Oversold & Underused – Computers in the Classroom - Hardcover

Cuban, Larry

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 067400602X ISBN 13: 9780674006027

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 2001

Synopsis

Impelled by a demand for increasing American strength in the new global economy, many educators, public officials, business leaders, and parents argue that school computers and Internet access will improve academic learning and prepare students for an information-based workplace. Just how valid is this argument? In "Oversold and Underused", Larry Cuban argues that when teachers are not given a say in how the technology might reshape schools, computers are merely souped-up typewriters and classrooms continue to run much as they did a generation ago. In his studies of early childhood, high school, and university classrooms in Silicon Valley, he found that students and teachers use the new technologies far less in the classroom than they do at home, and that teachers who use computers for instruction do so infrequently and unimaginatively. Cuban points out that historical and organizational economic contexts influence how teachers use technical innovations. Computers can be useful when teachers sufficiently understand the technology themselves, believe it will enhance learning, and have the power to shape their own curricula. But these conditions can't be met without a broader and deeper commitment to public education beyond preparing workers. More attention, Cuban says, needs to be paid to the civic and social goals of schooling, goals that make the question of how many computers are in classrooms trivial.

About this title

Review:

Cuban...has written extensively about school reform (e.g., "How Scholars Trumped Teachers"). In his latest work, he disputes the policymakers who have thrust computers into schools without much regard for the educators who are expected to improve students' learning with the new technologies. In fact, Cuban's 1999-2000 study of Silicon Valley schools, discussed and analyzed in the first two-thirds of the book, showed that less than ten percent of the teachers used their classroom computers at least once a week. Another unanticipated finding was that there was no evidence that information technologies increased students' academic achievement. Arguing that the educational revolution that computers were expected to incite has progressed far too slowly, he recommends that administrators involve teachers in the planning and implementation of technology plans and allow them more unstructured time, technical support, and professional development opportunities to optimize the educational benefits that computers offer.

About the Author:

Larry Cuban is Professor Emeritus of Education at Stanford University and past president of the American Educational Research Association.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 067400602X
• ISBN 13: 9780674006027
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256