Educational Technology, Policy, and Practice

This essay probes the relations between educational policy and teaching practice in instructional innovations. It also takes up explanations for the slow pace of instructional reform, and the seeming failure of many exciting instructional innovations. Computer technology is the case in point. One theme in the essay is that policies and programs depend on practice. Another is that instructional practice in schools is situated in a larger organization and a longer history of academic instruction than are usually considered. These angles offer a useful view of educational policy and innovation, that solves some problems in inherited accounts. But they require that analysts cross several academic barriers, joining studies of policy and school organization to studies of instructional practice, and doing so in large social and historical perspectives.