Government Support Of Edtech Research And Development: An International Overview

Introduction

Educational policymakers have invested heavily in computer technologies for schools. The Organization of Economic Coordination and Development (OECD) estimates that approximately US $16 billion was invested in information and computing technologies in 1999 (the most recent year this statistic was available), accounting for between 1 – 2% of overall education spending. Most of this investment was in hardware and networking infrastructure (OECD 1999). Understandably, governments, and schools, are beginning to ask serious questions about the return on this investment. What have schools gained? How can these resources be maximized? Answering these questions requires an investment in research and development, and the public sector should be supporting the endeavor since it will ultimately capture many of the gains that individual firms cannot.