Ines marquez chisholm

Computers and the Classroom Environment

The classroom environment is a multifaceted social milieu wherein teacher and students, enmeshed in their own natal cultures and diverse microcultures, interact and contribute to a shared classroom culture. How teachers organize instruction (Newman, 1990, p. 8) and shape the classroom culture have a definite impact on learning (Guernsey, 1989; Grossman, 1991). Likewise, how teachers plan for, use, supplement, and integrate computers determine the educational value of computer use as well as what and how their students learn via the technology. For instance, teachers who expose limited English proficient students primarily to drill and tutorial applications merely promote low level cognitive skills (Cohen, 1988/89; Johnson, 1987; Cummins & Sayers, 1990). Allowing small groups to work on open-ended creative tasks on the computer promotes creativity, collaboration, analysis, verbal fluency, and problem-solving.

Because educational computing is imbued with underlying cultural values and beliefs, computers eventually alter the existing classroom culture (Cochran-Smith, Paris, & Kahn, 1991, p. 68). For example, computers invite peer interaction as children navigate a program, observe each other, accomplish a task, create a product or play a game. Computers can also help teachers reach previously unattainable instructional goals, such as bringing together students from different cultural backgrounds. Through telecommunications, children can improve their cross-cultural skills and intercultural understanding (Mehan, 1989). In short, the computer can alter the teacher’s goals, the allocation of class time, how children participate, as well as the social and language processes with the classroom.

What children and teachers know about technology also modifies the classroom culture. Depending upon students’ age, socio-economic level, and geographic location, children may have greater contact and experience with computers than teachers. The older the child and the more financially affluent the family, the more likely it is that the child has regular hands-on experience with computers. As a result, these children are less intimidated by computers and have a greater willingness to use the technology than teachers who have never or seldom worked with computers. As a result, the unidirectional learning paradigm of adult teaching child disappears. The new classroom culture promotes multidirectional learning of technology (see Figure 1).

Learning occurs between peers. In addition to the formal learning in university computer courses, there is the informal learning of teachers sharing knowledge and classroom applications. Administrators learn from their teachers, and teachers learn from school administrators. Similarly, children learn from each other. Children seek help from their classroom computer expert, observe each other’s work and creative ventures, and share their discoveries of ‘how to’. In addition to peer learning, there is intergenerational learning as adults teach children how to navigate software and use the hardware. Older children teach younger children, and these, in turn, then teach older children what they have mastered or discovered. Interestingly, adults also learn from children. Some children, either due to prior experience, talent, curiosity, or cognitive disposition, quickly outpace their teachers. Consequently, teachers become learners and students become teachers. Thus multidirectional learning invests classroom culture with a unique cooperative and open environment where all are learners and all are teachers.

Just as the computer alters the classroom, the classroom culture, in turn, alters the computer. Classrooms valuing independence and individualization may prefer computer use for individual practice and personal learning. On the other hand, classrooms focusing on discovery learning and collaboration will use the computer as a creative tool for small groups. In the same way, creative classrooms may use software applications in inventive ways. A database might be used to list information on whales or to compile data on the weather over several weeks. A graphics program might help students create a dictionary on local fauna, create a report on dwellings in different cultures, or to learn about geometric figures.

Equally important, cultural and individual learning preferences mediate the use of computers. Comparisons across cultural and ethnic groups indicate that groups differ from each other in their preference towards specific learning styles. Although the effect of ethnicity on cognitive and motivational styles persists across social-class segments within a given ethnic group (Banks, 1988), there remains much variability within each cultural group. In reality, cultural preferences in modes of learning and interacting with others represent “cultural configurations for groups” (Banks, 1981, pp. 4849) rather than individual behavior within the group.

Sensitivity to children’s preferences in perceiving, remembering, and problem-solving modality promotes the use of computer software and CAI activities that are supportive of how students learn best The “preferred mode of communication, preferred mode of relating and preferred mode of obtaining support, acceptance and recognition” (Singh, 1988, p. 363) should guide classroom organization for computing. Adjusting instructional computing practices to learning preferences is not however, simply a matter of matching educational practices and computer applications to specific learning preferences of entire cultural groups. To assume that all members of a cultural group have the same cognitive and learning preferences is to disregard individuality. Consequently, flexibility, variety, and balance in instructional computing practices best support a variety of cultural and individual differences. For example, working in dyads or triads at the computer matches the preference for group problem solving and personal interaction frequently exhibited by many non-European groups, such as Puerto Rican, Mexican American, and Afro American (Anderson, 1988). Likewise an informal environment which allows movement from computer to other areas of the room complements the kinesthetic style of many Afro American children (Jacobs, 1987, Jacobs, 1990, Jalali, 1989). Software that uses pictures and graphic images to explain ideas may be useful for some Native Americans who prefer concrete imagery as a way of understanding and remembering (More, 1989).