This thesis's main trust is on the proletarianisation of teaching, the purpose of this article is to suggest that teacher's work is subject to the same force as other kinds of work and so to develop parallels. Currently, considerable pressure is build...
This thesis's main trust is on the proletarianisation of teaching, the purpose of this article is to suggest that teacher's work is subject to the same force as other kinds of work and so to develop parallels. Currently, considerable pressure is building to have teaching and school curricula be totally prespecified and tightly controlled for the purpose of 'efficiency', 'cost effectiveness', and 'accountability'.
The result of study are as follows:
First, The technology is not just an assemblage of machines and their accompanying software. It embodies a form of thinking that orients a person to approach the world in a particular way. Computers involve ways of thinking that are primarily technical. The more the new technology transforms the classroom in its own image, the more a technical logic will replace critical, political and ethical understanding. 'How to' will replace 'why'.
Second, One of the major effects of the current emphasis on computers in the classroom may again be the deskilling and depowering of a considerable of teachers. A number of elements through which curricula and teaching are controlled on the aspects of deskilling and reskilling of labor, and on the separation of conception from execution in teachers' work. Obviously, some teachers will find their jobs enriched by the technology.
Most teachers have to rely on pre-packaged sets of material, existing software, and specially purchased material. The reliance on pre-packaged software can have a number of long term effects, it can cause a decided loss of important skills and dispositions on the part of teachers. Instead of teachers having the time and the skill to do their own curriculum planning and deliberation, they become isolated executors of someone else's plans, procedures and evaluative mechanism.
Third, separation of conception from execution in teachers' work, namely the deskilling of teachers by the technology is a sort of technical control. Teachers are more and more face with the prospect of being deskilled of encroachment of technical control procedure into the curriculum in schools. The movement to rationalize and control the act of teaching and content and evaluation of the curriculum is very real.
Unless teachers and students are able to deal honestly and critically with these complex ethical and social issues, only those now with the power to control technology's uses will have the capacity to act. Our task as educators is to make sure that when technology enters the classroom it is there for politically, economically, and educationally wise reasons, not because powerful groups may be redefining our major educational goals in their own image.