Education, Technology and Higher Order Thinking

Submission note: Submitted in total fulfilment for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the School of Education, College of Arts, Social Sciences and Commerce, La Trobe University, Victoria, Australia.

This research examines whether teachers have a clearly articulated pedagogy for the use of technology in English domain learning and if this pedagogy includes the development of higher order thinking. The rhetoric surrounding the introduction of emerging technologies to education has made it difficult for educators to critically assess and be cautiously sceptical (Selwyn, 2014) about technology. The ‘problem’ of technology in education is not that it is there, it is that it is not ‘just’ a digital device. It has implicit and explicit social, economic and political implications for all stakeholders, acknowledged or not. Technology in education has been described as an ‘unbearable disturbance to education’ (Marshall, 2002, p. 5), identified as a ‘wicked problem’ (Mishra and Koehler, 2008) and a conundrum (Arntzen, Krug, and Wen, 2008). It is important therefore that educators examine the gap between potential and reality for the use of technology in secondary English Domain classrooms and whether higher order thinking skills are being nurtured with the use of these technologies. A qualitative situated case study methodology was used to examine the use of technologies in middle school English Domain classrooms and the fostering of higher order thinking. The study was located in a secondary school in regional Victoria, Australia with a mixed participant group of students and teachers. The findings of the study indicated that higher order thinking skills were not being explicitly taught regardless of whether technology was being used in the classroom or not. The implications of the study are that: English teachers need to have a firmer understanding of their pedagogical understanding of the use of technologies in their classrooms; explicit teaching of higher order thinking skills needs to be developed in English classrooms alongside the use of technologies. The findings of the study indicated that it is imperative that educators have a sound theoretical and pedagogical understanding of technology use in learning environment.