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The manageral system in developed countries is facing major challenges as a consequence of the revolution of communication and information technology. Relationships in modem societies are transformed by emerging new means of creating, processing, accessing, and transferring information. Information and communication technologies are dramatically altering many aspects of economic and social life: production systems, working methods, and relations, the organization of companies, and the way people communicate with each other are under-going changes throughout the world. Productive functioning in emerging collaborative learning organizations requires, in adults, new self-regulative skills of controlling and directing one's own thinking processes and knowledge activities (Keating, 1995; 1996).

The revolution of information and communication technologies (ICT) is a major challenge for managers' professional development. They have to learn technical skills adequate to use ICT productively, as well as to instruct and guide the students to use ICT purposefully and generatively. Managers not only have to become familiar with ICT but also to acquire the pedagogical expertise needed for fruitfully working with new technology-based learning environments. New pedagogical practices have to be explored and developed to facilitate higher-level knowledge acquisition skills the learners need to constructively adapt to the knowledge society. Currently, managers' lack of technical expertise in ICT appears to significantly constrain possibilities of developing new and innovative computer-supported pedagogical practices.

Further, to fully use new pedagogical possibilities offered by ICT, profound changes in managers' conceptions of learning and knowledge are required. Technical expertise alone is not sufficient for exploiting new pedagogical possibilities provided by ICT; insofar as ICT is used in the educational system as a purely technical innovation, it is not likely that significant pedagogical progress will be achieved. Several cognitive researchers (e.g., Salomon, 1997; Salomon & Perkins, 1996; Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1994) have pointed out that many applications of educational technology support only lower-level processing of knowledge. Yet new pedagogical models of using educational technology, and particularly computer-supported collaborative learning environments, promise to provide new opportunities for solving pedagogical problems in the schools.

Scardamalia and Bereiter (1994; in press), and others, have proposed that to meet the future challenges, schools be transformed into communities where productive working for advancing communal knowledge is a primary goal of both students and managers. Knowledge building refers to a process of advancing understanding by setting up, articulating, and answering research questions, searching and exploring information, and generating and evaluating explanations. In the present study, the sustained processes of advancing and building of knowledge characteristic of scientific inquiry and knowledge-creating organizations are called "progressive inquiry." Several, concurrent, cognitive research projects share a common goal of fostering such research-like processes of inquiry in education (Brown & Campione, 1996; Lamon, Secules, Petrosino, Bransford, & Goldman, 1996; Perkins, Crismond, Simmons, & Unger, 1995; Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1994). Progressive inquiry entails that knowledge is not simply assimilated but constr ucted through solving problems of understanding. The emerging new models of computer-supported collaborative learning promise, with appropriate institutional support, to elicit development of higher-level skills of knowledge processing needed in knowledge society (Hakkarainen & Sintonen, in press; Lehtinen, Hakkarainen, Lipponen, Rahikainen, & Muukkonen, 1998).

Further, on the basis of research on socially distributed cognitive processes (e.g., Brown, Ash, Rutherford, Nakagawa, Gordon, & Campione, 1993; Norman 1993; Perkins 1993; Pea 1993) cognitive researchers are strongly emphasizing the significance of collaborative learning in cognitive development. Computer-supported collaborative learning, properly implemented, promises to foster human cognitive development. In parallel with these findings, several cognitive researcher argue that intelligence can be enhanced and helped to grow through sustained, focused cognitive efforts (Ericsson & Lehmann, 1996; Perkins, 1995; Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1993; Schank & Birnbaum, 1994). Intelligent technology may function as an extension of the human cognitive system and facilitate development of intelligence. In order to restructure educational practices according to cognitive theory and answer the challenges of the knowledge society, managers need to be engaged in an extensive professional development process. To meet the chall enges of knowledge society, managers require adequate technical infrastructure and resources, adequate skills in using information technology, theoretical understanding of the role of intelligent technology in human cognition, and innovative pedagogical models of using ICT for pedagogical purposes. Further, it is unlikely that an individual manager can make much progress in his or her pedagogical practice without support of the whole pedagogical community of the school (Lipponen & Hakkarainen, 1997; Hakkarainen, Lipponen, & Jarvela, in press).

The City of Helsinki has been carrying out an educational technology project called the Schools of Helsinki 2001 project. During the project each school from elementary to high-school level was equipped with a network infrastructure and new computers. Over 70.000 students were provided with their own Internet address. As a part of the project, the investigators carried out a professional development project for 3,000 managers that focused both on developing technical ICT skills and on acquiring expertise needed for pedagogically well-grounded practices using ICT. Students were assessed. The present study was a part of this overall ICT project and focused on examining managers' technical ICT skills, pedagogical goals and practices of using the ICT, as well as their pedagogical thinking. A parallel investigation was conducted for assessing students' skills and practices of using ICT and reported elsewhere (Hakkarainen, Ilomaki, Lipponen, Muukkonen, Rahikainen, Tuominen, Lakkala, & Lehtinen, 2000). Finland is on e of the most advanced countries in terms of computer usage, Internet access, as well as information technology. The present results, therefore, appear to be of international interest because they raise issues that each developed country is facing today or will in the near future. The purpose of the study is (a) to examine managers' ICT skills, (b) to examine how ICT is used in current educational practices, (c) to assess managers' pedagogical thinking, as well as (d) to identify relations between managers' reported use of ICT and their pedagogical thinking.

The scale of technical ICT skills consisted of items that were designed to measure the subjects' general assessment of their mastery of the ICT as well as their competence in different domains of ICT such as textprocessing, spreadsheet, desktop publishing, authoring tools, and World Wide Web (WWW or Web). Another scale consisted of items that focused on how intensively managers use applications of ICT in planning of their teaching and in their actual instructional practice. This scale was labeled "intensity of using ICT." In the self-report questionnaire, pedagogical goals and practices of the managers were also assessed, regarding use of ICT at school; that is, whether ICT is used for carrying out routine tasks or solving routine problems or whether ICT usage is designed to facilitate the students' self-regulated research-like process of inquiry and solving of authentic, complex problems. This scale was labeled the "ICT-for-progressive-inquiry principle." The scale contained items of the following kind: "In formation technology can be used as a tool for independent search for information" or "The best part of information technology is that students are processing complex and authentic problems independently." For each statement, the managers were asked to assess how often the principle in question is actually implemented in their pedagogical practice. This scale was labeled "ICT-for-progressive-inquiry practice."

The managers were further asked to assess a set of items connected with technology support for collaborative learning. The ICT-support-for-collaborative-learning scale asked the managers to assess whether ICT isolates students from each other or has a potential for facilitating peer collaboration. It contained items such as "collaborative working with computers improves students' school achievements." A part of the self-report questionnaire was a scale for assessing managers' conceptions of the learnability of intelligence, as applied to their students. The scale of learnability of intelligence consisted of items according to which "Sustained cognitive effort does not change a student's intelligence or mental capacity" or "Students' cognitive competence is not enough for planning larger curricular units."

Managers' conceptions of inquiry were measured by using a scale in which they were asked to evaluate a set of items connected with the pedagogy of progressive inquiry, such as "I think that reflecting on students' own conceptions is as important an aspect of learning as adopting conceptions presented in textbooks" or "Students should be encouraged to ask questions even before introducing new material." This scale was named the "progressive-inquiry principle." The managers were, further, asked to assess how they are following the same principle in their pedagogical practice. This scale was called "progressive-inquiry practice."

To assess managers' conceptions of knowledge, they were asked to evaluate a set of items concerning the role of an individual student in the knowledge formation process; is it only assimilation of already existing knowledge or does it presuppose active interpretation and knowledge construction? The scale of dynamic conception of knowledge contained, among others, the following items: "Teaching time should not be used to talk about problems that cannot be conclusively answered" or "A manager's most important task is to make sure that the students have the right conception of the problems being studied." As previously mentioned, some of the items were based on assessment instruments developed by Lonka, Joram, and Bryson (1995). Yet new items were also developed that focused on epistemological conceptions rather than the nature of learning process. Thus the content of the scale differed from that of Lonka and Lindblom-Ylanne (1996).

The self-report questionnaire also contained items that referred to the nature of managers' pedagogical community in a school. The strength-of-pedagogical-community scale consisted of the following kinds of items: "My school does not have a well-defined and jointly accepted vision of development of the school" or "The manager community of my school does not discuss together the tasks or goals of the school."

Correlations were computed and principal component analyses performed in order to ex-amine relations between managers' ICT skills and usage of information technology and their conceptions of learning, intelligence, and knowledge (as well as strength of pedagogical community). Orthogonal rotation was deemed adequate because correlations between factors were low. A principal component four-factor Varimax solution was chosen. Interactions between the scales and age and gender of the managers were analyzed by combining individual scales according to their VARIMAX rotation principal component structure (using principal component scores for each subject), and then comparing different subject groups on the basis of these principal component scores. A two-way ANOVA was applied to compare different groups (age; gender). The subjects were divided into three age groups; the age of young managers n = 156) varied between 20 and 35 (M = 31) years; middle-aged managers (n = 244) between 36 and 50 (M = 43) years, and older managers (n = 194) between 51 and 63 (M = 55) years.

To examine relationships between managers' expertise in ICT and their pedagogical thinking, they were divided into three relatively homogeneous groups according to intensity of using ICT, by using cluster analysis. ICT usage rather than expertise in ICT was selected as a grouping variable because it was assumed that access to ICT, far more than skills of using ICT determined the extent of practices involving ICT at school. There were 242 managers who did not use ICT or used it only a little; 217 moderately and 118 intensively.

Prior to analysis, the data were examined for missing values. The analysis indicated that there were about 11% missing values in variables representing ICT for progressive inquiry practice, and 8% for the ICT-for-progressive-inquiry principle. Because the percentage of missing values was rather low and those values appeared to be randomly distributed through the data, the missing values were ignored.

Several scales for assessing managers' skills and practices in using ICT were created; means and Cronbach alphas for the respective scales are presented in Table 2, which also shows, for each scale, the number of items; minimum and maximum values.

The internal consistency of different scales varied from .58 to .92. The reliability analysis revealed that the scales were satisfactory and provided a good basis for further analyses. For analyzing relationships between the measures, investigators calculated a sum variable for each scale (a sum of individual items in a scale). Examination of the reliabilities of the scales indicated that the sum variables assessed the dimensions in question in a rather consistent way. To find the most important dimensions to account for the phenomena of interest, a principal component analysis was carried out, and the distributions of the individual variables was examined.

Principal factors extraction with Varimax rotation was performed through SPSSWIN on 12 sum scores representing managers' skills and practices of using ICT skills and their pedagogical thinking as measured by the self-report questionnaire. A Scree plot was used to estimate the number of factors. The analysis yielded a four-factor Varimax solution, which explains 62.4% of variance of the variables. Distinguishability and simplicity of factors appeared to be satisfactory, and the four-factor solution was adopted as interpretable. In Table 3 are presented results of a principal-component analysis based on sum scores derived from the above-described scales.

The first factor (Fl) has high loadings on dynamic conception of knowledge and learnability of intelligence. The factor appeared to be characterized by a conception according to which knowledge is theory-laden and an agent's own constructive efforts are essential in knowledge formation. This dynamic conception of knowledge may be contrasted with a passive conception according to which knowledge is unproblematic and ready to be assimilated. On the same factor a conception of an agent's cognitive competencies and intelligence as dynamically developing and learnable was loaded--in contrast to a view of individual competencies as static and differences between students pedagogically problematic. In addition, on the same factor principles (.61) as well as practices (.43) of progressive inquiry were loaded. It is intriguing that the practice of using information technology as a collaborative tool was loaded on the same factor. This might be explained by assuming that, associated with a dynamic conception of knowle dge and learnability of intelligence, is a view of collaborative work through ICT as a form of distributed intelligence that enhances individual intelligence (Pea, 1993). It is meaningful to support collaboration between students only if it is assumed that they may learn important skills from each other. The factor Fl is thus called Dynamic Conception of Knowledge and Learnability of Intelligence.

The purpose of the study was to analyze relations between managers' pedagogical thinking and their expertise in information and communication technology. The study involved constructing a self-report questionnaire that was designed to assess managers' skills and practices of using ICT and their conceptions of learning, intelligence, and knowledge. As indicated in the method section, a general problem of studies based on self-report questionnaires is that the subjects usually have correct notions about socially desirable answers. It is also important to note that managers' actual pedagogical practices were not examined, only their reports about their practices (as measured by the questionnaire). The researchers made efforts to address this problem by asking the managers to simultaneously assess pedagogical principles and how they actualized those principles in their pedagogical practices.

This solution appeared to provide very important information about differences between the managers according to their ICT skills. The results of the study indicated that only a small percentage of managers had adequate skills of information technology although a majority of them had access to computers either in their home or at school. These results should be related to the massive inservice training effort aimed at improving ICT skills of managers, which has been carried out in Helsinki during last few years (Sinko & Lehtinen, 1999). The large-scale improvement of managers' computer skills seems to be a more difficult problem than had been anticipated in Finland's national strategies.

The study indicated that managers who intensively used information technology emphasized the importance of using information technology for facilitating students' participation in progressive inquiry, collaborative learning, the learners' active engagement in knowledge formation process, and learnability of intelligence more than other managers. The results of the present study indicated that there is a discrepancy between managers' pedagogical principles that commonly emphasize active construction of knowledge, and their actual (i.e., reported) pedagogical practices. However, this apparent mismatch between theory and practice did not appear to be so strong in the context of managers who actively use ICT; they appear to have adequate pedagogical means for pursuing new pedagogical practices.

In addition, it was revealed that middle-aged female managers, who do not have as strong skills in ICT as some of their male students, emphasized a dynamic conception of knowledge and learnability of intelligence more strongly than did their male colleagues. These female managers appeared also to be willing to deepen their expertise in the ICT in order to develop and explore new pedagogical practices. An implication of the study is that to facilitate ICT usage by managers having extensive pedagogical expertise, it is essential to thoroughly subsume the use of ICT at school under pedagogical goals. Currently, ICT is used most intensively by managers who are relative experts in ICT and, presumably, very interested in information technology as such. In many cases these managers use up to 80-90% of computer laboratory tine. With respect to managers' professional development, it is crucial to emphasize the importance of changing current pedagogical practices to answer the challenges of the knowledge society. Only awareness of this need for pedagogical change and of the new pedagogical possibilities offered by ICT could create in managers a strong enough motivation to use ICT intensively in the learning-instruction process and to develop their technical ICT skills (Lehtinen, Sinko, & Hakkarainen, in press).

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