Information technology can remove barriers of time and location, institutional requirements, and prior schooling attitudes. However, it can impose new ones such as socioeconomic inequities in access. Privately sponsored virtual learning environments tend to focus on only a narrow base of core skills and competencies. (SK)

Public policy rhetoric depicts information/communications technologies as a means of transforming lifelong education, freeing individual learners, broadening social inclusion, and improving competitiveness. However, concerns about social exclusion are predominantly economic, and increasing participation does not mean the same thing as widening…

Creation of technologically based "virtual education" has been portrayed as a means of widening access to lifelong-learning opportunities for those currently excluded. An examination of these claims in light of UK nonparticipants' characteristics and common barriers reveals that technological fixes will solve some problems, create…

Interviews with 36 adult learners in information-communications technology (ICT) settings, using the concept of learning trajectories, revealed barriers to widening participation through ICT. In addition to technical shortcomings, social, economic, cultural, and political issues hinder the process, including lack of innovative instruction and…

Educational commentators have long feared a "digital disconnection" between emerging generations of technology-rich students accustomed to high levels of Internet use and their technology-poor schools. Yet few studies have empirically examined the existence and potential implications of such a disconnect from the students' perspective.…

This article uses the reports from 1,001 home-based interviews, with adults living in the United Kingdom, to describe their varying patterns of participation in lifelong, learning. It finds that 37% of all adults report no further education or training of any kind after reaching compulsory school-leaving age. This proportion declines in each age…

The use of information and communications technology (ICT) to facilitate easy access to lifelong learning for all is one of the central tenets of the United Kingdom (UK) government's drive to establish a more inclusive learning society. Advocates have highlighted the need to free learning from the traditional confines of educational institutions…

Describes the development of an instrument for measuring the attitudes toward computers and information technology of post-compulsory students ages 16-19 years in the United Kingdom. Highlights include a theoretical model; reliability and validity; internal consistency; test-retest reliability; and criterion validity. A copy of the Computer…

Argues that educational computing research has not kept up with the growing importance of educational technology. Examines criticisms of the research: the overtly optimistic tone permeating the majority of the literature, the avoidance of qualitative methodologies, and the distrust of a more theoretical analysis of the role of the computer in…

Analysis of questionnaires/focus-group-interviews with students 16-19 years old to examine the nature and extent of students' domestic use of computers and the relationship with their use of information technology (IT) in schools/colleges. Suggest students with home computers have more positive attitudes toward computers but make little use of…

The factors influencing students' decisions not to use computers during their education are explored, using focus-group interviews with 96 secondary and college students in the United Kingdom. Three main constructs underlying students' rejection of educational computing are defined, and how educational computing can be reconstructed is discussed.…

This paper looks at private interest involvement in education Information and Communications Technology (ICT) policymaking and implementation in the United Kingdom, using the National Grid for Learning (NGfL), an initiative to connect every U.K. school to the Internet and create an online connected learning community of teachers and students with…