Researching IT in Education: Theory, Practice and Future Directions

Serious criticisms of research on IT in education have been published recently in both the UK and the USA. Researching IT in Education aims to provoke thought and discussion among practising researchers by considering a range of approaches to undertaking quality research. Establishing priorities and directions for future research in the sub-discipline of IT in education, the book is structured around five foci:


theory
history
research directions
methodology
research topics.

This book argues for the enormous power of IT to enable fundamental research that both refines and develops theory and practice in education. High quality research that advances knowledge and educational practice in this area will generally require longer timelines and more complex data collection and analysis methods. The authors draw attention to the value of theoretical frameworks used in mainstream educational research and highlight the early theoretical work on the subject of IT in education.
Researching IT in Education is the only book in its area to focus on methodological and research design issues. The individual chapters are contributed by expert researchers and leaders in the field from ten countries, thus providing an unusually broad but coherent international set of perspectives for the issues examined in the book.
This book will benefit anyone interested in or undertaking research on IT in education, including academics, research students, teachers and policy-makers.

Anne McDougall, John Murnane, Anthony Jones and Nick Reynolds are all at The University of Melbourne, Australia.

@contents: Selected Contents: 1. Theory and History, Questions and Methodology: Current and Future Issues in Research into ICT in Education Anne McDougall & Anthony Jones (Australia) 2. The Changing Nature of Researching IT in Education Margaret Cox (UK) 3. Technology as Trojan Horse. A ‘Generation’ of IT Practice, Policy and Research in New Zealand Schools Vince Ham (New Zealand) 4. Transformative Application of Research and Learning Praxis in Education: Current and Future Trends in ICT Integration Paul Nleya (Botswana) 5. The Practical Power of Theoretically-Informed Research into Innovation Bridget Somekh (UK) 6. Analysing the Impact of IT on Activity and Learning Steve Kennewell (UK) 7. Models for Exploring and Characterising Pedagogy with IT Mary Webb (UK) 8. Setting a New Course for Research in Information Technology Bob Munro (UK) 9. Why "What Works" is Not Enough for Research on IT in Education Geoff Romeo & Glenn Russell (Australia) 10. From Integration to Transformation Andrew Fluck (Australia) 11. ‘Educational IT’ Research Methodology: Looking Back and Moving Forward Peter Twining (UK) 12. Using IT to Study Teaching With and About IT Anthony Jones (Australia) 13. Global Interdisciplinary Research into the Diffusion of IT Innovations in Education Niki Davis (USA) 14. Design and Analysis of Technology Based Field Experiments in Mathematics: A Methodology for Networking Research Teams Rosa Maria Bottino (Italy) 15. Methods for Investigating Young Children’s Learning and Development Kleopatra Nikolopoulou (Greece) 16. Development of ICT Learning Aids for Informatics Sigrid Schubert, Peer Stechert & Stefan Freischlad (Germany) 17. A Tangled and Complex Web: Assessment, Learning and IT at the Very Heart of Teacher Knowledge Deirdre Cook (UK) 18. Visualization, Multimodality and Learning with IT John Vincent & Herminia Azinian (Australia, Argentina) 19. The Enjoyment of Learning in Digital Environments Franziska Spring-Keller (Switzerland) 20. E-Teaching Readiness of Teachers Andrea Karpati (Hungary) 21. Different Perspectives on IT and the Learning of Mathematics Anna Kristjansdottir (Iceland) 22. Intelligent Computer-Aided Assessment in Mathematics Classrooms Christine Bescherer, Ulrich Kortenkamp, Wolfgang Muller & Christian Spannagel (Germany)