Introduction of computers in education : state of the art in eight countries

In 1989, the IEA Computers in Education study collected data on computer use in elementary, lower- and upper secondary education in 22 countries. This paper presents some preliminary results for lower secondary education in Belgium-Flemish, Belgium-French, France, Greece, Japan, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Switzerland and the U.S.A. The major questions that are addressed are related to the availability and the use of hard- and software, the problems experienced in introducing computers in schools and the attitudes of the principals towards computers. The results show that the number of schools equipped with computers and the number of computers available in schools increased dramatically over the past few years. Despite this fact, computers still are only used by a limited number of teachers, and mainly for teaching students about computers; the integration of computers in existing subjects is still limited. The major problems experienced in educational practice are the lack of sufficient software of high quality and insufficiently trained teachers.