Abstract

This study reviews the development of educational technology macro policies in China and USA based on the historical juxtaposition approach. It shows that, despite the fact that two countries have major differences, with China officially being a socialist country, while the USA is a capitalist country; the development of educational technology policies in the two countries has displayed remarkable similarities. USA’s revised educational technology plans also were used as the basis of some of Chinese educational technology policies. The study displays how the ambitions toward integrating ICT in education moved from critical issues facing elementary and secondary schools in the USA like technology literacy after 1990, to adopting a technology-based learning model that resulted in measuring of student’s outcomes individually in NETP 2010. China has moved from using traditional technology in education in the early 1990 e.g. slides, projectors, films, and radio and aims at building an educational infrastructure close to the developed countries by 2020. The study reviews briefly the development of equipping American and Chinese schools with the ICT hardware infrastructure and the educational technology standards in both countries.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.