Roger Austin & William Hunter – Educational Technology in the Service of Community Cohesion

Introduction

Research on teacher education has often been regarded as fragmented (e.g., Cochran-Smith & Villegas, 2015; Cochran-Smith et al., 2015). This critique is perhaps especially applicable to research related to educational technologies, including online education (e.g., Barbour & Hodges, 2024). However, related disciplines sometimes show a different pattern—e.g., in psychology, the intergroup contact theory (Allport, 1954) has been the focus of over 70 years of research (Paolini et al., 2021). That body of work inspired over 30 years of research on the use of educational technologies to bring students and teachers from Ireland and Northern Ireland together across the various boundaries that separate them.

Research from the European Studies Project in Ireland and Great Britain (ESP) and the Dissolving Boundaries Programme (DBP) involved large numbers of schools on both sides of the border, with some 36,000 pupils in the ESP and over 50,000 in DBP. ESP linked schools in Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, England and mainland Europe; DBP linked schools in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

Five lessons from research on cross-border school links

ESP and DBP research focused on schools working in small partnerships with children learning together both online and face-to-face (e.g., Austin & Hunter, 2013).

Lesson 1: Teacher professional development, including an introduction to contact theory, was critical for the success of the work.

Teachers learned that attitude change requires that all pupils have equal status, contact between groups needed to be long term and based on group-to-group communication, and that they needed strong institutional support from their schools. With guidance from project staff and their respective statutory teacher advisory organisations teachers jointly planned their use of technology. For example, at annual DBP planning conferences partner schools planned both online and face-to-face work for the year and prepared a learning agreement that would be signed by both schools and endorsed by their principals.

In both projects, teachers were encouraged to start with time for pupils to get acquainted before embarking on academic work.

Lesson 2: Focus the work on the needs and interests of the learners.

This meant that there was a strong alignment between DBP goals, the curriculum and school policies related to technology use. It also made a place for social interaction between pupils as a key element in building trust and friendships. The ESP designed modules related to the history and geography curricula of all the schools; DBP structured joint collaborative learning around any curriculum area focused on knowledge building more than information acquisition. Teachers were thus not expected to engage with controversial topics head-on but rather allow identity and citizenship issues to emerge naturally through shared study and contact between the pupils.

Lesson 3: Plan for sustainability.

Appropriate planning aimed to include children from primary, secondary and special schools and included a partnership with two coordinating universities and with school advisory teams so that the advisors were well-placed to nominate schools where staff would commit to the project for an entire school year. At year’s end, the thirty schools were encouraged to continue working together and attend the planning conference without additional financial support.

Lesson 4: Make appropriate use of technology.

The use of a common set of information and communications technology (ICT) tools supported the core project goals of collaborative learning. In the DBP, software was chosen to ensure that there was scope for pupils to work together in small teams asynchronously. Teachers also, particularly in special and primary schools, were given guidance on innovative ways to use real-time videoconferencing. In short, a common set of ICT tools was deployed to support the core project goals of collaborative learning.

Lesson 5: Monitor and evaluate.

The progress of partnerships was monitored and evaluated on a regular basis and intervention provided additional support if online activity seemed limited. The role of the Universities also gave priority to research-based practice published in peer-reviewed journals, enabling the insights of the project to be shared with a global audience.

Conclusion

Over 30 years of evidence-based practice examining the role of communications technologies in promoting school collaboration in the interest of improved social cohesion has created an environment in which schools and teachers may contribute to continued progress in community development.

Looking ahead, there is a need to examine the ways artificial intelligence (AI) might be used to enhance engagement in cross-border partnerships. For example, AI might serve to automate routine teaching and administrative tasks or by facilitating the analysis of data from online interactions to identify areas where additional support might help students to remain (or become) actively engaged.

Moreover, through engagement, students might become more confident and comfortable in working with peers from different communities.

References

Austin R. and Hunter W. (2013). Online Learning and Community Cohesion: Linking Schools, New York and London, Routledge ISBN: 9780415510288.

Allport G.W. (1954). The Nature of Prejudice. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Barbour, M. K., & Hodges, C. B. (2024). Preparing teachers for effective K-12 online learning in the age of disruptions: A call for transforming teacher education. Open Praxis, 16(4), 583-594.

Cochran-Smith, M., & Villegas, A. M. (2015). Framing teacher preparation research: An overview of the field, part 1. Journal of Teacher Education, 66(1), 7-20.

Cochran-Smith, M., Villegas, A. M., Abrams, L., Chavez-Moreno, L., Mills, T., & Stern, R. (2015). Critiquing teacher preparation research: An overview of the field, part II. Journal of teacher education, 66(2), 109-121.

Paolini, S., White, F. A., Tropp, L. R., Turner, R. N., Page‐Gould, E., Barlow, F. K., & Gómez, Á. (2021). Intergroup contact research in the 21st century: Lessons learned and forward progress if we remain open. Journal of Social Issues, 77(1), 11-37.