Logo in mainstream schools: the struggle over the soul of an educational innovation

Technologies do not follow some pre-determined and inevitable course from t heir context of production to their context of use, and technologies used i n schools are no exception. Rather, technologies and their use in the class room are socially contextualised. They are often appropriated in ways unant icipated by their developers, locking into institutional arrangements and r eflecting elements of the prevailing social relations in and around the par ticular context(s) of application. Through the discussion of a particular t echnology (the Logo programming language) as a case study in educational in novation, this article demonstrates how the use of technologies in schools is 'socially shaped'. The paper looks into the place that Logo occupied wit hin the institutional and organisational cultures of US and UK mainstream s chools after its introduction in the early 1980s. It discusses the ways in which Logo was received in the educational arena and was implicated in the politics of educational innovation at a time of conservative restoration.