THEME: Technology Planning for the New Millennium Some national and state approaches to integrating IT in education. Andrew E. Fluck, University of Tasmania Andrew.Fluck@utas.edu.au http://www.educ.utas.edu.au/users/afluck Abstract Schools generally in Australia, as elsewhere, are increasingly IT-deficient compared to homes, workplaces and other areas of society (Moursund & Bielefeldt, 1999, p 5). Given this dearth of IT support, it is difficult to frame a meaningful policy for the inclusion of computers across the curriculum, because the equipment and its potential fail to match real-world opportunities. Such policies need to be contextually-aware, and are subject to pre-conditions such as economic opportunity, political will, equipment validity and availability, support infrastructure, networking, software and so on. The tensions that have emerged include issues such as IT literacy for work and economic rationalist arguments for IT improving the effectiveness of current educational processes. This paper presents findings from a study of four nations, including Australia. Each has taken a different approach to the policy-coordination of classroom computing, teacher professional development and IT infrastructure management. In many ways the social and economic expectations of this innovation are very similar around the globe. In other ways, the will to sustain these changes, which strike deep into accepted conventional wisdom about the nature of education, remains questionable. Background Over the past twenty years, computers have become commonplace in most Australian schools. This has also been the case in a large number of other countries. As students have been introduced to the new technology, a diversity of approaches have been used to integrate this experience into the curriculum. Some of these were reported in Fluck (1995), which compared the British national curriculum with the Common and Agreed National Goals for Schooling in Australia. The areas of learning produced by both processes were remarkably similar, but their approach to information technology was very different. The proposal put forward in the previous paper on this topic was subsequently refined and extended by the Computer Education Discussion Group at the University of Tasmania, and published as the KITOs (Key Information Technology Outcomes for students). A commentary on this was presented at a previous ACEC conference (Fluck, 1998). Following the Adelaide Declaration on National Goals for Schooling in the Twenty-first Century (DETYA, 1999), there has been an increased emphasis on the information technology skills of students. Recent studies such as Real Time - Computers, Change and Schooling from the Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs (Meredyth, 1999) have shown that Australian students generally develop their IT skills at home, and are more proficient than most of their teachers. This could be because teachers face great challenges in successfully integrating computers into the educational process, especially resourcing. The author has undertaken further research into the ways in which various nations and more local areas have implemented curriculum change in this area, and interviewed individuals involved in both development and implementation in November 1999. This paper summarises the findings of these conversations, and identifies the major components of national/state approaches in England, USA, Australia and Canada. The contribution of the Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs, Canberra, and the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada in facilitating this research is gratefully acknowledged.