THE PREPARATION OF TEACHERS TO USE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ACROSS THE CURRICULUM - A CRITIQUE OF THE APPROACHES IN ENGLAND AND WALES

Many countries ar e moving towards a situation whereby information technology is a formally specified component of the school curriculum. This paper charts the progress of such a development in England and Wales and, in particular, considers the approaches adopted to meeting the associated inservice training needs of the two countries' teachers. In order to overcome the lack of published material on the quality of training that has occurred the author embarked upon research work based in five local authorities, and approximately thirty schools, in England and Wales during the period 1989 to 1991. This revealed that, for a variety of reasons, many establishments and some local authorities have not been able to make the progress that they desired and an analysis of the reasons for this indicates that considerably more attention needs to be given to the nature of the inset provision, particularly in regard to the rime allocated to ongoing teacher development.