Effective Strategies for Information Technology in Teacher Education: the use of an evolving permeation model

This paper examines the debate in recent years about the most effective strategy for establishing the use of information technology in teacher training establishments in the United Kingdom.Evidence is presented to support the notion that efforts should continue to permeate the use of information technology throughout the courses of such establishments.However, the paper suggests that staff development and the degree of permeation of information technology within the culture develop alongside each other.As one of these variables change, it feeds the development of the other; neither is an independent variable though both are influenced by external factors.Recognising this as a relatively slow process, the paper proposes a model of evolutionary permeation.In acknowledging the difficulties of such a strategy, the author uses a specific course, a discrete module in which information technology has a special role, as an exemplar for such units.The principles that lie behind the design of that course are used to generate ideas about the role of the discrete module during a transitional phase in which an institution is slowly moving towards permeated use of information technology.