If teachers are to be able to make informed decisions about the relevance of ICT resources to meet their own and their pupils' needs it is important that they become aware of a broad range of ICT resources and their potential. At present, primary and secondary (non-computing) teachers' use of ICT is limited in both range and frequency of use, although levels of use are higher in secondary than primary. Word-processing is the most frequent use, and for many teachers the only use, made of computers. Use of other generic software such as spreadsheets, database software, desktop publishing and specific educational software packages is much lower, across both primary and secondary sectors. Relatively little use is made of the Internet despite the fact that, in the secondary sector at least, the majority of schools have access.

Teachers see a need to develop more confidence in using the technology as a necessary prerequisite to exploring more effective ways of using ICT in the classroom. As a result their own priorities are still for more technical skills and knowledge despite the fact that many have already received some basic ICT training.

The evidence suggests that teachers are still in the early stages of ICT development. While they are interested in developing their skills and knowledge, many teachers still regard ICT as an add-on or extra in their teaching. ICT has not yet been absorbed into their core teaching and learning practice. A certain lack of confidence in their own skills and in the reliability of the technology appears to be acting as a barrier to fuller integration of ICT by teachers as a core part of their teaching. This feeling is more marked in the primary sector where the lack of technical support or specialist computing department advice is a particular problem.

Integration

Others have moved on in terms of integrating ICT into their existing teaching practice and view ICT as 'just another tool' to teach the existing curriculum in the existing way albeit with recognisable benefits such as learner motivation and increased access to information. They are still very far from the kind of radical questioning of the educational environment which Papert suggests will mark the fullest impact of ICT on education.

In terms of the developmental phases recognised over several years in the Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow (ACOT) model in the United States, it would appear that the majority of teachers are still in the early 'entry' or 'adoption' stages of ICT development. There is some limited movement into the 'adaptation' phase which is marked by more thorough integration of ICT in support of learning and teaching. For most schools it is not appropriate to expect the same pace of development which is seen in ACOT's technology-rich classrooms. It will be interesting, however, to observe the impact of an ACOT approach, which provides ready access to ICT and support for teacher development, in the pilot currently being undertaken in one school in Fife.

To help overcome the "add-on" effect (with all the pressures of being seen as an additional burden) and to encourage greater integration of ICT into the curriculum it will be important that future training approaches focus on the benefits and applications of ICT while continuing to provide the necessary grounding in technical skills. If ICT is to be an integral element of teaching and learning, it is also vital that teachers are able to relate the training they are offered to their existing goals and aspirations. Although most are interested in developing their ICT skills and knowledge, other developments such as Higher Still are seen as higher priorities. ICT needs to be presented convincingly as a vehicle through which the curriculum can be developed and delivered rather than as a separate entity.

While teachers need to be aware of a broad range of ICT resources, their training needs will relate to the technologies which they have available to them on a day-to-day basis. Conversely, no matter how good the quality of the training is, if it is not related to the ICT resources available in school it is likely to be seen by teachers as a waste of time and effort. This is true not only of the type of ICT applications available but also the type of operating systems available. Teachers continue to be faced with a variety of hardware and operating systems as they move between schools and authorities in their career and, in some cases, within the individual school itself. In the short-term at least it will be important that training remains flexible enough to accommodate differences in hardware and operating systems and encourages tecahers themselves to be flexible enought to move between systems if necessary.

Roles of Teachers and ITC

As might be expected, teachers are currently very much focused around their role in the classroom. Their views of the potential and value of ICT tend, therefore, to be focused around its use with pupils. Yet the effective teacher, as in any other profession, plays a number of roles: she/he is not only a classroom practitioner but is also a manager, a planner, and a learner. The role of life-long learner is particularly important in underpinning all other roles. It is the mark of professionals that they continue to develop, to seek evidence of best practice, to take on board innovation, and keep up-to-date. For the teacher this means updating their subject knowledge as well as their skills and knowledge of new approaches to teaching, managing and planning. In other words, the effective teacher must also be an effective learner. Yet there is very little evidence that teachers are 'personalising' ICT as a learning tool for themselves.

In relation to their roles as planners and managers, teachers express some interest in developing knowledge related to the selection and general management of ICT resources but, once again, the focus is on how ICT resources may be better selected, purchased and managed for use in the classroom. There is very little evidence that teachers generally are relating ICT to any great extent to other facets of their professional life, e.g. in professional development, or administration.

This limited view of the potential of ICT may be due to an understandable need to prioritise needs and aspirations in favour of the role which lies at the heart of the teaching profession, that of the classroom practioner. It may also be partly explained by a simple lack of familiarity with a wide range of ICT. In either case it could be expected that as technology and training become more available teachers will expand their own use of ICT.

If, however, this highly focused vision of ICT as a tool for pupils is symptomatic of teachers' lack of reflection on themselves as learners, as information seekers, and as decision-makers, this has more worrying implications for developments such as the National Grid for Learning. The concept of the Grid assumes that teachers will see its value as a source of information, teaching materials, development and adminstrative support. It assumes that teachers will be willing to contribute and that schools will be interested in commiting resources to access the Grid. There is little evidence from this study that teachers think of ICT in this way. Indeed, recent studies of student teachers and teachers in Scotland point to the fact that many teachers lack confidence in terms of finding and using information, lack skills in evaluating the quality of resources, find it difficult to reflect on themselves as learners, and routinely rely on a relatively narrow range of information sources to keep themselves up-to-date.

Reflective practice

Therefore future approaches to training should encourage reflection; should emphasise benefits to teachers as well as pupils; and should encourage more decision-making and self-assessment on the part of teachers. This should encourage "ownership" of ICT and should help create a more critical appreciation of the benefits and limitations of ICT.

The use of ICT will only be as effective as the skills of the person using it and, as is increasingly being acknowledged, information literacy will be as important as ICT literacy. Conversely, an information literate person will tend to use ICT. Any future education and training initiatives which fail to address teachers' and pupils' information literacy needs are therefore likely to hinder the effective use of ICT as a learning and teaching resource.

It is not only the content of staff development and training which is important. Teachers and schools are already at different stages of ICT development. Some have moved ahead while others have remained more cautious, aware as they are of the many other competing pressures on limited funds. They will vary in their needs and in their readiness to embark on ICT training. It is important, therefore, that training opportunities for practising teachers remain flexible enough to cope with the varying pace of development.

Similarly, it is important that there is ongoing provision for staff development to enable teachers to move on once they have acquired the basic technical skills which many still feel they need and so that they can keep pace with the introduction of new resources into school.

Teachers need to be encouraged to integrate self-development of ICT skills and knowledge within their normal development planning.

No matter how well designed, training alone will not be sufficient to develop effective use of ICT in schools. It is clear from the evidence of teachers, head teachers and education authorities across Scotland that training is only effective if teachers have access to the technology. This is not simply a matter of having more ICT resources but of finding ways to manage existing resources to maximise access. The management of ICT is an issue at classroom and at school level. There are still many hurdles to be overcome in learning how best to provide fair and equal access to hardware and software. Short of every child and teacher having her/his own computer, the key to the management of ICT seems to be partly a matter of information management and partly a matter of effective planning. It is likely to involve:

• finding ways to alert teachers to what is available in their school and where it is situated;
• finding efficient ways to share access to the technology across classes, levels and/or subjects (this could be through placing technology in general access areas or providing ways of safely moving the technology and/or pupils around school);
• choosing and using ICT in ways which are suited to not only the task and learning outcomes but also the dynamics and constraints of classroom conditions.

There can be no prescriptive solutions to these problems. There is likely to be no single approach which would be right for all schools and it is more important that teachers and managers in schools are made aware of the need to consider such issues in relation to their own school. Librarians and technicians will also have a role to play in information and ICT management. Staff development and training can help by focusing attention on these issues and by disseminating examples of good practice.

There is scope for more research in areas such as information management and classroom management of ICT and there is scope to learn from those teachers and schools already working towards their own solutions to these issues.

This is part of the wider issue of evaluating and selecting ICT in relation to teaching and learning goals. While there are many examples of schools seeking ways to share the task of selecting and evaluating expensive ICT resources, this is seen as a time-consuming task. While it was not a central issue of this study, the evidence from interviews suggests that primary schools are more used to the task of sharing resources and/or shared evaluation and selection of ICT resources on a school-wide basis. Secondary schools, operating through subject departments, appear to have developed fewer solutions to the issue of cross-curricular sharing of resources. Secondary schools have the option to site ICT hardware in general access areas such as the school library where they will also have professional support for pupils and teachers using the technology. However, apart from the library's own collection, software resources are often purchased on a departmental basis and any cross-curricular potential may be lost through lack of knowledge of what is held in subject bases or lack of willingness to give wider access to resources purchased through a department's own budget.

Another element in the provision of access to ICT resources is, inevitably, financial planning. ICT resources are widely regarded by teachers as expensive compared with many other basic resources. At a school-wide level head teachers are concerned not only about the initial purchase of adequate levels of hardware but also about the long-term financial commitment needed to replace old and obsolete equipment. Head teachers can find themselves with the dilemma of wanting to encourage ICT use but worrying about how they will be able to satisfy expectations which will rise as teachers' begin to integrate ICT more into their work.

There are of course no easy solutions to these problems and, as with ICT management issues, solutions will need to be developed locally in line with each schools' priorities and the other demands on resources. Knowledge of possible solutions (e.g. establishing rolling programmes for replacement of hardware) and dissemination of examples of interesting practice could be helpful. The recent BECTA publication 'Connecting Schools, Networking People' provides an overview of ICT planning, purchasing and good practice for the NGfL which spells out the kinds of decisions schools are faced with when investing in electronic networking. More fundamentally, these challenges point to the need for another level of ICT skills and knowledge - the ability to build ICT into the strategic planning and decision-making of a school or department. This requires not only the need to understand the potential and suitability of ICT resources for teaching, learning and management, but also the need to be able to weigh up the relative benefits of different strategies for resource allocation, siting of equipment, prioritising and so on. Clearly such skills and knowledge may be built into future staff-development objectives for those teachers whose careers progress along management paths. However, in the short-term it will be important to address the needs of those who are already in a position to be taking these kind of decisions.

A final, and very practical issue which emerges from teachers in both primary and secondary schools is that of lack of time. Teachers are particularly concerned that they do not have sufficient time in the school day to develop their own skills in using ICT, to practise and adapt ideas, to experiment, to develop new teaching materials for use in the classroom. There is evidence to show that access to a computer at home can make the difference between turning ideas into reality or allowing initial enthusiasm to be dissipated. Ready access to a computer at home provides the space and time needed by many teachers to enable them to capitalise on ICT training. Schools or education authorities which can develop schemes for allowing teachers to have access to computers for home use are likely to find that this will raise the pace of development in schools.

The need for ongoing support is also seen as an essential component of ICT development. It is clear that many teachers rely on colleagues for ICT support and advice. Primary schools have few other options with those in rural areas finding technical support particularly problematic. While there are some imaginative schemes, there is a great deal of reliance on the goodwill and enthusiasm of knowledgable teachers and head teachers. While peer support is an important ingredient in the success of any organisation, the overreliance on a few overburdened colleagues clearly worries many teachers. A number of more formalised models for support networks are beginning to emerge within education authorities and there is scope for more research into the kind of helpdesk support which is likely to prove most effective for teachers.

Teachers in secondary schools have the opportunity to draw on the support of technicians and librarians but, at the end of the day, the support they are able to give depends on the quality of their own knowledge and skills. By ensuring that these educational support staff have access to the development opportunities they need, schools and authorities will go some way towards providing the kind of localised support which teachers value. There is scope for further research into the ICT skills and knowledge needs of school librarians and technicians.

Allied to the need for technical support and advice is the need for support in selecting and evaluating ICT resources. This is only possible if teachers are familiar enough with ICT and its applications to develop clear evaluation criteria. Much is done by word of mouth and advice from other colleagues. However, even where teachers are aware of what they need and have sufficient experience of ICT to be able to evaluate the relevance and quality, they often feel they lack the time to appraise ICT resources fully. The need for support in this task, and particularly the kind of support which comes from other teachers, is something they value. There is a need for support mechanisms which provide teachers with information on what is available and critical evaluation of quality and relevance of resources to the Scottish curriculum. There is also a need for any such mechansims to allow teachers themselves to share their views with others.

Support from the top is also essential. Teachers need to know where ICT development fits into the schools priorities and development plans. They need to feel that the time spent in developing their skills and knowledge is valued and they need to know that they are not working in isolation. Teachers are well aware of the many competing claims on resources. They do not expect miracles in terms of resource provision. Much can be done, however, to ensure that they feel supported in progressing their ideas as far as possible, that there are fair and equal opportunities for training and development at whatever level can be realistically supported, and that there is someone they can turn to for advice when necessary. Head teachers have a particular role to play in stimulating this kind of supportive environment. They in turn need to be aware of the benefits of ICT across the school, in all contexts, and can set examples by being seen to be using ICT themselves where appropriate. This role, together with the need to take a lead on strategic planning and budgeting for ICT (see above) suggests that ICT should be seen as an important facet of the new Scottish head teacher qualification.