Rio de Janeiro, 29 de maio de 2003
Eu Régis Selmon Tractenberg comprometo-me,
caso meu trabalho seja aprovado pela Comissão Científica que coordena o X Congresso Internacional de
Educação a Distância da ABED, a comparecer para
sua apresentação, nos dia e hora previamente comunicados, e autorizo sua
imediata publicação no site da instituição.
Régis
Tractenberg
An Analysis of PROINFO´s Implementation in
Regis
Tractenberg
Instructional
Design
rtractenberg@hotmail.com
Resumo
O artigo resume uma avaliação qualitativa sobre o PROINFO em escolas
públicas do Estado do Rio de Janeiro. Tal avaliação foi realizada em julho de
2002, e examina seis estudos de caso em escolas do Ensino Médio. Diretores,
coordenadores de Informática Educativa, professores, e alunos relatam como
percebem o desenvolvimento do PROINFO em suas escolas a partir de variáveis
levantadas na literatura sobre inovação em ambientes educacionais. Também
prestam depoimentos Coordenadores de dois Núcleos de Tecnologia Educacional,
onde são capacitados professores para o projeto. O estudo conclui formulando
recomendações para o PROINFO com base na literatura e nas propostas dos
diferentes atores envolvidos.
Palavras chave: MEC, PROINFO,
informática educativa, ensino médio, Rio de Janeiro.
* This paper is based on the thesis “An
Evaluation of the Introduction of Computer Labs Into
Rio de Janeiro’s Public Secondary Schools”, final work for the MSc. In Telematics Applications in Education and Training,
This paper reports a
qualitative study on the implementation of PROINFO, the Brazilian government
project to introduce computers in public schools. Literature on school
innovation and ICT implementation was used to analyze the implementation policy
guidelines of PROINFO. Case studies were conducted in a sample of six schools
and two ICT support centers in order to evaluate the project’s development. In
total, 22 persons were interviewed. They reported problems and gave advice to
improve PROINFO in
In 1997 the National
Secretary for Distance Education launched PROINFO, a project with ambitious
goals which seek to enable thousands of teachers and provide ICT access for
millions of students. It introduces ICT in public schools for pedagogical
purposes aiming
PROINFO was an initiative
of the Ministry of Education to address the increasing differences between
public and private schools. It is an attempt to fight social exclusion from new
production technologies, by giving public school students
access to ICT.
The
project expects to benefit 13,4% of the 44,800 public schools in
To
accomplish this goal its implementation strategies include Installing 100.000
computers in 6.000 selected public schools and 5.000 computers in 200 NTEs -
Centers for Educational Technology, which would provide school teachers with
the proper training on educational technology. A thousand multiplier
instructors qualified in post-graduation courses were expected to run these
training / development centers, enabling 25.000 school teachers to work with
telematic resources in classroom.
NTEs
have many duties, such as teacher training, helping schools to plan for ICT
use, technical and pedagogical support and evaluation of the schools in the
region. In average 50 schools are linked to each center, but this varies
according to the number of students and geographical dispersion.
In order
to respect the pedagogical and administrative autonomy of the Brazilian states’
educational systems, the project was decentralized. Each state’s secretary of
Education is responsible for implementing PROINFO after they present a
statewide project for ICT on Education and a regional coordination for
educational technology.
The
participation of schools should be subordinated to three factors: an ICT
pedagogical plan developed by the school staff, the presence of a suitable
physical infrastructure structure and human resources development, both
provided by the state government.
The
distribution of PROINFO’s computers was defined according to the proportional
number of schools with more than 150 students and the number of students in
each state. This was done to ensure a fair distribution of resources across the
country. The basic specifications for the computers to be used in schools were
chosen according to the kind of systems mostly used in Brazilian companies, to
ensure that what is learnt by students in schools can be used in student’s
future jobs.
In order to maximize the use of the equipment distributed to the schools
and ensure a minimal level of computer use per student, PROINFO’s guidelines
propose the use of the computer labs during the three periods of classes
(morning, afternoon and night), with two students per station in a class and
with each student having at least two classes in the computer lab per week.
(PROINFO Guidelines 1997)
As
desired effects, the national project counts on the improvement of Education’s
quality, the development of new intellectual habits and skills and the
preparation of citizens capable of taking part in the new labor market
characterized by the use of ICT.
PROINFO’s
guidelines state the need to evaluate the project’s results in three main
dimensions: educational quality, efficiency of teaching and social equity, in
terms of access to ICT technologies, but it does not specify in clear terms how
this evaluation should take place. This is left for the states and schools to
decide, but at state level, nothing could be found about evaluation procedures.
By
May, 2002 PROINFO had only 23.450 computers installed in schools, far from its
goal of 100.000 (PROINFO Guidelines 1997, PROINFO website May, 2002).
Educational innovation
and ICT implementation are closely related fields of study. Janssen Reinen
states that computer use in schools can be seen as “a specific case in the
broader field of educational change” (Janssen Reinen, 1996, p.15).
Fullan (2001)
characterizes the innovation process in educational organizations as a complex
one, requiring attention to several key details both in the macro and micro
dimensions of the system, in order to have change successfully implemented. The
macro dimension relates to the social and political system that surrounds the educational
institutions, while the micro perspective refers to the individual reality and
subjective meanings given to innovation by the people involved on the
transition process. Fullan (2001) attributes special attention to the
individual perspective: it is necessary to “know what change feels like from
the point of view of the teacher, student, parent and administrator if we are
to understand the actions and reactions of individuals” (Fullan, 2001, p. XI).
The importance of
considering a broad view on change processes while keeping emphasis on the
individual perspective is shared by Collis and Moonen (2001). They provide an
overview of four major factors that influence the likelihood of engagement on
the use of new technologies by a staff member within the environmental
conditions of an educational organization. It focuses on the way he/she
perceives the usefulness of the new tools in his/her educational practices; the
level of ease to use technology; the personal motivation to use new
technologies; and how the environmental conditions influence the individual
towards the change.
According to Fullan
(2001) educational change is difficult and needs time to develop due to the
systemic forces that hold and maintain an educational system together. It
requires several years because it demands a cultural shift among teachers, who
need time to experiment, test and revise their practices, and this depends on
developing new understandings and beliefs.
School innovation
projects have to addresses the needs of the main stakeholders, presenting more
benefits than costs (Fullan, Miles and Anderson 1988). It cannot pose many
difficulties for the people involved (Collis and Moonen, 2001), and technology
needs to be reliable to be used (Cuban, 2000).
For this study, we
adapted a model which considers 1) the stages of ICT implementation, 2) the
reasons that lead to the adoption of ICT tools, 3) the plans and policies
required to initiate and maintain implementation, 4) the three dimensions of
ICT use as noted by Fullan, 5) the most important factors shown by research
which influence ICT use, and finally, 6) the effects of ICT implementation
expressed in terms of costs and benefits for students, teachers and the
educational organization (the model is available in the complete version of
this study at http://geocities.yahoo.com.br/rtractenid/).
From the perspective
of educational change theory PROINFO’s national documents reveal well designed
policies and strategies, which meet most of the conditions for successful ICT
implementation.
The analysis of
PROINFO’s policies and strategies lead us to formulate variables to investigate
whether and how the conditions for successful ICT implementation are being
applied in the schools and NTEs in
The choice for case
studies as a research method was due to several reasons. As a qualitative
methodology, case studies are adequate to hypothesize the relations between
variables of complex problems (Krathwohl, 1997). Since no specific literature
was found on PROINFO’s implementation in the state of Rio de Janeiro, the
descriptive nature of case studies is useful, since this research aims to
explore and understand what is going on in the implementation of this project
in the state schools. The possibility of using personal statements of
individuals that are currently in contact with the project is adequate to
discover which are the problems faced in PROINFO’s development and to get their
opinions about what could be done to make the project better.
The small sample of
cases normally studied in qualitative research does not allow generalizations
to whole populations. Nevertheless, selective sampling and the use of multiple
case studies enrich the understanding of the studied factors in different
settings and through different perspectives (Krathwohl, 1997). In this study,
purposive sampling applied to the selection of the participant schools and NTEs
provided these settings. Six schools, from a total of 871 schools (0.68%) and
two out of 12 NTEs in the state Rio de Janeiro (16,6%) compose our sample (we
called them NTE A and NTE B).
The schools were
chosen according to their affiliation to the state network of education, which
serves mostly secondary education, and their participation or contact with
PROINFO. Those schools were all under the support area of NTE A. The
composition of the school’s sample searched for schools with different success
levels in order to detect a wider diversity in positive and negative factors which
influence educational ICT’s implementation in
NTE B was selected to
provide information over their experience in PROINFO’s implementation in
another city which is also found in the state of
To improve the quality
of the data gathered and raise the strength of conclusions drawn from
interpretation, data source triangulation was used by collecting information
from people in different roles. One representative of each of the groups
involved in PROINFO was interviewed. This way, in each school, one student, one
ICT-user teacher, one ICT coordinator and the principal were interviewed.
Five questionnaires were designed to interview
students, ICT-user teachers, ICT coordinators, principals and NTE coordinators
according to their roles in PROINFO. The questionnaires include questions that
allow crosschecking the answers among the participants. The answer
possibilities were structured as much as possible, in order to simplify the
data analysis process. Most questions combined closed and open answers.
During the following
months three field researchers contacted the schools, NTA and NTE B, they scheduled visits and conducted the face-to-face
interviews. These field researchers were skilled in interviewing techniques,
and had experience in working with ICT and education, educational Research or
Organizational Psychology. All of them received detailed instructions by the
author of this study. Semi-structured interview questionnaires were used and
all interviews were tape-recorded. The field researchers also made additional
notes during the interviews to follow up the answers. The tape recordings were
then encoded in MP3 files in
The data about the NTEs and schools was
organized into thematic tables: infrastructure, professional development,
implementation problems and suggestions for improvement. After each table, the
results were analyzed according to the differences and similarities found in
the research sample. Some quotes taken from the interviews were used to support
the analysis made and to provide a vivid picture on the implementation of
PROINFO (not available in this paper due to length restrictions).
NTE B differs from NTE A in some points: it revealed more organization in its data about the schools it supports, and has a larger staff which includes administrative personnel and an ICT technician. NTE B has more projects to support ICT implementation in its schools such as the ´pedagogical week´ and the course for ‘mediator teachers’.
Educational
ICT specialists compose the staff of both NTEs. The Ministry of Education
provides them with occasional training in the use of Educational ICT, which is
said to be useful. NTEs’ staff also attends the state and National congress on
educational ICT, even though they don’t consider these events as of high values
for their professional development. The State government does not grant the
NTEs with specialization courses as it is mention in the State Plan for
educational ICT.
The NTEs complain about their lack of autonomy
to invest in the development of their own staff through the acquisition of
books and subscription of courses. They also complain about little autonomy to
improve their infrastructure, buying new equipment and upgrading their software
and hardware.
The amount of NTEs in the state is very small,
and their staff’s workload is below the national requirements of forty hours
per instructor, because they have other jobs. The NTEs performance is not in
their optimum level. They have small classes with high drop out rates due to
factors that include: lack of administrative personnel (to contact schools and
gather schoolteachers for training) low commitment of NTEs’ instructors, lack
of support of principals in allowing their teachers to attend to the training,
distance between the schools and the NTE, teachers’ overload and their reduced
motivation to attend the courses.
The NTEs are failing to provide the schools
with the technical support they need, and this is seriously impairing the
development of PROINFO in
There are evidences that at least some of the
NTE’s instructors feel unmotivated for PROINFO because considerable part of
their time has been dedicated to give basic ICT lessons, something that may be
considered a waist of their skills. In the perception of NTEs instructors, a
small percentage of the teachers they qualify in educational ICT actually take
their students to the computer labs, and they do not multiply their knowledge
in their schools as it was expected by the Ministry of Education.
The NTEs are not providing the schools with
in-site training because their staff is reduced and this activity involves more
costs than their budget allow.
PROINFO currently provides several public
schools with computer labs, and training in the use of new ICT-based
pedagogies. Most of the case-study schools are situated somewhere in between
the initiation and implementation phases, and just one have achieved
institutionalization level, since the pedagogical use of ICT became regular
activities for at least some part at that school.
In each school, whenever it was possible, the
Principal, the ICT coordinator, an ICT user teacher and a student were
interviewed.
Two schools were considered to have a low level
of ICT use, two a medium level of ICT use and two schools were considered to
have high level users. It seems that the schools with better implementation
results are those whose principals support ICT use, have autonomy to repair and
upgrade their infrastructure and possess active ICT coordinators.
Even though the schools elaborate educational
ICT projects to receive PROINFO’s computer labs, they face obstacles for their
implementation, and the central coordination levels of the project (NTEs, State
ICT Coordination) conduct no regular follow ups, evaluations or feedback
procedures to help them in overcoming their implementation problems.
Implementing educational ICT is not felt
practical by teachers due to its high personal costs in terms of time and money
they have to spend for personal development, conflicts with their principals
and difficulties on the use of the computer labs. Furthermore, they receive
little benefits, such as the opportunity to provide their students with a
better Education through the contact with ICT.
The data collected suggests that the majority
of computer labs in the state are closed most of the time. This is due to the
lack of well-qualified teachers to use them, the reduced number of computers
available in the labs due to their design or hardware malfunction. Principals’
also seem to fear having the computers broken so they keep the labs closed.
PROINFO is not achieving the goal of providing
each student with two ICT supported classes per week. Still just a minority of
teachers knows how to use ICT in education, and even fewer make use of the
computer lab. Among the most important reasons for this is the reduced number
of computers in the labs and the difficulties concerning splitting their 40
students sized classes.
The interviews revealed that Rio de Janeiro’s
schools do not match PROINFO’s standards of one computer for each 25 students,
and that the software and hardware received by them, although similar to market
configurations at the time of delivery, soon become malfunctioning and outdated
due to deficient maintenance and absence of upgrade policies. Schools say they
have no autonomy even to employ their own funds to repair and upgrade their
hardware and software.
While all NTEs in the state seem to have
Internet access, the same goal was not achieved in PROINFO’s schools.
Two environmental factors are not directly
related to PROINFO, but influence all educational projects in the schools: the
overload of students in classrooms and the schools’ lack of personnel.
Finally, the statements reveal a great deal of
disbelief in the central coordination structures of PROINFO, which are
perceived as non-concerned about results.
Advices for improvement
The actual conditions of PROINFO do not
stimulate implementation, because teachers and schools face too much
difficulties and personal costs to use their computer labs and apply
educational ICT.
Both the NTEs and the schools made several
comparable suggestions for the improvement of PROINFO. To make implementation
more practical and easy, it is necessary to support teachers with training
time, financial support and to reduce the problems they face when using the
computer labs. The suggestions meant to improve practicality and easiness of
use of ICT in the schools include:
·
Schools
should have autonomy to fix their hardware;
·
Better
technical support should be provided;
·
The
computer labs should be available all the time;
·
The
computer labs should be able to receive classes of 40 students at the same
time;
·
Teachers
should be given financial support for professional development.
To improve teacher development, teachers need
to receive financial support for their development in educational ICT, they
must be allowed to study educational ICT at the NTEs during their schedule at
their schools, and more specifically, they should learn educational ICT applied
to the subjects they teach.
To stimulate professional learning communities
in the state, the educational ICT Coordination, and the NTEs need to promote
pedagogical weeks for the exchange of information among local schools and
include teachers in the announcements of seminars and congresses on ICT and
Education.
Despite the attention given to teacher training
in PROINFO there are evidences that it is still not enough to lead teachers to
the use of ICT in their classes. Based on Collis and Moonen (2001) it is also
possible to advice the state Secretary of Education to make available a
distance learning web environment. This action would represent a great
potential and flexibility for PROINFO’s implementation in the state, since it
could serve schools and NTEs with on-line pedagogical resources, as well as for
teacher training.
Infrastructure: availability of
hardware / adequate software
Accomplishing large-scale distribution of
computer labs and software to several public schools is a great success of
PROINFO, nevertheless infrastructure needs careful attention from PROINFO’s
central coordination. Teachers need adequate hardware and software for their
practice, so it would be adequate to create conditions to repair and upgraded
software and hardware at the schools systematically, otherwise the computer
labs will loose gradually their educational value and usability as it is
happening.
Other suggestions that concerns schools’
infrastructure are to provide schools with free Internet access, and adopt the
use of free software.
Innovation planning
Planning is an important factor for
implementation success (Fullan, Miles and Anderson, 1988; Fullan, 2001 and
Collis and Moonen, 2001), and it does not seem to be a problem for the schools
in PROINFO, since most of them reported pedagogical plans for ICT in education.
The major problem of the schools is to implement their plans, due to lack of
personnel, adequate environment conditions and support from central project’s
coordination.
Principal / ICT coordinator’s support
The support of principals and ICT coordinators is a major influence in the use of ICT in schools (Collis and Moonen, 2001, Janssen Reinen, 1996). Most schools had supportive principals who were willing to create conditions for ICT implementation, nevertheless, these principals face limitations like the impossibility to have an ICT coordinator to lead the schools development in the use of educational technology or allowing their teachers to leave their classes and go to the NTEs for training.
The
actual level of support given by the unofficial ICT coordinators in the schools
is low, because they do not have much time to dedicate to the schools’ ICT
projects. The only school that had a full time ICT coordinator with autonomy to
fix their computers, revealed better implementation
results than the other schools. This suggests that having such professional
present in the schools may improve significantly the development of PROINFO. Professionals
with full-time dedication to the implementation of educational technology in
schools could perform the following activities:
·
Repair the
school’s hardware or contact the technical support provided in the hardware
guarantee, the NTEs’ support or independent technicians paid by the schools.
·
Upgrade
software, and hardware with school’s funds, if available;
·
Raise
funds in the community for the improvement of the computer lab;
·
Teach
regular basic and advanced ICT courses to students and teachers;
·
Train
teachers in general uses of ICT in Education (true multipliers);
·
Assist
students in NTE’s or Ministry of Education’s on-line courses;
·
Support
teachers in planning their ICT-based classes;
·
Train and
guide students as assistants and ICT technicians;
·
Keep the
computer lab open during all school day;
·
Taking
care of classes whose teachers are at the NTEs studying.
School environment stability
The most important environmental factors which
impair PROINFO in the state of
Central office direction, commitment and support
Administrative pressure and support are
desirable in the innovation process (Fullan, 2001), and PROINFO is deficient in
both. Inefficient pedagogical guidance and technical support is provided by the
NTEs. A condition for good central administration is to keep clear
communication channels with the implementors and to show commitment to the
change process, but the Ministry of Education, the state ICT coordination and
the NTEs are not fulfilling these needs. The interviewees requested better
material support in terms of hardware and software upgrades, more personnel,
greater autonomy in the project, easier communication with the NTEs,
pedagogical guidance and (surprisingly) more pressure for results.
Implementation monitoring and problem solving
Visscher (2002) and Witziers (1999) state the importance of feedback for improving school performance, however, most schools in the sample did not have any procedure to evaluate their progress in the use of ICT in education. Only one NTE mentioned a Ministry of Education’s evaluation which did not return to the NTEs or schools in the form of feedback.
The effort put into identification and
improvement of problems and evaluating progress could help to motivate the
participants of a process of educational change (Fullan, Miles and Anderson,
1988).
The schools required that the Ministry of
Education and the State Secretary of Education set clear goals for the NTEs and
the schools that receive PROINFO’s computer labs. It was suggested to
redistribute resources and equipment according to the school’s merit, that is,
whether they are using the computers they received or not.
Community support
Students and parents support the use of ICT in
the schools, but in general did not seem to make pressure over schools or
government agencies for the improvement of educational ICT use.
Case studies’ results
cannot be generalized for the whole population of schools in the state of
The results suggested
by this report urge for more studies about PROINFO´s implementation, not only
in the State of
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