What is Four in Balance? - PDST

1 - what is four in balance?In many cases, schools fail to achieve the benefits that they thought theywould attain using ICT. For example, a project falters because the teachersare not equipped to use the technology, or because the infrastructure thatthe school has chosen does not match the pedagogical approach that teachersfavor. The project then never goes beyond a one-time experiment (Van derNeut, 2010; Van Eck, 2009; 2010). One well-known example was described byZucker in an article in Science. Zucker looked at the investment schools inthe United States had made in laptops (Zucker, 2009). Although the schoolshad spent a lot of money on the laptops and related equipment, teachersscarcely changed their lessons and failed to use many of the new options attheir disposal. There was no impact on the way pupils thought or learned.Similar findings have emerged in studies exploring the impact of interactivewhiteboards (DiGregorio, 2010; Bannister, 2010).The Four in Balance model allows schools to avoid such pitfalls by helpingthem consider, in advance, how to organize teaching/learning and what toinvest in. Thanks to research, we are coming to learn more and more abouthow best to coordinate the four basic elements. One important findingis that the human factors (vision and expertise) must be considered first,and only then the material ones (learning materials and infrastructure). Inprevious publications, we referred to this particular coordination sequenceas “education-driven innovation” (Law, 2008; De Koster, 2009). The oppositesequence, which starts with technology or digital learning materials, is knownas “technology-driven” or “material-driven” innovation (see Figure 1.2).Education-drivenVisionExpertiseDigitallearningmaterialsICT infrastructureTechnology-drivenFigure 1.2: Two coordination sequences: education-driven (starting from the human factors)and technology-driven (starting from the material factors). Education-driven coordination hasa better chance of succeeding11