as twitter or facebook has been
2010) the new head of Glow, which will, if carried through have an impact on the
Future impact of Glow will be difficult to predict, but its potential, if the discourse
more generally suggests that it does provide small, but significant increases in
pedagogical shifts (Lemke, Coughlin, & Reifneider, 2009), reinforcing the notion
(2010).
spite of the not inconsiderable amount of funding and extensive degree of policy
advocacy that has occurred around Glow, its impact will be minimal without the
A very simple, clear and incisive observation was made of Glow recently by a
you want to make it" #glowbetter #glowstories mclaughlin_aj (Friday 16th April
via twitter). The same could be said of any attempt to analyse, understand and
Bibliography
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Acknowledgement
Grateful thanks to John Connell, i8iuCisco, for sharing the paper SSDN Statement
of Requirements