The Rhetoric of ICT and the New Language of Learning: A Critical Analysis of the Use of ICT in the Curricular Field

Abstract

This article focuses on how we perceive new technology and technological development within educational settings, and seeks to establish a critical link between the rhetoric of information and communications technology (ICT) and what Biesta called ‘the new language of learning’. Within this ‘new language’ the learner is a consumer, with needs that must be fulfilled by the teacher. This rhetoric implies that ‘teaching’ has been replaced by ‘learning’ and challenges the conventional curricula in many respects. The article applies Biesta's perspective to a concrete scrutiny of current trends in education and the introduction of ICT in education in particular. The analysis gives support to Biesta's main hypothesis, but it also indicates that the radical shift from teaching to learning is accompanied, and we might possibly say influenced, by the rhetoric connected to the use of ICT. In recent Norwegian curricular texts ICT takes a position as the rationalising tools by which teaching can be made efficient, individually designed and flexible. The intention is to critically examine the way in which teaching is more or less automatically replaced by learning, the influence the rhetoric of ICT has had, and how ICT and learning seem to be connected through merely rhetorical couplings.