What’s Really Getting in the Way of Teachers Embracing Edtech?
Amy Ballard, Ph.D., a math trainer and tutorial coach at Brashier Middle College Charter High School in Simpsonville, South Carolina, has greater than twenty years of expertise and spends lots of time occupied with edtech. Yet Ballard’s predominant focus just isn’t the instruments themselves, however quite, easy methods to assist academics leveraging edtech to assist enhance scholar studying.
“I worked as an administrator for 10 years, so I think about edtech from both sides — both how an administrator makes decisions about edtech tools, but also how we can support our teachers,” Ballard shared in a spotlight group that was half of a larger project designed to raised perceive the hole between educating practices and expertise use. This venture was supported by Google for Education and concerned a quantity of companions, together with our group, WestEd.
As the analysis leads on the venture, we drew on literature and educator focus teams to research how expertise may very well be leveraged most successfully in instruction, the obstacles to adoption, and the strategies that could best support teachers in adopting effective instructional practices.
We chosen Ballard and her friends for our collection of focus teams as a result of of their management in supporting the efficient use of expertise in their colleges. Even although Ballard is a self-described “early adopter,” she is cautious to not advocate the newest, shiniest instruments to her academics outright. She acknowledges that instruments should align to academics’ tutorial objectives and should be accompanied by skilled improvement that covers not simply how particular person instruments operate, but additionally how they match into efficient educating follow.
“I need to reiterate with my teachers that the tech tool itself isn’t the be all, end all,” Ballard mentioned. Instead, she added that you will need to middle edtech round the educator; finally it’s how academics use that expertise to advance their tutorial objectives that issues.
A Shift to Technology-Enabled Instruction
Ballard, together with different academics who participated in our focus teams, helps to domesticate “technology-enabled instruction,” an idea coined by training researchers Peggy A. Ertmer and Anne Ottenbreit-Leftwich that refers not simply as to if expertise is used in the classroom but additionally when and the way academics use expertise to enhance studying outcomes.
For a faculty to shift from merely including tech instruments to encouraging academics to make use of them successfully, just a few components should be in place, together with knowledgeable decision-making by management, continuous coaching and assist for academics and buy-in from employees. After all, there are lots of the reason why a trainer is perhaps reluctant to embrace edtech, and never all of these obstacles hinge on whether or not a trainer is aware of easy methods to combine expertise in the classroom.
Ballard understands that higher than most. For instance, in one of our focus teams, we requested academics to look at the prototype for a software they may use to guage whether or not and easy methods to use edtech. Ballard believed that the software required an excessive amount of time for academics to parse and leverage successfully in their educating. She mentioned, “When I think about my teachers, I think they would just shut down if they saw this.” Ballard illustrated that typically it’s not about understanding easy methods to use a software — it’s about not having the time.
There are good causes for that, Ballard mentioned. Teachers are already stressed, overwhelmed by technology and reluctant to speculate their restricted time in a doubtlessly unproven software or method. Many have seen this present earlier than: a faddish flavor of the month that was rapidly changed by the subsequent huge factor or that was proven to be ineffective in the long run.
Barriers to Embracing Technology in the Classroom
Teachers in our focus teams defined that past time and experience-backed cynicism, there are a bunch of different the reason why academics may not wish to undertake technology-enabled tutorial practices.
Some contributors mirrored that they’ve colleagues who categorical an absence of confidence in their technological talents or who say they’ve adopted non-technological approaches that they really feel are simpler. Others shared that they or their colleagues concern being reprimanded by faculty leaders for making an attempt one thing new, don’t really feel adequately educated, or lack entry to the instruments they should implement edtech successfully.
These explanations for educator reticence about embracing edtech are backed up by a quarter-century of analysis, courting again to earlier than the time period “technology-enabled instruction” was first launched. Ertmer first distinguished between “first- and second-order barriers” to the efficient use of expertise in the classroom in 1999, referring to classes of challenges which are typically referred to as “external and internal barriers.”
External obstacles are elements exterior of a trainer’s management — entry to expertise, assist from management and alternatives to take part in high-quality skilled improvement, amongst others. Internal obstacles are intrinsic to the trainer — for instance, their beliefs and attitudes about the usefulness of expertise, and their actual and perceived information.
| Examples of External Barriers | Examples of Internal Barriers |
|---|---|
| Lack of entry to expertise | Real and perceived information and expertise |
| Lack of skilled improvement | Beliefs about technology-enabled educating and studying |
| Lack of a faculty or district imaginative and prescient for expertise integration | Pedagogical values and beliefs |
| Poor or unsupportive management |
This distinction between exterior and inner obstacles was intuitive for the academics in our focus teams. If a classroom has spotty Wi-Fi or a trainer has insufficient entry to units for college kids, it’s awfully laborious to make the most of edtech. If a trainer has had adverse prior experiences with edtech instruments or considers themself a technophobe, it’s troublesome to persuade them that studying to make use of tech instruments is an effective use of time.
Understanding the Relationship Between Barriers
The significance of these obstacles has modified over time. Over the previous twenty years, there was vital progress on breaking down exterior obstacles similar to Wi-Fi and system entry, at the same time as the challenges are removed from solved. According to a 2019-20 survey administered by the National Center for Education Statistics, 9 out of 10 colleges reported that their computer systems met the faculty’s educating and studying must a average or giant extent. Internet entry has additionally improved considerably. A 2021 survey by EdWeek Research Center discovered that greater than 75 % of academics mentioned that not less than three-quarters of their college students have sufficient web entry at house to assist studying. Digital divides persist, however colleges have made some progress in addressing these obstacles.
When taking a look at how academics use expertise, their faculty and district context issues an incredible deal too. A trainer in one faculty may work with directors who’ve clearly articulated a plan for a way academics can use edtech and who’ve offered the assist crucial for academics to implement that imaginative and prescient. That assist may embrace peer-teacher fashions, related skilled improvement alternatives {and professional} studying communities that elevate trainer voices. A trainer in one other faculty with much less assist is perhaps much less efficient in utilizing edtech.
When contemplating easy methods to handle these context-specific obstacles, it’s necessary to know how inner and exterior obstacles are associated. In a landmark study of barriers to using edtech effectively revealed in 2007, researchers Khe Foon Hew and Thomas Brush argued that inner and exterior obstacles should be addressed collectively. As Hew and Brush put it, these obstacles “are so inextricably linked together that it is very difficult to address them separately.”
Several contributors in our focus teams informed us that they have been excited to embrace new edtech instruments however encountered resistance from leaders who claimed that the work didn’t match into the imaginative and prescient for the faculty or who didn’t assist further trainer coaching. In these circumstances, academics confronted no inner obstacles when it got here to beliefs and attitudes, however they have been nonetheless hampered by utilizing edtech successfully in instruction.
Other academics informed us that they’d colleagues who had entry to a spread of instruments however who considered expertise negatively, and opted to not use expertise in ways in which might have benefited scholar studying.
Those inner obstacles are particularly powerful to handle. The excellent news is that research exhibits that academics’ beliefs, values and attitudes are usually not static, and that faculty and district leaders can play an necessary position in altering their perceptions, paving the approach for technology-enabled instruction to happen.
How School and District Leaders Can Address Barriers Holistically
A quantity of researchers, together with Ertmer, Windschitl, Hew and Brush, have proven that academics’ beliefs — the underlying concepts and assumptions they maintain about expertise and pedagogy — affect whether or not and the way they use expertise.
Yet, these researchers have additionally proven that these beliefs are malleable. Ertmer and others have proven that academics’ beliefs about edtech can shift when introduced with proof {that a} follow improves scholar studying. When faculty and district leaders assist academics see how tech can assist with a selected educating aim similar to scaffolding or lodging of particular person scholar wants, academics usually tend to be open to utilizing expertise in instruction.
Studies also reveal that academics’ beliefs and practices may also change in response to direct, optimistic experiences utilizing edtech. Opportunities to experiment with tech in small and incremental methods can assist academics enhance their self-confidence, self-efficacy and perceived technical information, ensuing in academics’ willingness to make use of tech the place it may profit instruction and studying. There’s also evidence that academics can expertise the same shift in perspective when colleges assist them with ongoing and related skilled studying alternatives, skilled studying communities and alternatives to contribute to decision-making.
Of course, instituting these approaches to shift academics’ beliefs and attitudes to foster technology-enabled practices isn’t straightforward. It requires substantial time, effort, respect for educators and a transparent understanding of how inner and exterior obstacles relate. But, as we heard from the academics in our focus teams, it’s a course of that may finally profit everybody, college students most particularly.
