Pedro Abrantes, Nuno de Almeida Alves, Paulo Coelho Dias y Carla Rodrigues: ICT …[RASE vol. 6, núm. 2: 259-273]
Academic scores
Advanced
High
Average
B
3
Average
Average
High
Basic
Average
Low
C
2
Low
Average
Low
Basic
Low
Low
↗
D
3
Average
Low
Average
Basic
Low
Average
↔
E
3
Average
Low
High
Medium
Low
Average
↔
F
2
High
Average
Low
Advanced
Average
High
G
1
Low
High
High
Medium
Average
Low
↘
H
2
High
Low
High
Advanced
Average
Average
↔
I
2
High
Low
Low
Basic
Low
Average
↔
J
1
High
High
High
Medium
High
High
↔
K
3
Low
Average
High
Medium
High
Average
↔
L
0
Average
High
Average
Advanced
High
Low
↘
evolution
High
ICT use
High
ICT strategy
ICT services
High
background
1
Students’
A
School
TPfE Stage
ICT resources
Academic scores
Table 5. ICT profile of each school (synthesis)
↗ ↘
↘
Not surprisingly, the stage of implementation of the secondary schools modernisation programmehas also been identified as an important factor for ICT development in schools. On average, schools included instages 0 and 1 (for which most resources were transferred in 2007 and 2008) have shown more intense, advanced and diversified use of ICT in pedagogical activities, although there were some exceptions: for instance, ICT use is more common in school K (stage 3) than in school G (stage 1). It would be reasonable to expect that schools engaged in stage 2 would register higher frequencyof ICT use than those more recently involved, but no differences were observed between schools engaged in stages 2 and 3. We cannot therefore exclude an alternative hypothesis: that most schools engaged in stages 0 and 1 were already the most “e-mature”, since they were those most interested in receiving ICT support, while the public program focused primarily on attaining fast results, actually reinforcing a pre-existing inequality. This may be the case due to the complex relations between public policies and local institutions (Ball & Bowe, 1992), especially in Mediterranean educational systems where a high level of formal centralism coexists with enduring local disparities (Archer, 1978; Fernández Enguita, 2001; Barroso, 2006). Finally, as in other studies (Wong et al., 2008), factors as the geographical location and the social environment of each school appeared to have little impact on ICT use. Innovative as well as traditional schools were found both in middleclass andworkingclass environments.The humble social background of students may not be an issue because of previous governmental programmes (e-Escolas) dedicated to the distribution of laptops at reduced prices (or even free of charge) to secondary students, dramatically reducing the digital divide in this way; but equally,
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