ACITT: Is it true you began your career as a maths teacher? How long were you teaching?

GG: In 1963 I started teaching mathematics in schools and later in a teacher training college in London. I became involved in the curriculum development of the Mathematics in Education and Industry Project. As part of this, I collected and published for the Project applications of mathematics in industry and commerce which were based on computational algorithms. This interest in computing led me to teach programming and analysis in secondary schools and to trainee teachers, and to publish some more applications of computating in mathematics for teachers. With the aid of an IBM grant,and the London University Institute of Education, I researched the effects on pupils’ organising skills of learning programming and related techniques. After six years of thus teaching mathematics and computing I joined industry to develop my technical, team working and managerial competences. After six years of this, I returned to education as HM Inspector of Schools.

ACITT: Programming skills seem to have been largely relegated to subservient

GG: There was a simple reason why programming was not “flavour of the curriculum reviews” that established the original National Curriculum and its subsequent revision. The majority of teachers saw programming as a great consumer of IT resources and a great mystique factor that left girls bored and computer rooms tied up with little to show. Use of IT for communications, design and limited modelling was far more apparent and attractive. Programming involved more fiddly IT skills, and for many pupils, risks of early failure. Relatively inexpert teachers felt unable to resolve programming problems, or provide the variety of projects, with the same ease as other aspects of IT, especially once WIMP environments turned up for designing, drawing, DTP, sound composition, etc. Programming was regarded as “whizzy” and for the few. Tellingly, the word could not be used in the national curriculum terminology. Modelling with spreadsheets and in control was the most that could be expected of all pupils, and the level of programming in spreadsheets was not too daunting! In some present GCSE work, the level of programming with spreadsheets can be just as effective as anything that used to be done in headier days of Basic, Logo or C+. The environment is far more controlled, and the systems analysis and problem solving concepts rather less challenging.

I agree that mathematics could be transformed by an algorithmic approach allied to programming and computational solutions. The programmable calculator is a superb support for these approaches, as is Logo. The pedagogy of using these tools has been explored by the Association of Teachers of Maths, by NCET projects and by European and American educators who wrote many books about it! We have some noted mathematical educators in higher education with superb ideas on programming in maths. Their impact has been limited since LEA advisers have not had the time to develop their ideas locally.

ACITT: Why did you decide to leave education for a while? Was it the same reason so many good IT teachers left at that time, for better money due to the high demand of IT skills in business?

GG: Money was not a consideration at the time, but career development was. I was, and remain passionate about education and teaching and wanted to extend my experience beyond education in order to pursue applications of IT. My late father also wanted me to have a second string to my career bow in case anti Semitism drove me out of this country as he had been driven out from Germany 35 years earlier. I valued his advice, and continued my educational studies and thesis writing while in industry with the full intention of returning to the classroom at some stage. I have still to realize this ambition, although I have some fun with my grandchildren!

I kept on looking out for senior positions in education after completing the six years my father thought I ought to do of the second-string stuff, although I enjoyed it enormously and, with G-d’s help, had a measure of success.

ACITT: Did you ever work for ILECC? What do you remember about them?

GG: I did not work for ILECC but worked in several London comprehensives as a maths and computing teacher and in one of ILEA’s teacher training colleges. I thought the world of most of the people working in ILECC and what they did for teachers and schools in terms of training, documentation and technical support. I was lucky in being asked to help with some training in the early days of school computing, and later found myself facing ILECC staff and their course members in my audiences at weekend schools or at John Ruskin Street. Given its size, I was only sorry that, for reasons I understood well, ILECC felt unwilling to support the products of more than their one chosen maker of computers and peripherals until very much later. Some of the London children I knew would have benefited if supported facilities had been available on other platforms and associated devices.

ACITT: What was the first major Ofsted report on national IT that you were involved in?

GG: My first published report was in 1986 when my team of HMI reported on the work of the Microelectronics Education Programme, the predecessor of MESU, NCET and BECta.

ACITT: What do you remember of the state of IT in schools then?

ACITT: The rumour is that you were actually instrumental in founding ACITT although there are no references to you in the early issues of the newsletters. Is there any truth in this?

GG: There is truth in the claim that I was involved in the founding of ACITT, though my part was more modest than the role of those founding fathers who did all the initial work. Among the chief organisers were ILEA advisers Bryan Weaver and Sheyne Lucock, blessed by Derek Esterson, Bryan’s chief at the time, though Derek did not to my knowledge get involved in the detail. Others involved included university lecturer John Hammond, now with the QCA, though he was not on the initial executive, not being in school-related work at the time.

My role was simply to help define a role for the new organisation and to convince potential activists that there was a great need for it. I addressed the first meeting of ACITT because I was the national point of reference in HMI for IT both as a subject and as a resource in the curriculum. I talked about the state of IT and IT leadership in schools, and tried to show what agenda a new professional association of computing and IT teachers would have to offer a profession starved of “political”, organisational and pedagogical support. I have addressed several other ACITT annual conferences since then, mainly to report national inspection findings.

ACITT: Exactly what was the agenda you think ACITT should have pursued back then?

If the first, then this must mean that members must work towards a legal definition of the subject and concentrate on its pedagogy. If the second, then much development is needed in explaining what IT across the curriculum really means as compared with Bullock’s “language across the curriculum”; was IT really seen as important enough by heads?

If the third, then how could responsibility for administrative systems and timely technical support be compatible with carrying a heavy teaching and assessment load, or developing a school’s curricular applications of IT?

In my view, ACITT’s role was to constitute a professional body to debate and answer these questions in turn and to provide a vision of where the IT teaching profession really should be going. I felt that ACITT needed to develop professional literature on how to teach aspects of IT; how to organize and support IT as a resource across the curriculum; how to make school management aware of the need to separate responsibility for curricular uses of IT from technical responsibility for supporting systems for school administration and the management of information. I felt that membership should initially be open to secondary teachers and to be broadened as computers became more plentiful and accepted in the primary curriculum. Needless to say, members made up their own minds on the membership and agenda they wished to carry forward, and for several years, I heard little about the direction taken by ACITT, though I addressed several of your Annual Conferences to report the state of IT in the nation’s schools.

ACITT: In the current climate of political support and organisations for ICT, do you feel it is the pedagogical support that is most needed now, or have we moved on to other issues?

GG: Professional support is needed on three fronts:

Best practice in the teaching of IT as a subject now that it has been defined in the NC. This is a task that needs to feed the training of specialists in initial training institutions – yet there is an absence of active ACITT members in all but a handful of those institutions/partnerships.

Assessing IT capability in various Key Stages, including 16-19. This is especially necessary now that vocational courses at several levels have changed the nature of assessment and of the subject. While QCA is responsible for assessment issues, it needs the support of subject professional associations: QCA has many subjects to look after, and only a handful of officers for a volatile, new subject like ICT. ACITT, the British Computer Society and examining boards need to debate valid ways of assessing ICT capability and the implications of assessment methods for the ICT curriculum. I am concerned about many tick-list approaches to ICT skills, and any consequent lowering of expectations in terms of problem solving.

Developing a sufficient understanding of the needs, strengths and limitations of subject teachers in the application of ICT in the curriculum. This is NOT in order to tell them what ICT is good for their teaching. It is to understand enough of what other teachers are trying to do in their classes and their teaching to be able to determine whether a given ICT solution really adds value. As well as technical expertise a good dose of professional integrity is needed and much common sense. (ICT coordinators are already pretty skilled at teaching colleagues the technical bits of IT which they need before they can apply technology in their subject, e.g. email or DTP. Post NOF-funded ICT training, it would help if all could also help to resolve conflicts between what’s easily available or affordable and what’s likely to lead to really enhanced work that would please subject specialists, and not merely reinforce IT skills, important as those are.)

ACITT: Is there anything you would like to say in conclusion?

GG: Yes, the definition of ICT capability, and its extensions, continues to develop. It is a true privilege now to be able to see how the nation has progressed in so many respects in funding and utilising ICT. So much remains to be done, especially in the context of post-NOF training for school staff, yet the culture of development with ICT is there. We must pray for the wisdom to nurture this culture wisely.

ACITT: Gabriel, thank you very much for taking the time to respond to an interview in this manner. I’m sure our readers will find it very interesting and our thanks go to you for your many contributions and consistent passion for ICT over the years...