British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 33 No 4 2002 411–421

A theoretical framework for the study of

ICT in schools: a proposal

Cher Ping Lim

Dr Lim is an assistant professor in the Instructional Science Academic Group, National Institute of
Education. His research interests include the integration of ICT in the learning environment, educational
applications and dangers of the Internet, and design aspects and pedagogues of E-learning. Address for
correspondence: National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, 1 Nanyang Walk,
Singapore 637616. Tel: +65 6790 3279; fax: +65 6399 4057; email cplim@nie.edu.sg

Abstract
A sociocultural approach towards the study of Information and Communication
Technologies (ICT) in education rejects the view that ICT can be studied in
isolation; it must be studied within the broader context in which it is situated.
The paper argues for a more holistic approach of studying ICT in schools by
adopting a sociocultural perspective. It proposes a theoretical framework based
on activity theory, with the activity system as a unit of analysis that is
surrounded by different levels of ecological circles.

Introduction
As we move into the 21st century, schools have to enculturate students to be lifelong
learners. Students need to learn how to seek out new information, think critically and
show initiative to meet up with the challenges of the fast-changing world. Research
studies of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in schools have
established that ICT facilitates the enculturation processes of lifelong learning (Sivin-
Kachala, 1998; Wenglinsky, 1998; Mann, Shakeshaft, Becker and Kottkamp, 1999).
However, many of these studies lack detailed investigation of what actually takes place in
the ICT learning environment and its sociocultural context. ICT does not exist in
isolation; it is interwoven with the rest of the tools and participants in the learning
environment.

Therefore, research studies in ICT need to shift their attention towards the whole
configuration of events, activities, contents, and interpersonal processes taking place in
the context that ICT is used. Such studies are particularly critical to educational research
where the object of its inquiry is not simply knowledge, but useable know-ledge:
knowledge that is “responsive to the current or emerging needs of practitioners and
ultimately to the solution of professional and social problems” (Richey, 1998, 7).
© British Educational Communications and Technology Agency, 2002.
Published by Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
412 British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 33 No 4 2002

This paper first argues for a more holistic approach to the study of ICT in schools. It then
adopts a sociocultural perspective, and proposes a theoretical framework based on the
activity system (Engeström, 1987) as a unit of analysis that is surrounded by different
levels of ecological circles (Cole, 1995).

Towards a sociocultural approach of ICT in schools

As ICT enters the sociocultural setting of the school, it “weaves itself into learning in
many more ways than its original promoters could possibly have anticipated” (Papert,
1993, 53). It may trigger changes in the activities, curriculum and interpersonal relation-
ships in the learning environment, and is reciprocally affected by the very changes it
causes (Salomon, 1993). From this perspective, ICT is a mediational tool, incorporated
within learning environments with authentic goals and purposes for students, and settings
that are explicitly interpreted with other experiences of knowing and understanding as
they get organised at other times. Considering ICT as a mediational tool, the following
are the implications for the study of ICT in schools.

First, the employment of mediational tools fundamentally shapes the activities in the
learning environment (Wertsch, 1991). When the cognitive opportunities of ICT are taken
up and integrated with planning, enactment and assessment of both teaching and learning
activities, a change of pedagogy may be necessary. Teachers may have to rethink the
purpose of the lesson, the nature of the task that should be set, and the method of
assessing how students carry it out. Students may have to rethink the way they approach
the task, and assess how best to use the new tool to carry out the task. Inevitably, the use
of ICT in education shapes the teaching and learning activities.

Second, the power of mediational tools in organising activities is often not consciously
recognised by those who use them, which contributes to the belief that cultural tools are
the product of natural or necessary factors rather than of concrete sociocultural factors
(Wertsch, 1991). Research studies have shown that the cognitive opportunities of ICT are
not automatically taken up in the learning environment. In her study of the use of word-
processor in the classroom, Cochran-Smith (1991) observed that most stu-dents used it
primarily to make minor stylistic, grammatical, and spelling corrections and to get nice
printouts. Only the more experienced ones utilised the powerful editing mechanisms of
the word-processor to plan their essays and make structural revision. Draper (1998)
claims that most ICT packages do not have significant effect on learning and teaching
activities in schools because only a small proportion of their potential is used.

And third, as mediational tools are “products of cultural, historical, and institutional
forces that may have little obvious relevance to the local settings in which they are
employed, they shape these settings in ways that might otherwise not be deemed appro-
priate from the perspective of intermental and intramental functioning” (Wertsch, 1991,
38). There is a context for the ICT experiences that encompasses activities

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 A theoretical framework for the study of ICT in schools 413

peripheral to the particular times and formats of the ICT interaction itself. Salomon
(1993, 189) proposes:
“No tool is good or bad in itself; its effectiveness results from and contributes to the whole
configuration of events, activities, contents, and interpersonal processes taking place in the context
of which it is been used.”
Therefore, the study of ICT in education cannot be fractured from the learning environ-
ment in which it is situated. ICT may trigger changes in the activities, curriculum and
interpersonal relationships in the learning environment, and is reciprocally affected by the
very changes it causes. The study of ICT in schools needs to consider the social pro-
cesses that ICT supports during the circumstances of use, and how the ICT experience is
integrated into the discourse of learning to develop higher order thinking skills.

Activity system as a unit of analysis

In order to deal with this task, the activity theoretical framework is adopted to demon-
strate the intimate mechanisms that link ICT, learning and their sociocultural settings.
Modern activity theory originated from Soviet cultural-historical psychology (Vygotsky,
1978; Leont’ev, 1981), which in turn was rooted in both eighteenth and nineteenth
century classical German philosophy—from Hegel’s idealism to the historical
materialism of Marx and Engels, in which the concept of activity was extensively
elaborated. Like Marx and Engels, Vygotsky and Leont’ev took as their premises “real
individuals, their activity and the material conditions under which they live, both those
which they find already existing and those produced by their activity” (Marx and Engel,
1970, p. 46).

Activity theory has been successfully used to analyse successes, failures and contra-
dictions in complex situations without reductionist simplifications (for example,
Engreström and Escalante, 1996; Miettinen. 1998). It offers a set of conceptual tools that
is applicable to various situations to understand the coupling of cognition and activity.
Activity theory draws on Vygotskian theory of cognition where higher mental function
appears “twice, or on two planes. First it appears on the social plane and then on the
psychological plane. First it appears between people as an interpsychological category
and then within the individual child (learner) as an intrapsychological category”
(Vygotsky, 1978, 57).

Throughout Vygotsky’s (1978) formulation of a sociocultural approach to cognition is the

claim that higher mental functioning and human action in general are mediated by tools
(or “technical tools”) and signs (or “psychological tools”). The consequence of tools
mediating the activity is that “instead of applying directly its natural function to the
solution of a particular task, the child (learner) puts between that function and the task a
certain auxiliary means… by the medium of which the child (learner) man-ages to
perform the task” (Luria, 1928, as cited in Cole, 1995, 191). From this perspective,
cognition is no longer studied in light of individuals learning in isolation with only their
minds to guide them; instead, the emphasis is on individuals learning with a wide variety
of tools, and people that help them carry out their goal-oriented activities in a
sociocultural setting.

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414 British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 33 No 4 2002

The study of ICT in schools may then ground its research in a unit of analysis that allows
one to observe the actual processes by which sociocultural setting and cognition shape
and are shaped by ICT tools. There is a basic unit common to the analysis of the learning
processes both at the individual and social level, including the mediational tools and
artefacts that link the processes together. This unit of analysis “consists of an individual
engaged in goal-directed activity under conventionalised constraints” (Cole, 1985, 158).
The centrality of activity in sociocultural research is reflected in Leont’ev’s (1981, 46–
47) assertion:
“Human psychology is concerned with the activity of concrete individuals, which takes place
whether in a collective—that is, jointly with other people—or in a situation in which the subject
deals directly with the surrounding world of objects—eg, at the potter’s wheel or the writer’s desk
—if we removed human activity from the system of social relationships and social life, it would not
exist… the human individual’s activity is a system in the system of social relations. It does not exist
without these relations.”

Therefore, activities are systems in the system of social relations. Activity theory takes a
collected object-oriented activity system as its prime unit of analysis (Engeström, 1987;
Engeström, Miettinen, and Punamäki, 1998). The unit of analysis allows one to observe
the actual learning processes in context, where the context is the activity system. It
integrates the subject (individual participant), the object, the tools and the dynamic nature
of human activities. Engeström (1987) represent the idea of activity systems as a unit of
analysis with an expanded version of the classical mediational triangle.

The classical mediational triangle represents the basic structure of human cognition that
results from tool mediation. Drawing upon Vygotsky’s (1978) higher and elementary
mental functioning, “unmediated” (elementary) functioning occurs along the base of the
triangle; while “mediated” (higher) functioning are interactions between the subject
(individual) and object (task) mediated by tools, at the vertex of the triangle (see Figure
1). However, this basic mediational triangle fails to account for the collective and
dynamic nature of activities.

The expanded version adds the crucial components of community, rules and division of
labour to the classical mediational triangle. Individuals exist in communities where there
is division of labour with the “continuously negotiated distribution of tasks, powers, and
responsibilities among the participants of the activity system”. The relations between the
individual (subject) and community are mediated by the com-munity’s collection of
mediating tools, and rules. Rules are “the norms and sanctions that specify and regulate
the expected correct procedures and acceptable interactions among the participants”
(Cole and Engeström, 1993, 7) (see Figure 1).

The model of activity system is dynamic across time where there are continuous
constructions and reconstructions among its components. For example, there are ongoing
negotiation and reformulation of rules by the subject rather than subject abiding by fixed
rules. The tools are continuously reconstructed or new tools developed by both the
subject and his/her community to meet the object of the activity system.

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 A theoretical framework for the study of ICT in schools 415

Mediating tools:
ICT and non-ICT

Subject: Object:
Individual student Higher order
thinking skills

Rules: Community: Division of labour:

General rules, Classmates, teachers, Roles
specific rules ICT staff

Figure 1: The expanded version of the classical mediational triangle

The division of labour is always in the process of redefinition and refinement by the
subject and his/her community. Even the object is constantly in transition and under
construction, and “it manifests itself in different forms for different participants and at
different moments of the activity” (Hasu and Engeström, 1999, 4).

Taking an ICT-based lesson in a school as an activity system, the specific elements in the
learning environment fit into the various components of the expanded version of the
mediational triangle. The subject is the individual student and the object is to understand
the relationships among the variables found in an ICT-based simulation package. A pool
of ICT and non-ICT tools, including the simulation package, in the learning environment
mediate the interactions between the subject and object. Besides the ICT package, these
mediating tools consist of the whiteboard, whiteboard markers, notebook, pens, data
projector, projector screen, overhead projector, and textbooks.

The student belongs to a community consisting of his/her classmates, teachers and ICT
staff, situated in a sociocultural setting mediated by rules and division of labour. The
rules include the general school rules and regulations, or more specific ones like the
procedures necessary to run the simulation program. The role that each individual of the
community has to play in the activity system falls under the division of labour. The
individual student is expected to be a scientist at work, gathering, representing, inter-
preting, and analysing data. The teacher takes on more of a mediator role than he/she will
take in a non-ICT environment. He/she shares with students the well-defined tasks of
questioning, clarifying, summarising, and predicting to help them understand the
relationships among the variables under study.

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416 British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 33 No 4 2002

Taking activity systems as a unit of analysis provides important insights into the study of
ICT in schools. First, it provides a conceptual map to the major loci among which human
cognition is distributed in the learning environment, with ICT as one of the mediating
tools. Second, it includes other people who must be taken into account simultaneously
with the subject as constituents of the activity systems. Third, institu-tionalised activities
are more robust and enduring than an individual goal-directed activity, making analysis
less problematic (Cole and Engeström, 1993). And fourth, it considers the history and
developmental phases of the ICT integration processes that is represented by “some
historically identifiable ideal-typical qualitative pattern or constellation of its components
and inner relations” (Engeström, 1993, 69). Therefore, the concept of activity system
provides a seminal formulation in a Vygotskian approach of a unit of analysis that serves
as the starting point for a sociocultural approach towards the study of ICT in schools:
“real activities of real people” over time (Cole, 1985, 159).

Situating the activity system in a broader context

One of the limitations of activity theory is its narrow view of culture (Kaptelinin, 1996).
Although activity system as a unit of analysis captures the activities mediated by
students, teachers, ICT tools and non-ICT tools in the learning environment, it fails to
look at the broader context in which ICT is situated—the school, education system and
society-at-large. To situate the activity system of an ICT-based lesson within a broader
context, Cole’s (1995) garden-as-culture metaphor is adopted. Culture and garden share a
basic idea about creating an artificial environment with optimal conditions for growth of
young organisms, mediated by tools and other organisms. Cole (1995, 196) draws a
parallel between the role of the sociocultural researcher and the gardener that both “must
attend simultaneously to two classes of concerns: what transpires inside the system
(“garden”) they study (or design and study) and what transpires around it”. These two
classes cannot be addressed independently of each other, as the garden is dependent on
the larger ecological system within which it is embedded.

Cole (1995) has applied the garden metaphor to the Fifth Dimension, a specially designed
learning environment for promoting the all-around intellectual and social development of
six to twelve year old children in the United States. The study of the Fifth Dimension
suggests that a change of culture in the broader context, a switch of institu-tional setting,
or a change in focus on a different activity in the activity system is likely to change the
higher mental functioning displayed by the individual child. How-ever, the change will
not be a random one. It will be in accord with the culture operating at each level of
context in the new learning situation.

Knowledge of the operations and interdependence of the cultures, at various levels of

context, will empower the study to provide a better understanding of where and how ICT
is situated in the academic course. Applying the garden metaphor to the study of ICT will
provide a more adequate and detailed account of the activity systems. Figure 2 shows the
schematic overview of a sociocultural approach towards the study of ICT in schools.

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 A theoretical framework for the study of ICT in schools 417

Society at large

Education system

School

Course of study

Activity systems
Tools

Subject Object

Rules Community Division of

labour

Activity systems

Assessment, curriculum,
entry requirement, layout
of classrooms

Type, location, ethos, ICT facilities,

time-table, type of students,
parents, peers, home
computers

Examination boards, education policies,

league table, recruitment and
training of teachers

Employers, publishers,
software developers
Adapted from Cole 1995, p. 198, fig. 8.1

Figure 2: Applying the garden metaphor to the activities systems

In this “concentric” model, successive circles represent the activity systems in the broader
contexts of the ICT-based lesson. The activity system of the ICT-based lesson, with its
interacting components, is in the innermost circle. The next circle represents the activity

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418 British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 33 No 4 2002

system of the academic course with elements such as mode of assessment (tools),
curriculum (object and tools), layout of the classrooms and ICT rooms (rules), entry
requirement to the course (rules and community), and roles of course participants
(division of labour and community). The next higher level of context or activity system is
the school where the course is situated. Elements to consider include the type, location,
layout and ethos of the school (rules and community), ICT facilities (tools), type of
students, parents, peers (community), home computers (tools), time-tabling of ICT and
non-ICT lessons (rules), and roles of different members of the school (division of labour
and community).

The country’s education system is in the next circle with elements such as education
policies on use of ICT (rules), examination boards (tools and community), league table
(object and rules), the recruitment, training and retention of teachers (community and
roles), and the division of labour among major stakeholders of the education system. The
outermost circle is the society at large in the country and consists of elements such as
education software developers, publishers (community and division of labour), and public
perceptions of schools and teachers, and expectations of employers (rules, object and
community). The activity systems at different levels may change over time, but they are
always interdependent of one another. Nothing is unidirectional in such an interactive
system. Changes that are initiated by any of the components of an activity system have an
impact on the components of the other activity systems (Cole, 1995).

Limitations of the theoretical framework

Although Cole’s (1995) ecological circles address the limitation of the narrow view of
culture that is adopted by activity theory, there are other limitations that have not been
addressed. First, activity theory was originally developed for understanding individual
activity (Kaptelinin, 1996). Yet, the subject may be a group or an individual. In the case
of the subject being a group of students, it cannot be assumed that all of them share the
same object in the activity system. A way around it may be to identify the dominant
object and adopt it as the object of the activity system of the group of students.

Second, “the border between a tool and reality is rather unclear; information technology
can provide the user not only with representations of objects of reality but also with a sort
of reality as such, which does not obviously represent anything else and is intended to be
just one more environment with which the individual interacts” (Kaptelinin, 1996, 64).
This unclear border is a problem virtual reality presents to activity theory. However, it
may be addressed by drawing upon the distributed cognition approach, in which internal
and external representations of the artefacts are examined (Hutchins, 1991).

Third, activity theory is not operationalised enough (Kaptelinin, 1996). The field still lacks
sufficient methods and techniques that can be utilised directly to answer certain research
questions of ICT in education. Some techniques for the application of activity theory in ICT in
schools may include video analysis of various learning activities involved

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 A theoretical framework for the study of ICT in schools 419

in observing the use of ICT in the learning environment combined with traditional
ethnographic approaches of observations and interviews (Bellamy, 1996).

Conclusion: developing a research agenda for the study of ICT in

Singapore schools
A sociocultural approach towards the study of ICT in schools rejects the view that ICT
can be studied in isolation, or as a single variable in the learning environment hold-ing all
other things constant. Instead it must be studied within the learning environ-ment and the
broader context in which it is situated. The paper has argued for a more holistic approach
of studying ICT in schools by adopting a sociocultural perspective. It proposes a
theoretical framework based on the activity system as a unit of analysis (Engeström,
1987) that is surrounded by different levels of ecological circles (Cole, 1995).

By adopting the proposed framework and addressing its limitations, we will be able to
study and document both the “successful” and “unsuccessful” integration of ICT in
schools with particular learning environments and their sociocultural context (education
system and society at large). From these discussions, a research agenda can then be
generated for the study of ICT in Singapore schools.

The Singapore Masterplan for ICT in Education was launched in April 1997. One of its
goals was to ensure that by the end of 2002, all 368 schools in Singapore would be
equipped with the necessary hardware, software and infrastructure that would support an
ICT integrated learning environment. At its launch, the Minister of Education in his
opening speech elaborated on the rationale:

“Singapore’s Masterplan for Information Technology in Education lays out a comprehensive

strategy for creating an IT-based teaching and learning environment in every school. It will be one
of our key strategies for equipping our young with skills that are critical for the future—creative
thinking, the ability to learn independently and continuously, and effective communication.”
(Ministry of Education, 1997)

As the process of ICT integration in Singapore schools reaches a considerable level of

maturity and stability, it is timely to conduct a study to address the pertinent question of:
“Where and how ICT is situated in Singapore schools to mediate the learning process of
students?” The proposed theoretical framework and research purpose discussed above
provide the parameters, tools and general guide for the study to address the question. The
research study may be carried out in two phases.

Phase one comprises a self-reporting questionnaire to be sent out to all schools in

Singapore. One of the main objectives of the questionnaire is to assess the level of ICT
integration in schools by identifying the various sociocultural elements that influence the
successful integration of ICT in Singapore schools. The other objectives are to serve as a
screening phase to identify the case studies for phase two of the study, and to refine and
guide the direction of phase two of the study.

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420 British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 33 No 4 2002

The questionnaire may explore different aspects of ICT integration in schools that include
school ICT culture (leadership support, exchange of ideas and experiences, and extent of
staff involvement in review of school ICT programme), pupil use of ICT (pro-ficiency of
pupils in the use of ICT, and pupils’ usage for learning), teacher use of ICT (teachers’
proficiency in the use of ICT, and integration of IT by teachers in the class-room),
management of ICT resources (accessibility to ICT resources, and monitoring process of
ICT resources to optimise usage) and staff development (opportunities for staff
development in the area of ICT integration, and review of staff development to meet the
needs of ICT integration).

Phase two is a collective case study of schools at different levels: primary schools,
secondary schools and junior colleges. The sample of schools at each level is chosen
based on their degree of ICT integration reported in phase one. Case study research is the
most appropriate methodological tradition, given that the purpose of the study emphasises
the context of ICT use. To gather accounts of different realities constructed by various
groups and individuals in different environments, both qualitative and quantitative
methods are drawn upon: observations of ICT and non-ICT based lessons, face-to-face
interviews with principals and ICT-coordinators, focus group interviews with students
and teachers, questionnaires for teachers and students, samples of students’ work and
schools’ documentation.

The proposed theoretical framework described earlier then, allows us to generate a

comprehensive research agenda to study and document the totality of “successful” and
“unsuccessful” ICT integration into Singaporean schools. Such a study will inform
policy-makers, school administrators and teachers about how to take up the opportunities
and address the limitations of ICT, and how to successfully integrate ICT in schools,
specifically within their broader sociocultural contexts.

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