John Arul Phillips
Department of Curriculum & Instructional Technology
Faculty of Education
University of  Malaya

Date: 25 October 2001
Time: 3.30-4.00

With the advent of information and communication technology, research into its impact on teaching and learning at all levels of education and training has been prolific.  Initial efforts tended to compare technology-based teaching with more 'traditional' teaching methods with the quasi-experimental design being most popular.  Besides seeking causal determination, prediction, and generalization of findings, there is growing realisation to investigate deeply into the processes involved with the aim to illuminate, understand, and extrapolate similar situations using qualitative inquiry methods.
A compelling reason for the selection of qualitative methodologies within the educational technology research arena is the shift in the theoretical emphasis from a more behaviourist perspective of technology application to a more cognitive-constructivist view of teaching in a technology-based learning environment.  The cognitive-constructivist conceptual framework that has become the dominant structure for investigating the teaching-learning processes in a technology-based classroom has necessitated more qualitative tools to be adopted.  While not ignoring the importance of measuring the product of learning, there is also a growing interest in examining the processes involved in learning. Hence, it is not surprising that the interview, participant observation procedures, clinical inquiry and ethnographic techniques have been widely applied in gathering data about the technology-based classroom.
The paper will trace this shift in theoretical perspective and methods of investigation as well as illustrate the trend with samples of works from the writer's research project.