When the first computers were introduced into classrooms in the 1980s, expectations were high, but the benefits remained limited. Education researcher Larry Cuban summed it up as “oversold and underused”. Yet the path to this point was anything but random. A well-connected alliance of computer scientists and committed teachers had put the issue on the political agenda since the late 1970s. When computers also became economically relevant, local authorities and cantons followed suit.
What happened back then has been repeated many times since. Michael Geiss from the PHZH has analysed teacher journals and found the same pattern for every wave of technology: euphoria, disillusionment, quiet normalisation. The internet in the 1990s, tablets, the metaverse. Is history repeating itself with AI?
The discussion is not just about history, but about issues that shape everyday school life today. Why do Swiss schools almost inevitably end up relying on the big tech companies? How risky is this dependence? What is taught in the subject “Media and IT”? And what do teachers need to prepare young people for a world that is changing faster than the curriculum?
Michael Geiss is Head of the Centre for Education and Digital Transformation and Professor of Education at the Zurich University of Teacher Education.
Weitere Informationen
- Centre for Education and Digital Transformation
- Equipping Schools: The Role of Finance in Shaping Switzerland’s Educational Media Landscapes, 1950-2010. Research project, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation
- Cuban, Larry (2001): Oversold and Underused. Computers in the Classroom, ResearchGate
- Flury, Carmen and Geiss, Michael (Hrsg.) (2023): How computers entered the classroom, 1960–2000: historical perspectives. Berlin 2023: De Gruyter. DOI: 10.1515/9783110780147
