The Flight of a Butterfly or the Path of a Bullet? ― Using Technology to Transform Teaching and Learning

In this book, Larry Cuban looks at the uses and effects of digital technologies in K–12 classrooms, exploring if and how technology has transformed teaching and learning. In particular, he examines forty-one classrooms across six districts in Silicon Valley that have devoted special attention and resources to integrating digital technologies into their education practices.

Cuban observed all of the classrooms and interviewed each of the teachers in an effort to answer several straightforward, if also elusive, questions: Has technology integration been fully implemented and put into practice in these classrooms, and has this integration and implementation resulted in altered teaching practices? Ultimately, Cuban asks if the use of digital technologies has resulted in transformed teaching and learning in these classrooms.

The answers to these questions reflect Cuban’s assessment not only of digital technologies and their uses, but of the complex interrelations of policy and practice, and of the many—often unintended—consequences of reforms and initiatives in the education world. Similarly, his answers reflect his subtle understanding of change and continuity in education practice, and of the varying ways in which different actors in the education world—policy makers, school leaders, teachers, and others—understand, and sometimes misinterpret, those changes.

The result is a crucial contribution to our knowledge of digital technologies and their place in contemporary education practice from one of our leading scholars of education policy, practice, and reform.

Larry Cuban is professor emeritus of education at Stanford University.