September 1, 2006

EssentialsUseofTech06.pdf

The research literature on educational technology has identified a number of important contextual factors that influence how technology is used in educational settings. For six years, the Education Development Center (EDC) has used a variety of methods to investigate the multiple ways in which the Intel Teach to the Future Essentials professional development program interacts with these contextual factors to support effective integration of technology into K-2 classroom teaching. In May of this year, EDC conducted the 2006 Instructional Practices and Classroom Use of Technology Survey with over a thousand teachers, some of whom participated in Intel Teach to the Future and some of whom did not, to investigate whether three of the key research-based factors - participation in quality professional development (specifically Intel Teach Essentials), teachers' access to technology, and their pedagogical beliefs - influenced teachers' use of technology and their instructional practices. We found that each of these factors had some impact and that interactions among the factors, both at the individual teacher level and the district level, often had even more pronounced influences on teacher behavior. The key findings from our survey analysis are highlighted below.

All three research-based factors had an impact on teachers' use of technology to support their practice.

• Intel Teach to the Future Essentials participants in general (94.4 percent) and Master Teachers in particular (97 percent) used technology in their practices more than non-participants (86.1 percent).

• Teachers with strong constructivist beliefs (91.7 percent) used technology in their practice more than those with moderate (89.4 percent) or weak (86.3 percent) constructivist beliefs.

• Teachers were more likely to report using technology in their practices if they had access to computers in both a lab and their classrooms (91.1 percent) than if they had only lab access (86.8 percent) or only classroom access (83.2 percent).

• Teachers who reported using technology in their practices had a greater number of computers in their classrooms (mean: 2.98) than those who reported that they did not use technology in their practice (mean: 1.87).

All three research-based factors had an impact on teachers' use of technology with their students.

• Intel Teach to the Future Essentials participants in general (95.4 percent) and Master Teachers in particular (98.4 percent) used technology with their students more than non-participants did (90.7 percent).

• Teachers with strong constructivist beliefs (95.2 percent) used technology with their students more than those with moderate (94.5 percent) or weak (87.9 percent) constructivist beliefs did.

• Teachers who used technology with their students had a higher number of computers in their classrooms (mean: 3.09) than those who did not use technology with their students (mean: 1.44).

Participating in Intel Teach Essentials appeared to produce more dramatic changes in the behavior of teachers who held weak, rather than strong, constructivist beliefs.

• The difference between program participants and non-participants in the use of technology in their practices was greater for respondents with weak constructivist beliefs (11.4 percent) than for those with strong constructivist beliefs (6.7 percent).

• The difference between program participants and non-participants in the use of technology with students was also greater for respondents with weak constructivist beliefs (5.7 percent) than for those with strong constructivist beliefs (3.2 percent).

Participating in Intel Teach Essentials appeared to produce more dramatic changes in the behavior of teachers who had access to few classroom computers than those who had many classroom computers.

• The difference between program participants and non-participants in the use of technology in their practices was much greater for respondents with one classroom computer (19.6 percent) than for those with 5-7 classroom computers (4.3 percent).

• The difference between program participants and non-participants in the use of technology with their students was greater for respondents who had one classroom computer (7 percent) than for those with 5-7 classroom computers (no difference).

The research-based factors appeared to influence teachers' use of technology at the district level.

• Districts where teachers held strong constructivist beliefs saw higher levels of technology use than those where teachers held weak constructivist beliefs. One hundred percent of teachers in the district with the strongest constructivist beliefs used technology with their students, while 87.2 percent of teachers in the district with the weakest constructivist beliefs did so.

• Those districts that were ranked high on both constructivist beliefs and technology access had the highest levels of technology use.

• Intel Teach Essentials seemed to have the greatest impact in the least constructivist districts. In the district with the lowest percentage of constructivist teachers, there was an 8.6 percent difference between participants and non-participants in the use of technology with students, while there was no difference between participants and non-participants in the district with the most constructivist teachers.