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The influence of ICT on the interactivity of teaching

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Abstract

There has been much concern with the ideas of interactive and dialogic teaching during recent years in the UK, ideas which have emerged from international comparisons. This paper concerns a research project in Wales which sought to explore how the interactive features of information and communication technology (ICT) support interactivity in teaching. The project found that much use of ICT by good teachers was at a relatively superficial level of interaction, yet when teachers used a deeper, more dialogic, level of interactivity in teaching, they achieved improvements in learning whether they used ICT or not. The potential of ICT to support more dialogic teaching was not being fully exploited. The paper reports the findings of the classroom observation dimension of the project, and examines the implications for pedagogical practices and the development/dissemination of ICT resources which can support more dialogic interactivity.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the contribution of other project team members—Howard Tanner, Sonia Jones, Lynne Meiring, Nigel Norman, John Parkinson and Gerran Thomas—who carried out much of the analysis reported here. The project was carried out with funding from the Economic and Social Research Council, grant number RES-139-25-0167

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Correspondence to Gary Beauchamp.

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Beauchamp, G., Kennewell, S. The influence of ICT on the interactivity of teaching. Educ Inf Technol 13, 305–315 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-008-9071-y

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