NEW TECHNOLOGIES AND THE CULTURAL-ECOLOGY OF PRIMARY SCHOOLING - IMAGINING TEACHERS AS LUDDITES IN DEED/

This article's concern is with discourses of innovation, and it makes some instructive connections between technoromanticist discourses acro ss two ''revolutions'': the industrial revolution at the dawn of the 1 9th century and the information revolution at the close of the 20th ce ntury. Ifs central question is this: Given the proliferation of futuri st and neophilic rhetoric about the ''digital revolution'' and the won ders of computer-mediated learning, how cart we explain teachers' less than enthusiastic participation in bringing about changes involving c omputers? This article draws an data from a 2-year study of the implem entation of new technologies in 12 elementary schools across the provi nce of British Columbia. In broad strokes, it is a study of failure, f or what it does is document in some derail the very great divergences between what teachers actually do with computers in their classrooms a nd the enthusiastic claims and exhortations of educational administrat ors and policy makers with respect to the educational benefits of new technologies.