The Future is in the Margins: The Role of Technology and Disability in Educational Reform

Introduction

In a remarkable work of social history called More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave, Ruth Cowan examines the effects of new technologies in the kitchen. Her main conclusion: new technologies like stoves (which were invented in the 18th century and replaced traditional cooking on the open hearth) did not generally make less work for mother. But stoves did transform our culture's concept of what constituted a meal, what was meant by cooking, and even who and what a kitchen was for. Most important, the new technologies of the kitchen democratized cuisine - bringing meals that were more nutritious, more differentiated (multiple dishes, multiple courses), and more attractive to a wide range of households where such meals had been previously unavailable.

In our view, the effects of new technologies in education will be similar. These new technologies will not make less work for teachers. But they will transform the work - making it more nutritious (in Piaget's sense of aliments for learning), more differentiated, more engaging, and more democratized. Perhaps most important, these new tools will change our very concept of learning, and thus of teaching.

When new technologies move beyond their initial stage of development, innovations in curriculum design, teaching strategies, and policies will be driven by the needs of students "at the margin," those for whom present technologies are least effective -most prominently, students with disabilities. The beneficiaries of these innovations will be ALL students.