Richard Millwood
email: richard.millwood@tcd.ie

From Mathematics Teacher to Computer Assisted Learning Researcher

Keywords: mathematics education, computer assisted learning, computing, computer studies, curriculum development, educational research

In this article, I discuss a journey from Mathematics and Computer Studies teacher in secondary school to an educational researcher in computer assisted learning. Along the way, in collaboration with other early pioneer teachers and encouraged by visionary education advisors a personal kit computer was constructed in 1978, an educational simulation created in 1979, before employment as an educational simulation developer as part of the UK Computers in the Curriculum project from 1980 to 1990. Although a specific case, issues of general interest about major upheavals in the educational and technology worlds and personal issues in an unusual and ground-breaking career are discussed.

Introduction 1.1 University

I graduated from university in 1976 with a degree in Mathematics and Physics. I had undertaken two computing courses in my studies, one to develop programming skills in Fortran and the second, described as Advanced Computing, was simply to develop a more ambitious project, which I failed! These early days at university involved the punching holes in 80-column cards and constructing a stack of such cards, each of which represented one line of program code. The cycle of trial and error to improve programs took a day, leaving the cards at the computing centre reception on one day and collecting them and a printout on the next.

Teaching

When I left university, it was to work at an inner London school to teach mathematics -there were no facilities to pursue computing in this job, but the next year in 1977 I left and took up a post at another London school where programming was taught and thus begun my educational computing career.

The Early Days of Educational Computing in UK Schools

The State of the Art

This early career coincided with the development of microcomputers which became increasingly affordable for any school to explore as a focus for teaching computer studies or a tool for engaging children in thinking about other subjects. Until this moment, very few schools in the UK had any direct contact with computers except through local authority and higher education services to take mark-sense 80-column cards, carefully coded in BASIC with pencil marks before being whisked away on a motorbike to the local centre only to return a week later with a print-out saying 'Syntax error at line 10' and ready for corrections to be made by the learner -such was the experience in 1977 at the second school I joined.

Mathematics

My main activity was to teach mathematics and it was notable then that the Schools Mathematics Project (SMP), first developed in 1961 and taught to me in school, was coming to the end of its popularity. SMP was a mathematics curriculum designed partly in response to the Sputnik launch by the Soviet Union, which also led to the 'New Maths'. Much was done in SMP mathematics to provide an intellectual foundation for computer science, and just as real computers began to be available to children to explore, its modernism began a decline in popularity! In this school, the mathematics department and indeed the whole school was beginning a reappraisal of all curricula to focus on the challenge of mixed-ability teaching and seeking curriculum developments which could tackle this. One such development was the Secondary Mathematics Individual Learning Experiment (SMILE), which invited teachers to collaborate to design a resource-base scheme for students to follow individual pathways through an agreed mapping of tasks to key curriculum areas and levels. Although this school did not adopt the scheme, SMILE became hugely influential in my development and understanding of design for learning.

Computer Studies

Computers Studies in the school was taught to Certificate of Secondary Education (CSE) level, an examination through which students could attain an award at school leaving age (16) which was equivalent to a pass at the then predominant O-level qualification. The curriculum focused on a theoretical and historical account of the development of computers, an analysis of their component parts, a sense of the wider societal use of computers and their applications, some skills in flowcharting and a small amount of programming. In my first year, this programming was undertaken, as described earlier, through mark-sense cards on a weekly turnaround, but each year I taught brought change and new opportunity. The development of this subject was supported by an advisory service led by inspector Derek Esterson and advisor Bryan Weaver who organized courses and meetings for teachers. In addition the school was part of a consortium of schools developing the CSE examination in what was called 'Mode 3' form -both the questions and syllabus were developed by teachers with both examination and coursework marked by teachers checked by the examination boards' moderation processes to assure quality. This creative and participative design opportunity was very influential for me and my future career.

Teletype Interactivity

A telephone line and teletype was installed in the mathematics staff preparation room. The teletype was an electronic typewriter that could print onto a roll of paper at the mercurial pace of 11 characters per second (a page of 60 lines and 80 characters per line might thus take around a minute to print). This equipment allowed interactive programming through the telephone handset placed in an acoustic coupler and modem connected to the City of London Polytechnic's minicomputer. Although slow by modern standards, this facility permitted a quicker turnaround to develop a program, but was not located in the classroom and thus hard to integrate into lessons. On the other hand, it became a route to connect with other professionals, the local authority advisory staff and indeed other computer services in other higher education institutions through email. The only drawback was that the head of department ran an after school meat butchery business using the telephone for customers to place orders, and was not best pleased if I used it after lessons!

Kit Computers

In 1978, many kit computers began to be available to the general public to purchase and build. In my case, I saved up the £230 (about £1,100 in 2013 terms) for a NASCOM II single board computer. This computer used the then powerful Z-80 central processing unit, boasted 2 kilobytes of memory, three quarters of which was available to me to use in my programs, came with a keyboard and connected to a domestic television. I could (just about) save programs to audiotape, but had to write programs by directly entering hexadecimal codes into the memory, so spent time poring over the Z-80 instruction set to discover what was possible, and acting as my own assembler -writing mnemonics for instructions and translating into the hexadecimal alongside. A great deal of learning went on after assembling the kit with a soldering iron and I developed a profound understanding of the fetch-execute cycle and the underlying operation of a computer.

A Microcomputer for Education

In 1979 the school set aside budget for the purchase of a microcomputer which was designed and marketed to education. The Research Machines 380Z had been adopted as the standard for use in the Inner London Education Authority and some money offered to schools to help with purchase. This computer, although still storing programs onto audio cassette, was considerably more powerful, including the opportunity to use computer graphics on an 80 by 60 grid and a BASIC interpreter so that programming could be more readily related to real world problems. This computer displayed its output on a small black and white television monitor and was also capable of being connected through the telephone/acoustic coupler to interactive services and, more powerfully, to resources so that computer programs could be downloaded and used after saving to audio cassette. This connection could be made to both the City of London Polytechnic service and to other local authorities -I remember downloading new software from the then Hatfield Polytechnic in Hertfordshire. Unlike the modern internet, these were point-to-point connections made through individual telephone numbers, but despite this, there was a powerful sense of connectivity and opportunity that was remarkable for the time in such a humble setting.

Designing for Learning

Creating a Simulation

The new school computer became a regular visitor to my home, despite weighing several kilograms and being a two handed, two journey job to carry to my car. Ever since as a child seeing a computer simulate a frictionless ball, bouncing around a perfectly elastic snooker table on the television programme 'Tomorrow's World', I had craved the chance to make a program like it. I now set about writing a BASIC program to do just this, purely for my own gratification, and thus the program SNOOKER was born. I added pockets, friction, restitution (energy lost on bouncing) and an interactive opportunity to set the direction and pace of the ball. If it landed on a pocket a success message was displayed, varied to reflect the number of attempts it had taken. I had conceived it as a test of my capability and as a game, so proudly showed it to my students in the school. I was surprised to find they liked it, wanted to play with it together and argue with each other about the angles. One even went to the cupboard to find a protractor to hold up against the screen in order to estimate the angle to pocket the ball. It was my first experience of the power of the computer to support learning of another subject, and launched a career in computer assisted learning. The motivation, persistence and delight in the students' eyes had made a huge impact on my educational thinking.

Consolidating the Design Thinking

As a consequence of this success, I signed up to a course titled 'BASIC Programs for Teaching -a course on program writing' on the design of educational software which was being offered by the Polytechnic of the South Bank in London. This course was led by Morfydd Edwards and Susan Eisenbach and introduced me to the evaluation outcomes of the National Development Programme in Computer Assisted Learning (NDPCAL). Although that project had been at higher education level, the evaluation findings proposed four categories of computer use which might support learning: instructional, revelatory, conjectural and emancipatory. This offered me an early practical analysis to inform my own designs.

Professional development

Through all of these activities I met with other teachers in London who were developing educational software and joined the group 'Microcomputers in Computer Education' (MICE) led by Bryan Weaver, the advisory teacher for computer studies in the ILEA. Our goal was to collaborate to create interactive programs for learning concepts in computer studies itself -a typical example was to visually portray sorting algorithms.

My own proposed program was intended to visually simulate the layout and operations of the central processing unit of a computer and would respond to a simplified assembly language program. My intention was to bring these to life in a 'revelatory' mode [START_REF] Millwood | Strategies for Computer Assisted Learning Masters Thesis, King's College London[END_REF]) and relate them visually to the computer hardware.

Although there had been a growing interest in teaching programming concepts through animations in the context of higher education, it was new to be focussing such innovation on secondary school. Our work made impact on the practice of colleagues in the Inner London Education Authority and at the time was considered a vital part of the development of teaching computer studies there, with its work reported regularly in the newsletter distributed to computer studies teachers in London by the advisory service.

Research, Design and Development as a Career

Programming Full Time

By 1980, I realised that I wanted to spend all of my time developing educational programs and I set about looking for posts that might permit it. There was little or no commercial market at the time for such materials and the only place where I could see opportunity was in university education departments where curriculum development projects had been undertaken to research this new area. There were two key projects at the time. The first was titled 'Investigations into Teaching with Microcomputers as an Aid' (ITMA), a collaboration between The College of St Mark and St John and Nottingham University -it focussed at first on Mathematics education, but broadened into Geography and other subjects. The other was the 'Computers in the Curriculum Project' (CIC) based at the Centre for Science and Mathematics Education at Chelsea College London University. This project focussed at the time on science simulations for sixth form students and had been distributing software to schools globally on punched paper tape to be loaded onto central computers and operated by the kind of teletype that I had been using in school. Posts were advertised in both projects and I was offered the job with the CIC project, in the beginning to redesign the paper-type / print-out simulations for the new screen-based microcomputers.

Interoperability and Standards

A major concern for the CIC project was to ensure that owners of the varied kinds of microcomputer then available could access the software we developed. This meant either re-writing each program to suit the specific variant of BASIC and computer graphics / keyboard that each computer had to or find a way to write once using standards that would enable easy implementation in each platform. The latter course was developed by creating a library of subroutines in BASIC which attempted to provide a layer to separate machine specific issues from the educational and logical design of the program. I eventually became the leader on this task and created and maintained the guidance for a growing team of programmers in the project.

Development Methodology

The project also deployed and developed a methodology for the design and development of the educational experience. This involved groups of subject teachers working together with a programmer -ideas would be generated based on challenges faced in teaching together with perceptions of what a computer could do to tackle the challenges. Simulations of expensive equipment, complex or time consuming experiments or indeed dangerous manufacturing processes were often at the heart of the work, only lightly touching on the use of the computer to encourage debate, collaboration or make choices within difficult issues, although this became more prevalent as the project matured.

To develop a unit, the teachers would complete a form which outlined the design, share these with the project's leadership and once agreement found, the programmer would begin to work with one or two of the teachers on each idea. Key concepts included the program's navigational structure, the underlying scientific model and the development of a teachers' and students' guide.

The result of the team's work would be trialled in all the schools of the wider disciplinary group and observations brought back to an evaluative discussion which may have led to change, improvement or rejection.

Finally the guides would be typeset for publication, edited by a member of the CIC project, and the computer program would be checked on the platforms for publication before being duplicated on floppy disk.

Materials were then distributed through publishers Edward Arnold or Longman Group and promoted at conferences, professional development events and subject discipline meetings.

For me as a programmer, exposure to the educational and pedagogical debates as each program was designed led to an increasing mastery of these as key issues to the success of our work and thus programming alone did not satisfy!

Lecturing in Education and National Leadership

Towards the end of the decade I began to be more and more involved in the core business of the teacher education department within which I was employed. My newfound understanding of educational issues allowed me to lecture and supervise student's work. My role became part time as a mathematics education lecturer, visiting students in practice in schools and as a lecturer on a Masters level course relating particularly to computers in education.

At the same time, I took the post, based in the Computers in the Curriculum Project sponsored by the then national organisation Microelectonics in Education Support Unit (MESU) as a research fellow in software interoperability. I helped found the Educational Developers Software Forum, where I could exercise national leadership on the way in which we could tackle the burgeoning range of hardware and systems becoming available in the late eighties. I published studies which clarified the role of new software environments and their potential in educational computing.

Mental Models and Doctoral Research

As I was based in a highly respected educational research unit, attending seminars and taking part in meetings related to education more widely, I was invited to join the London Mental Models group led by the late Joan Bliss. This multidisciplinary research group involved staff in science, mathematics and history education, but also in language, cognitive psychology, educational computing, expert systems and artificial intelligence. The group provided me with a regular and powerful discourse to engage with in relation to the role of computers in learning and in particular, analysing the nature of modelling and simulation software and its potential for learning. I participated in the meetings and contributed ideas to seminars considering models of learning with technology.

This engagement led to a proposal to undertake PhD research with Prof Paul Black. I was invited to undertake two tasks to enter the course -an essay on technology and learning and to follow the Masters level course in Research Methods. I completed both and was about to set out on this course until swept up in the technological wave of interest in multimedia, which led me to work with Prof Stephen Heppell in 1990 to build the Ultralab research team. The PhD has recently (2013) been re-engaged with, but now reported as a retrospective reflection on my practice!

Conclusions

This article describes the first half of a career which has always been interdisciplinary and constantly compromised by the emergence of technologies inviting re-appraisal of the direction taken. As Alison Hudson points out, there are many professionals now operating as learning technologists or educational developers, with much confusion about their academic and professional status as the disruption made by new technologies continues to be felt in both schools and higher education.

Hudson's study suggests that: "…both groups occupy a highly politicised position, are affected by the shifting value of social, cultural and economic capital in the constantly changing higher education, are subject to struggle regarding 'position' and agency and are susceptible to the demands of new power regimes and technological solutions." [START_REF] Hudson | New Professionals and New Technologies in New Higher Education? Thesis, Nationella Forskarskolan i Pedagogiskt Arbete[END_REF], Abstract This struggle with 'position' has made identity difficult, since the combination of disciplines necessary to carry out my work has shifted from instructional design, to multimedia creativity, and although not reported here, to course design and ultimately the design of school and higher education itself. Thus I have never 'settled down' in any subject disciplinary sense, instead obtaining coherence from the focus on design, development, marketing, teaching and leadership in the creation of innovative 'products' at many levels.

Fig 1 :

 1 Fig 1: An acoustic coupler and modem -the telephone handset rested on the two cups to transmit and receive digital data encoded as sound frequencies


William F Keane
email: william.keane@emmaus.vic.edu.au

Keywords: change agents, professional development, in-service programs 1

Following the introduction of microcomputers into schools in the late 1970s, National Policy was developed which focused on the use of computers in non-computing subjects. The Victorian strategy for the implementation of the National Computers in Education Program was the development of a week-long in-service course which aimed to develop seeding pairs of teachers who would act as change agents when they returned to school. This chapter looks back at the case studies of two schools which sent teachers to the in-service. The case studies were initially presented in a Master of Educational Studies degree at Monash University. This chapter looks back at the way that professional development was designed to bring about change in schools with respect to computer use, how two schools made use of the seeding pair teachers and what issues emerged as a result.

The Victorian State Computer Education Committee's

Seeding Pair In-service Program: Two Case Studies Introduction

In 1970, as third form student at Xavier College, I was privileged to be able to do computer programming one period a week as part of the Mathematics curriculum. Under the guidance of our teacher 'Basher' we straightened paper clips to make holes in punch cards and place the cards carefully in stacks to send to a computer at Monash University. At one stage it was mooted that we might go on an excursion to see the machine but our hopes of doing that were dashed when we were told that the pristine environment which housed the computer would be compromised by a visit of thirty 14 year olds. It seemed that the closest any of us would get to a computer was the imagined ones in the pages of the Fantastic Four comic book. However, within a few short years the development of the so-called microcomputers meant that computers could begin to come into schools [START_REF] Walker | The development of educational computing policy in the Victorian school system, 1976-1985[END_REF]. From a comparatively modest, hobbyist beginning there was rapid change; so much so that by 1982 in Victoria a subject association, the Computer Education Group Victoria (CEGV) had been formed, a journal (COM 3) had begun and Computer Science had been accredited as a Year 12 subject [START_REF] Bigum | Coming to terms with computers in schools[END_REF].

Interest in the provision of computers in schools developed rapidly to the point where it became a focus of government priority. Following the election of the Federal Labor Government in 1983 the Commonwealth Schools Commission established the National Advisory Committee on Computers in Schools (NACCS) which, among other things, set aside money for the development of in-service courses [START_REF] Bigum | Coming to terms with computers in schools[END_REF]. School education is largely a State Government responsibility which meant that "while the Schools Commission's Computers in Education Program was a Commonwealth initiative its delivery was via state instrumentalities" [START_REF] Bigum | Coming to terms with computers in schools[END_REF]. As the program was to be administered in each state, there would be differences between the states and evaluation of the programs and their impact would be at the state level.

At the time I was looking around for the topic for my Master of Educational Studies project at Monash University. My supervisor, who was involved in the evaluations, suggested that I take part in the case study evaluations. The resulting project was a study of two schools which sent teachers to an in-service course which was part of the Victorian response to the National Computer Education Program. With each state given considerable latitude, the Victorian response, which began in 1984, was designed by officers at the State Computer Education Centre. The result was the deployment, in Stage 1 of a number of week-long courses [START_REF] Ingvarson | Factors affecting the impact of in-service courses for teachers: implications for policy[END_REF]. Later, in 1985, a Stage 2 course was developed so that, between 1984 and 1986 over 2000 teachers attended courses on the applications of what were called, at the time, microcomputers. It is interesting and instructive to look back at what was a major professional development and change initiative at a turning point in education.

The Seeding Pair In-Service Courses

As indicated above, the in-service courses in Victoria were designed through the State Computer Education Centre (SCEC) to operate in two stages. Initially, schools were invited to send two teachers, one of whom had to be from a non-Maths or Science background and one of whom had to be female. The week-long in-service program was designed with the non-user in mind. It was hoped that the in-service would make these users proficient in computer use, break down barriers in the use of computers and provide an introduction to the range of software available. In terms of computer use the main aim for the non-user could be simply described as familiarisation [START_REF] Ingvarson | Factors affecting the impact of in-service courses for teachers: implications for policy[END_REF].

In addition to having the teachers who attended the course become familiar with computers, the course planners had a second agenda. It was intended that the teachers who attended the in-service courses would act as change agents when they returned to their schools. This second agenda was a key driver about the selection of the teachers who attended from the school. The seeding pair teachers, as they were called, were expected to carry the seeds of what they learned on the in-service back with them to their school. It was intended that they would provide training at the school level on what could be done with the computers in the classroom. The idea was that the seeding pair teachers would use computers in their own teaching and preparation, contribute to future discussions and inspire and be of assistance to their colleagues in the use of computers. They would be expected to take part in policy development and make a contribution towards future directions in the use of computers in their school [START_REF] Ingvarson | Factors affecting the impact of in-service courses for teachers: implications for policy[END_REF].

The Use of Computers in Schools

It was clear that there was a vision of what a good school would look like as a result of the seeding pair in-service. This vision was a reflection of the literature of the time. Whereas there was, by 1984, an established Year 12 Computer Science course in Victoria there was a concern that the use of computers was being held captive by specialist computer interests. Part of the concern at the time was that "it appears that computers are increasingly becoming a sign of a 'good school' and that the acquisition by the school of computers has an important 'symbolic role'" [START_REF] Firkin | Computer Culture in the Classroom[END_REF]. The consequence of this was the seemingly unbreakable link between the maths/ science area and computers, the crowding of the timetable and the problem of adequate access for students and teachers. One of the battles of this time was between the dominant model of computers being housed in rooms or laboratories and the fear that this model was a barrier to others making use of the computers. This might not have been such a problem if the computer rooms in schools had remained empty of formal classes but, in fact, the opposite tended to be the case. It seemed that it was important to principals that such an expensive facility be fully utilised.

The link between computers and the maths and science areas led to fears that girls would be either excluded or less inclined to pursue computers. Typical of the concerns expressed at the time was the argument that, with respect to computing, "teaching methods, content, classroom dynamics and lack of female role models all work to discourage girls from participating in this area" [START_REF] Davidson | Women and Computers Workshop[END_REF]. It was not just the use of computers but how they were being used which was vitally important. There was a belief that computer use in education needed to move beyond the specialist study of the computer itself. This led to the debate about whether computers were better understood as tools or topics [START_REF] Walker | The development of educational computing policy in the Victorian school system, 1976-1985[END_REF].

It was soon understood that any attempt at making educational use of computers across the curriculum was predicated on teacher development [START_REF] Firkin | Computer Culture in the Classroom[END_REF]. While one way to make use of computers in different subjects was to use packaged program, some critics thought that this had significant limitations on the kind of learning that was likely to take place and that it would be better and more effective if teachers designed the programs themselves [START_REF] Kelly | Microcomputers and the curriculum: uses and abuses[END_REF]. At the same time there was much concern that there were insufficient software resources for teachers to use. Some writers thought that a program such as LOGO would have a major impact in a number of classrooms across a range of disciplines [START_REF] Papert | Mindstorms: children, com puters and powerful ideas[END_REF].

The emphasis on teacher development led to the second agenda of the in-service program: the role of the seeding pair teachers as change agents.

Change Agents

Arguably the most significant aspect of the seeding pair in-service program was their role as change agents in schools. It is sobering to look back to the early 1980s and see how much was already known about the effectiveness of professional development and how much was already understood about the difficulty of creating change in schools. It is fair to ask what lessons have been drawn from this work and how much has changed in practice over the last 30 years or so.

It was already well understood that one-off in-service workshops were ineffective, largely because, "the absence of follow-up after workshops is without doubt the greatest single problem in contemporary professional development" [START_REF] Fullan | The Meaning of Educational Change[END_REF]. This was a crucial issue for the designers of the seeding pair in-service as the purpose of the course was to develop and change the way that computers were used in schools. A centrally designed course would be unlikely to have the desired effect of changing practice within the schools themselves.

What was understood to be more effective in terms of implementing programs in schools was peer interaction [START_REF] Fullan | The Meaning of Educational Change[END_REF]. We would be likely today to describe this peer interaction in terms of mentoring or coaching and there was an emphasis in the literature of the day on developing in-services courses which were more in tune with what participants needed [START_REF] Joyce | Improving inservice training: the message of research[END_REF][START_REF] Showers | Teachers coaching teachers[END_REF][START_REF] Wood | Guidelines for better staff development[END_REF]. This meant that the in-service course needed to provide sufficient time to develop confidence in new practices.

For change to be effective, then, it is important to have people operating at the school who can foster and initiate change by facilitating the new practices. One obvious candidate for fostering change was the principal. However, educational research at the time demonstrated that the principal was not always best place to either initiate or foster change as they spent a large part of their time maintaining stability rather than initiating change [START_REF] Fullan | The Meaning of Educational Change[END_REF]. In any event, the principal hardly had timethen or now -to sit with and assist staff members in the development of new skills. Despite this important limitation of the principal's time it was equally clear from the research that "Whether it is direct or indirect, the principal plays a fateful role in implementation and continuance of any change proposal" [START_REF] Fullan | The Meaning of Educational Change[END_REF]. However, it is not possible for a principal to drive change without help:

Principals need to be knowledgeable about the goals and expected uses of an innovation in order to understand the needs, progress, and problems teachers experience during implementation. They may choose to undergo training and become users themselves and to provide teacher assistance directly. Their participation at that level is not essential however, so long as they provide access to resources, training, and assistance from others.

Research indicates that principals often depend on assistance from a "second change agent" in the school-for example a vice-principal, a key teacher, or a central office consultant-especially in secondary schools. [START_REF] Fullan | The Meaning of Educational Change[END_REF] A key goal of the seeding pair program was having people in the school who could assist in leading change. The fear was that computer use could be held hostage by the few teachers who had expert computer knowledge. Writing about the seeding pair inservice program Ingvarson and McKenzie [START_REF] Ingvarson | Factors affecting the impact of in-service courses for teachers: implications for policy[END_REF] described in vivid detail the fears that some held about the role of the computer coordinator in schools:

Forebodings were expressed before our study began about the possibly negative role such people might play in the outcome of the courses, given that their background was usually a specialized one in Mathematics, Science, or Computer Science; and given that they were sometimes caricatured as introverted, anally retentive males with a strong sense of territory in relation to 'their' computers [START_REF] Ingvarson | Factors affecting the impact of in-service courses for teachers: implications for policy[END_REF]. The seeding pair structure was intended to guard against the 'gatekeepers' by developing skills in those who attended the course. It was intended that the seeding pair teachers would acquire skills, become involved in the development of school computer policy and work together to empower others.

Case Study of Vista College

The case study investigation of the impact of the seeding pair program at Vista College was undertaken in the second half of 1986.

Context

At the time of investigation Vista College was a Catholic boys' school in a southeastern suburb close to Melbourne with an enrolment of approximately 770 students, a quarter of whom were from non-English speaking backgrounds. The school was not resource rich by any means and there were class sizes nearing 40 in many year levels.

Given the lack of resources, the decision to obtain the original computer system in 1981 showed great daring and foresight. The Headmaster of the time was known for pursuing modern approaches to curriculum provision. One notable example at about the same period in the school's history, was the building of an Arts and Technology wing -despite great opposition from some of the staff -to offer these subjects for the first time.

Along with the Headmaster's determination to provide a modern education at Vista College, his decision to purchase the Northstar computer was a reflection of the confidence he had in the Maths Coordinator and the friendship and trust he had developed with her husband who had left the academic world to get into the fledging computer business. He sourced the computer and wrote much of the software the school relied on in the early days of computer use.

The Headmaster had faced opposition from conservative staff members in building the Arts and Technology wing based on their objection that he was introducing 'Mickey Mouse' subjects into the curriculum. In contrast, there was little opposition to the introduction of a computer. The idea that computers were needed in schools had achieved rapid acceptance. In describing the developments at the College during the course of 1981 the Headmaster had this to say about the latest school developments: Among these should be noted the setting up of a computer within the school. We are grateful for the advice of the Head of our Mathematics Department and her husband who have, this year, established this computer, which is better and more advanced than those usually found in Secondary Schools. In 1982 a room next to the library was set aside to house the Northstar computer and a teacher was appointed to teach the Introduction to Data Processing (IDP) course as part of the Certificate of Business Studies course offered to Year 12 students as an alternative to the Higher School Certificate. The decision to offer the IDP subject rather than the newly accredited Computer Science course was a reflection of the view that it was becoming imperative to provide access to computers for a generation of students who would need computer skills when they entered the workforce. The IDP subject was designed to be relevant to the general business student and this was seen to be more important than catering to the specialist computer studies student. To some extent this choice represented the nearest thing to a computer policy in the early years.

Other year levels were also given exposure to the computers. The large class sizes (35-40) meant that students went to the computer room in half class groups linked to the Mathematics classes. The Maths teacher remained behind to teach the rest of the class while the computer teacher taught the half class.

Because of the circumstances which led to the original purchase the computer area remained under the wing of the Mathematics Faculty. Rapid staff change led to instability in the computer area. There were six different teachers in the first five years of computer use and changes of Headmaster in both 1984 and 1987.

The Northstar computer did not prove very resilient and frequently broke down to the point that it was reserved for administrative purposes rather than student use. Students then used newly purchased Apple IIe computers. Up until late 1986 there were only 8 of these Apples which often meant that there were three students for each computer. In term 4 of 1986 an additional six Apple IIe computers were purchased with three added at the beginning of 1987. This allowed full classes to use the computers so long as there were two students for each machine.

In 1987 the curriculum included Computer Studies for Years 7-10 as well as the Data Processing subject. This meant that the room was timetabled with formal computer classes for 25 out of a possible 31 periods, thus greatly reducing the possibility of other subjects using the room. Year 12 Accounting and Year 11 Practical Maths classes managed to squeeze into the timetable.

The Decision to Send Teachers to the Seeding Pair Course

The decision to send two teachers to the Stage 1 seeding pair course in 1985 and another teacher to the Stage 2 course in 1986 was driven by the Curriculum Coordinator in conjunction with the Computer Coordinator. It was clear to the Curriculum Coordinator that more teachers in the school needed to know about computers, about what they could do and how they might impact on the students. The availability of funding was an important factor as Vista College did not routinely employ replacement teachers and the commitment to having two staff members at a week-long course was significant.

The two staff members who attended the Stage 1 course in 1985 were quite senior in the College. This was deliberate as it was thought that their seniority would mean that they would be more likely to be respected by their colleagues and less likely to be intimidated by negative members of staff. Susan, in her thirteenth year of teaching when she went on the course, taught English, History and Religious Education, had been English Coordinator and would later take up the role of Year 10 Coordinator. Patrick, having taught for 12 years, had a primary teaching background which enabled him to teach Religion, English, Social Studies and Mathematics. He was the Year 7 Coordinator.

The following year Steve, a first year Maths and Science teacher, attended the stage 2 course. While the Stage 2 course was supposed to be for senior staff or computer coordinators, Steve was proficient with computers and would be the main teacher of computer subjects the next year. In a reflection of how these kinds of extended release courses were regarded at Vista College the second teacher who was to attend the Stage 2 course with Steve was not allowed to go as no suitable emergency teacher could be found to replace him.

The views of the participants about the courses varied widely. While Patrick and Steve were enthusiastic about what they had learned, Susan felt that the course did not meet her needs. In summary, her complaints were that there was too much 'preaching' about what constituted good computer use in a school, the course was not really for the uninitiated and that the course did not really help her to understand how computers could be used in her teaching. Susan expressed a lack of confidence in what she had learned and this had an impact on the extent to which she felt she could help others subsequently. Susan felt that she lacked sufficient skills to make effective use of a computer and, like Patrick and Steve, was disappointed that there was no follow-up from the original course.

Acting as Change Agents: Professional Development of Staff

The teachers who attended the seeding pair in-service course were full of good intentions but very little happened in terms of staff development. While Susan felt that she lacked the necessary skills to assist other staff members, Patrick and Steve were more than willing to provide professional development. The initial plan was to have them deliver professional development on one of the staff curriculum days. There were problems with this proposal, though, as time was limited. There were, on average, six such days in a year and they were taken up with the usual administrative matters and meetings which were considered essential to the good running of the school. The other complication was that the College had to complete a mandated School Development Project which took up much of the available time and was seen to be more urgent as there were timelines to follow. After-school sessions for professional development were considered but dismissed as an option because there were a great many extra-curricular activities which took place.

The lack of formal opportunities to deliver professional development meant that the seeding pair teachers had to resort to informal opportunities such as talking to colleagues, leaving work lying about and offering help. Steve even offered to put the timetable for the following year into a spreadsheet so that it could be saved and printed and could be edited at a later date if necessary.

The seeding pair teachers, the Curriculum Coordinator and the Headmaster were all conscious of the resistance of many staff members to the use of computers. Some staff members could not see the relevance of computers to their teaching and there were many complaints at the time that there was a lack of suitable software for educational purposes. This perspective then became entwined with the belief that trying to come to grips with computer use was likely to time consuming. The lack of access to the computer room was seen to be a real disadvantage. Before 1987, bringing a whole class to the computer room meant having four students sharing a terminal. At this time there was simply no possibility that a teacher might have a computer on their desk at school or at home as part of their day to day work practice.

All of the participants of the study believed that there was an urgent need for further professional development as this was seen to be the key to improvements in the use of computers in schools. Despite this strong belief, there was no plan of action. It was almost as if the act of sending teachers to the course was enough in itself. There were no support structures in place to facilitate the work of the seeding pair teachers or were any seen as necessary.

Acting as Change Agents: Policy Development

Emily, the new Computer Coordinator in 1986, believed that she could easily develop the computers in education policy for Vista College but such a document would not be inclusive of the views of others and would, therefore, have limited usefulness in the College. The then Headmaster had a sense of the need for direction in the areas of computer literacy, understanding the impact of computers on society and determining a direction in computer education for the future. Nevertheless, despite agreement that a policy was desirable, six years after the introduction of computers in the school, no policy had been developed.

The seeding pair teachers all expressed a willingness to be involved in policy development as they believed the course had given them insight and skills in the area and that they could not have made a worthwhile contribution to policy development with their experience at the course.

As with professional development, there was no structure in place which would have facilitated the development of policy. Certainly there were competing priorities for attention and resources but, perhaps, the lack of support by the Headmaster was the crucial factor. The Headmaster had not actually used a computer and, while he might have been supportive of the establishment of general directions, he had neither the expertise nor the sense of urgency to develop policy in this area and, by the end of 1986, he had moved on to another position.

Towards the end of 1987 the Year Coordinators discussed whether the College was making the best use of the computers in the lab at one of their weekly meetings. Some believed that, while students needed exposure to the fundamentals of computer use at some stage, there should be less formal teaching of computers and more access to the computers for other subjects.

The opposing view was that the computers were too expensive a resource to run the risk of not being used except when someone decided to make use of them. Moreover, it was argued, access to computers was a matter of fairness. What if a Maths teacher in Year 10 wanted to use the computers while another did not; would it not be unfair to the students who missed out? It was this view which prevailed which meant that computer subjects remained in place and dominated the timetabled space in the computer laboratory. Without being able to access the computers there was little incentive to encourage teachers to try to make use of computers in their teaching.

To make matters worse, there were no computers available for staff use. Even the Timetabler had to use a computer in the back of the computer room to do his work.

Summary

Without regular access to a computer to further develop their skills and without structures in place to enable them to carry out their role, the seeding pair teachers were ineffective as change agents. There was an urgent need for on-going professional development but, again, without a structure to facilitate this there was no progress made with improving the skills of the seeding pair teachers or the teachers in general.

St Christopher's Grammar School

Context

At the time of the study St. Christopher's Grammar school was a co-educational grammar school with an enrolment of over 1000 students from primary school through to Year 12. By comparison with Vista College, St. Christopher's was a resource rich and competitive school in the independent school In keeping with the beginnings of computer provision in Victorian schools, St. Christopher's began by setting up a separate computer laboratory and teaching classes in computer awareness to middle schools students. By 1986 there had been a move away from what was described as computers as topics and towards using computers within other areas. The computer awareness course at Year 10 continued as a more or less permanent feature of the curriculum. There was a well-resourced computer laboratory of Apple IIe computers in the secondary schools with more to come (as we shall see).

The Computer Department began, as was typical of the era, as part of the Mathematics Department and the Head of Computers was also the Sub-Head of Mathematics. The Computer Awareness course at Year 10 was delivered to students via their Maths class groups. The issue which arose from this organisational arrangement was the extent to which other staff felt that the computers in some sense, belonged to the Mathematics Department. Balanced against this was the obvious encouragement which the Head of Computers, Frank, gave to anyone wanting to use the computer facilities.

The Decision to Send Teachers on the Course

Frank, with the support of the Headmaster, chose the first of St. Christopher's Seeding Pair teachers to attend a Stage 1 course in 1984. This was understood to be a major commitment as the school was always reluctant to send teachers away on inservices at all, let alone ones which ran for an extended period. Despite his enthusiasm for sending teachers to the course, Frank admitted that he did not immediately grasp the importance or the potential benefits of the in-service. The two teachers were chosen with a view that the course would help them to introduce and use computers in their teaching rather than how their attendance might benefit the whole school.

In fact the two teachers did not have a significant impact on computer use at St. Christopher's. Sylvia, a middle school English and History teacher had to go to hospital during the course and was off work for some weeks afterward. The other teacher chosen to go left the school at the end of the year.

Despite these setbacks, a second pair was sent to another Stage 1 course in 1985. Thomas, the Senior Master and Head of English and Jane, the Head of Geography, had significant positions in the school and it was felt that they would be better able to influence policy and help set directions for the future, especially in terms of computer use in their subject areas. Frank and a colleague applied to attend a Stage 2 course in 1986 but they were not selected because four teachers from the school had already attended a Stage 1 course.

There were divergent views about the appropriateness of the course strategies from the three participants. Sylvia was complimentary about the course and felt that is was pitched at the right level for her but it is worth remembering that she did not complete it due to ill health. Perhaps not surprisingly she made less use of computers after the course than either of the other two participants did. Her particular contribution was running a lunch time girls only computer group. Her experience on the course had led her to set up the girls' only group as she had formed the view that it was necessary to ensure that girls had exposure to computers.

Jane was positive about the course despite feeling that there should have been more hands-on activities. While she made great use of computers in teaching Geography, Jane felt that computers were another teaching tool and that they should not be seen as the answer.

Thomas felt that the conveners of the course spent too much time trying to push particular policy perspectives rather than providing the kinds of hands-on experience that he believed he needed. He had written to the organisers to express his views and vowed that computer in-services at St. Christopher's would be very much a hands-on experience.

Acting as Change Agents: Professional Development of Staff

The seeding pair teachers at St. Christopher's felt that they had little impact on staff members directly, despite their best intentions. They saw a divide already emerging between those who were willing to embrace the use of computers and those who were strongly resisting them. All three seeding pair Teachers could point to teachers they felt were doing "wonderful things" with computers in their classrooms.

St. Christopher's routinely set aside one of its staff development days to meeting staff requests for professional development and there was a sense of pride on the part of the seeding pair teachers that the staff voted to devote their curriculum day to the use of computers. Frank was pleased that ten teachers, including the seeding pair teachers, had volunteered to help put the day together. It was felt that much staff resistance would be broken down when the resisters could see what their colleagues were accomplishing.

The contrast with Vista College was obvious. Whereas any thought of offering professional development at Vista College had been somehow lost or simply never become a priority, there was clear action at St. Christopher's. Devoting a day to learning about computers sent the message that learning about them was important. While one day was of only limited value in the long run it did represent a base on which to build.

Acting as Change Agents: Policy and Strategic Development

The St. Christopher's Headmaster established a Computer Policy Review Committee in February, 1986. While he set the terms of reference the Headmaster chose not to be on the Committee. Because of their involvement in the course the Seeding Pair Teachers were invited to join the Committee. Jane was the only woman on the Committee.

The brief provided to the Committee was extensive, covering all aspects of computer use in the school. It met one a fortnight for three months and the methods of investigation included a questionnaire and school visits. In addition to the needs of administration, the library, the finance department and careers, the Committee considered a number of areas of concern including access to computers, the future of a computer subject, computer literacy and professional development for staff.

Access to computers was considered to be the most important question in 1986. As well as the Year 10 Computer Awareness course taking up space on the timetable, the demand for spaces by other teachers for the senior school computer laboratory exceeded the availability. The Committee considered deploying computers to classrooms but rejected it because the demand did not justify the cost. It was understood that, in general, teachers at the school preferred that students all work on the same task together and so the preference was that additional laboratory space which would serve this purpose. Only Jane objected to this recommendation, arguing that other ways of working might be better.

Instead of deploying computers in other spaces, the recommendation of the Committee was to provide for another laboratory. This second laboratory would have IBM compatible computers in a deliberate move to provide for business level machines. The direction was set that computers would provide an important point of contact with the business world. This meant that computers were being seen as, in the parlance of the day, topics rather than tools.

The computer curriculum was also considered. Computer Awareness at Year 10 was seen to be an important subject but the Committee also came to the conclusion that it was important to build computer literacy into the curriculum. The Committee believed that Computer Awareness could be phased out as other subjects moved to increase their use of computers. The plan for Years 7-10 was for the following:

 Mathematics to undertake programming  English to cover word processing  Geography to deal with the social implications of computing It was thought that Computer Awareness should continue as an option for those who wanted to study computers and that Computer Science should be introduced for Years 11 and 12 for those who wanted to peruse a serious study of computers.

The original brief from the Headmaster did not provide for a consideration of the need for professional development of staff members. This was added by the Committee who surveyed all staff:  75% of staff members wanted to learn how to use computers in their teaching  There was a strong demand for 5 week courses  There was strong demand for 1:1 tuition by teachers  There was strong demand for an external ISE course on computers  Instructional posters were needed in laboratories  Strong demand for access to a laboratory  The feasibility of selling old computers to staff members should be investigated The Committee identified a clear need for access to computers and for targeted professional development.

Most of the recommendations of the Committee were adopted, with the creation of the second laboratory seen as being crucially. Professional development was provided which helped break down resistance to the use of computers. Frank was delighted to discover that there were fewer hard core resisters than he feared but some remained and would not prove easy to shift.

Summary

In the area of policy the contrast with Vista College was striking. At St. Christopher's the formation of the Committee was a vital step in establishing a direction for the use of computers in the school. Including the seeding pair teachers ensured that their professional development was not wasted and that decisions about computers were being made by a group which included members of staff who were up to date with the latest thinking. Because the Committee was representative it sought to include the views and needs of other members of staff in a systematic way that tried to take account of their learning needs.

The Changing Times

The problems associated with facilitating change in schools are no less pressing today than they were in the mid-1980s. In fact the seeding pair in-service was quite sophisticated in the way that it made use of the research of the times to design an approach to change that was different to a centralised, top-down model. It is sobering to look back over thirty years to realise that there have not been any real advances in the way that professional development is used to create change in schools. Moreover, much of the recent emphasis on professional development for registration purposes has produced providers who have designed programs to cater for the individual teacher with little thought or interest in how the whole school might benefit. One of the glaringly obvious issues to emerge from the case studies was the very different ways that the schools made provision for change. Vista College floundered about without direction and the expertise of the seeding pair teachers was never put to good use either in policy terms or to provide professional development. St. Christopher's, on the other hand, provided a structure through which the seeding pair teachers could make a real contribution, especially in terms of providing a direction for the school to take in the short to medium term.

The role of the principal in creating that strategic direction remains important. In terms of technology strategy this is problematic. As a number of writers have pointed out the principal does not always have expertise in technology and yet is often the one who insists on a particular direction [START_REF] Keane | An investigation of the role of the information and communication technologies leader in secondary schools[END_REF][START_REF] Lee | Leading Schools in a digital era[END_REF]. One principal I know declared that he and the computer coordinator determined computer strategy over a cup of tea before school on a Friday morning. The question of who makes the decisions remains a vital one [START_REF] Keane | An investigation of the role of the information and communication technologies leader in secondary schools[END_REF]. In the case of Vista College, the change in headmasters in 1984 and again in 1987 resulted in a computer policy vacuum. The emphasis became one of providing resources rather than providing direction for teaching and learning. The contrast with St. Christopher's could not have been more striking. There the Headmaster set a policy committee in place and they were able to add professional development to their brief. The result certainly provided the school with a sense of direction and a plan of action for the future.

Along with leadership, perhaps the major question of the 1980s was access to computers. At the time the thinking was very much concentrated on providing access to students and this was reflected strongly in the expansion of the numbers of computers at Vista College and the provision of a second computer laboratory at St. Christopher's. At Vista College little thought was given to providing access to teachers while at St. Christopher's computers were stationed in staff rooms. Providing notebook computers to teachers was some way off yet. Thanks to government policy [14] the problem of access to computers is no longer the pressing issue it once was. The Digital Education Revolution might well prove to be the beginning of a new chapter in the history of computers in education.