"My big concern has to do with how narrowly we have been focusing on these discrete skills. The most common uses of the computer didn't really take advantage of their capabilities as tools. The activities were mostly skills-oriented-math skill, in particular-or “how to” lessons in using a particular application. The proportion of use of the computer for productive thinking, analyzing and communicating has been pretty small."

-Henry Becker, 1998

Henry Becker is a sociologist and Professor of Education at the University of California, Irvine. In the 1980s Becker conducted national surveys which provided concrete data about how representative samples of schools and teachers used computers for instruction (Technos Quarterly, online). In addition to these surveys he conducts field experiments which evaluate the consequences for students when they use computer technologies under different circumstances. Becker is currently in the process of evaluating a computer based integrated learning systems and the development and assessment of lesson plans for inner city middle school math teachers.

In a recent interview in Tech Learning, Becker shared some of his beliefs after his years of researching the effects of computers on education. “Having kids practice stuff they don’t understand is not helpful. Intervention is necessary. In theory a computer could do the necessary teaching, but they are not sophisticated enough to offer feedback. Human intervention is generally important....Students don’t self teach. Software can be used to help automate skills kids have already begun to learn.” (Online interview) This is an almost identical quote to those made by Larry Cuban and Roy Pea in a Tapped In interview. Teachers are necessary to give students an anchor, or as Vygotsky says as an intelligent peer, in the ZPD.

Becker contends that where research in technology in education is concerned the difficulty arises in asking the right questions. He states it’s also hard to develop good measures about important and complex concepts and performances. Because you must have large samples to be certain the results are generalizable which is expensive, most research is based on “quick and dirty” measures.

In his own words, Becker calls himself more of a survey person than and experimentalist. He is currently working on a large-scale survey of over 1,000 schools nationwide. He is surveying teachers regarding their basic beliefs, philosophy and teaching practices to see where they fall on the basic skills to constructivist Spector and then see how that relates to their use of technology. (Wow this would be really interesting for my dissertation!) He hopes to have the results by fall 2000.