Educational Technology: Promise and Performance

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Abstract
Having disowned its behaviourist origins, educational technology has failed to find an alternative theoretical basis for its activities. Its ostensible contribution has been a much‐vaunted cyclical model, of which almost all parts have come under attack. Even educational technologists themselves have not been able to practise the systems approach they preach, nor even agree on which of its components is crucial. This discrepancy has led to professional insecurity among educational technologists and a dangerous tendency to overkill in their sales talk. Instead, the real contribution of educational technology has been the promotion of empiricism and innovation. Methods of distance learning, modern presentation systems, assessment aimed at diagnosis rather than selection ‐‐ all these have helped to promote quality and experiment in educational practice. However, social and economic aspects of the learning milieu are crucial to the success of innovations. Although educational technologists have not been as preoccupied as educational researchers with eliminating sources of variation in ‘natural’ situations, they have not taken sufficient account of the work of sociologists, nor paid enough attention to the economic and situational pressures on teachers which militate against innovation.

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