The study is funded by the PROject on MultiMedia In Teacher Training (PROMMITT). PROMMITT is part of a Dutch national initiative aiming at the stimulation of use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in education. The focus of PROMMITT is on ICT use in teacher education.

The study "A Portrait of Emergent Practices" aims at identifying, describing and analyzing existing promising and innovative examples of ICT use in education, so called emergent practices, all over the world. We use the term ‘emergent’ here, because these practices anticipate elements of future education.

Emergent practices are expected to fulfil two functions in the stimulation of integration of ICT in education. Firstly, they can fulfil an exemplary function by offering a concrete operationalisation of integration of ICT in education. Secondly, they may serve a transfer function because there is the possibility that teachers from other schools will adopt emergent practices.

The present study aims to contribute to a better understanding of emergent practices. The aim is not only to present promising examples of innovative use of technology (emergent practices) to Dutch educators, but also to contribute to the development of instruments for monitoring coming emergent practices to be developed by teacher education institutions in the Netherlands in co-operation with primary and secondary education. The project runs from July 1997 - October 1998.

The purpose of this paper is to give an overview of the study for an international audience. We will particularly focus on the conceptual framework developed for the study. The full results of the study will not be available before Autumn 1998.

The first part of the study is a definition study. It includes the development of a conceptual framework of characteristics of emergent practices. Another component is a description of characteristics of emergent practices that likely contribute to successful transfer and implementation in other situations.

The second part of the study is a series of case studies of existing emergent practices. In these case studies we focus on innovative use of ICT at the classroom level. The teacher and the students are the primary units of analysis. Based on the conceptual framework, the emergent practices selected for this study will fit into the transition or transformation stage of technology use. The selection of emergent practices mainly takes place by searching recent databases on technology awards in education and suggestions from experts in the field.

In total, 20 cases will be investigated: 10 in primary/junior high school and 10 in teacher education colleges. While the Dutch government not only wants to learn from existing examples in the Netherlands (10 cases), they explicitly want to study promising examples from other countries as well (also 10 cases).

Each emergent practice will be visited on location. Data will be collected from documents (school technology plan), interviews (with school management, computer co-ordinator, teachers and students) and classroom observations. For the classroom observations, use will be made of an innovation profile (Van den Akker & Voogt, 1994), describing the essential characteristics of technology use in an operational manner. The first ten cases will be visited by two researchers in order to get information on the inter-rater reliability of the instruments. Within-case analysis as well as cross-case analysis will be carried out.

Advocates of technology use in education (Office of Technology Assessment, 1995; Panel on Educational Technology, 1997; Watson, 1996) mention three major reasons for using ICT in education: 1) new demands from society (an emphasis on meta-cognition, information management and social skills), 2) a new - constructivist - approach to teaching and learning (e.g. students’ responsibility for their own learning, teachers and learners as partners), and 3) to solve problems in present day education (e.g. drop-outs, individualized education, poor transfer of school knowledge to real life). Use of ICT in the classroom contributes to at least one of these motives, but more often to a combination.

Particularly the demands from society for independent and flexible citizens challenges education implies a challenge for education. Learning is not longer considered as the pure transfer of knowledge and skills to students, but as a process in which the student activily constructs his own knowledge and is responsible for his own learning process. In this constructivist approach, learning can be seen as a process that takes place in a field in which four components may be distinguished, 1) the role of the teacher 2) the role of the student 3) goals and content 4) the infrastructure.

Itzkan (1994) distinguishes between three stages of ICT in education. In the substitution stage, ICT is solely being used as a replacement for tasks of the teacher, with the specific aim to make education more effective, or to provide more possibilities for individualizing education. Drill & practice and tutorials are good examples of this use of technology. In the stage of transition not only the introduction of ICT is present, but the new technologies also require teaching practices to be changed. In this stage, computer applications not only structure the learning process, but students themselves need to structure increasingly more of their own learning process. Word-processing, use of databases and spreadsheets are examples of this use of technology, as is (more recently) the use of the World Wide Web as a global library. In the transformation stage, teaching practices needs to be changed as well as the underlying rationale. Examples of the latter stage are to be found in small scale projects only. One example is project Jason, where scientists and students discuss research findings online (Knezek et al., in press). Teachers and students become partners in the learning process. The virtual classroom emerges.

In Itzkan’s approach the transition and transformation stage of ICT use in education might facilitate a learning process in which students actively construct their own knowledge.

In our view, ‘emergent practices’ contribute to the innovation of education, not only by introducing ICT in education (substitution) but at least by changing existing teaching practices (transition) and ultimately by changing the underlying rationale for education (transformation).

Taking this as a starting-point the selection of emergent practices for the research project is guided by the following criteria :

• The use of ICT affects other components of the learning process. From the preceding follows that in emergent practices the use of ICT cannot be limited to replacement of aspects from the present educational practice only.
• The emergent practice formulates an answer to new demands that society poses in addition to a renewed vision of education and learning.
• The emergent practice realises elements of education of the future in the actual learning process.

While we also focus on characteristics of emergent practices that likely contribute to successful transfer and implementation in other situations the following additional criteria for selection of emergent practices are involved:

• The emergent practice is a concrete practical example (thus not prototype or pilot projects)(sustainability).
• The emergent practice can be made accessible for others in an appealing manner (exemplary function).
• The emergent practice has the potential to be transferred to other contexts (transferability).

Based on the literature (see for an extended overview Voogt & Odenthal, 1997) a number of educational elements can be distinguished for each of the components of the learning process as portrayed in Figure 1. In our view these educational elements can be considered as characteristics of emergent practices. Table 1 presents an overview of these characteristics of emergent practices. To be clear: we do not expect to find all these characteristics in emergent practices, nor do we suggest a hierarchy in the way the elements are sequenced. One of the aspects of the present study is to see whether certain combinations of the characteristics can be found in emergent practices.

As has been said before, emergent practices are expected to fulfil two functions in the stimulation of integration of ICT in education. They offer a concrete operationalisation of innovative use of ICT in education, and therefore are an example to others (exemplary function). Besides, when other teachers adopt emergent practices transfer of knowledge and experience in ICT integration takes place (transfer function).

The extent to which an emergent practice is embedded in the educational practice of the teacher as well as in her environment influences the exemplary and transfer function they can perform. Therefore it is assumed that the sustainability of the emergent practice in its environments increases the ability to fulfil both functions. Characteristics which are supposed to determine the sustainability of an emergent practice are included in table 2.

The exemplary function of an emergent practice is dependent on (1) the extent to which it gives a concrete image of future education and (2) its potential for inspiring others. In table 3 the characteristics are included which are supposed to influence the examplary role of an emergent practice.

The transferability of an emergent practice can be inferred from those characteristics of an emergent practice that make it possible for potential users to estimate its advantages over an existing practice. The exemplary function and the transferability are closely related, because the decision to transfer is made on the basis of the example. In the transferability, therefore, similar characteristics are important as in the exemplary function (see table 3). A number of characteristics, specific for the transferability are added to these (see table 4).

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