Access or Training?
Why Aren’t Science
Teachers Using Technology More?
Joan Lindgren,
Robert E. Bleicher,
Theoretical
Framework
This
study aims to establish a baseline of use, need for training, and interest in
using technology in instruction by science teachers in a large south Florida
school district reputed to be somewhat more advanced in the use and integration
of technology in its schools in comparison to surrounding districts. Our
research was informed by the literature on national technology reform and
research on conditions supporting teachers’ use of technology.
Bransford,
Brown and Cocking (1999) have suggested ways that information and communication
technologies (ICT) can improve learning and education. Students can work on
solving problems similar to what exists in real life, and can do so actively
through multimedia and simulations. ICT applications can be used to help
students understand complex ideas and relationships that frequently exist in
science. Teachers have the opportunity to provide immediate feedback to
students and students can correct their work easily.
Ritchie
& Wiburg (1994) determined that several variables influenced whether or not
technology was integrated into the curriculum. When technology is well
integrated, there is administrative support and leadership for such ventures,
professional development is readily available and collaborative partnerships
beyond the school are commonplace.
Methodology
Science
teachers in one large south
The
survey was distributed at two district meetings organized by the science
supervisor for secondary education: one for middle school science department
chairs and one session for high school department chairs. I attended these
meetings and explained the survey and what we hoped to learn. The science department chairs agreed to
distribute and collect the surveys at their science department meetings. The
science supervisor requested that all surveys be returned to him, and I then
picked up the completed anonymous surveys. This method seemed to aid the high
rate of return that we achieved from the teachers, whereby 122 teachers
returned the survey, a return rate of about 89%. Of surveys returned, the
following bullets outline the demographics of the respondents.
·
53% Middle School, 47% High
School
·
60% female, 40% male
·
80% White, 9% Hispanic, 8%
Afro-American, 3% Asian
·
Years Teaching:
0
– 3 21% Beginner
4
- 10 30% Tenured
11
- 22 23% Veteran
>
23 26% Near Retirement
A
limitation to this study was that the survey was long and somewhat tedious to
complete. We believe this caused several parts of the survey to be ignored by
some of the teachers.
It
is frequently acknowledged that technology has not been well utilized in
instruction. We were interested to see if there was greater utilization in this
district by science teachers than had been reported elsewhere. We further
wished to establish a baseline of how teachers were using technology in science
classrooms to ascertain if training would be needed or desired. The following
were questions raised during the review of literature and into which we hoped
to gain insight through this study.
·
Were district science teachers
technologically proficient?
·
Were science teachers using ICT
in their teaching and if so to what extent?
·
Which applications and programs
were most relevant for them?
·
Were science teachers reluctant
to adopt technological innovations?
·
Did science teachers need or
want further training on existing applications, software, and in integrating
technology with students?
·
Was time or a lack of adequate
tech support factors that teachers related as problems for them as they
integrated technology into their teaching?
·
Were there sufficient resources
for students to use & for teachers to use for instruction with
students?
Findings
We
had speculated that newer science teachers might be more likely to use computer
technology with students and in their teaching because of their recent exposure
to such in their university training, and the emphasis placed on integrating
technology into teaching in their university studies. This turned out not to be
the case. There were no significant differences in technology interest and use
among the four groups of teachers in regard to the length of time they had been
teaching. “Veteran” teachers and “near retirement” teachers were as likely to
use technology in teaching as beginning teachers or “the tenured” group. Many
long time science teachers were using computers in teaching at the same rate or
at the same level and with the same degree of enthusiasm as newer teachers. We further found no statistically significant
group differences in interest and use by gender, race/ethnicity, or between
high school and middle school teachers.
In
a self rating of their technological proficiency or ICT capabilities, the
largest majority of science teachers (nearly 69%) responding to the survey
rated themselves as Intermediate in their skills and knowledge of technology,
while less than 3% rated themselves as Novice (knowing very, very little about
computers). The second largest category rated themselves as Advanced (18%),
while 11% rated themselves as Beginners in using technology. It was noteworthy
that almost 87% of the science teachers classified themselves as either
intermediate or advanced in their knowledge of computer technology. From our
verification procedure, we cross-checked which programs teachers indicated they
were using or able to use against their self-perceptions and determined that
science teachers seemed reasonably accurate in their self-ratings.
Differences
in use of technologies in the science classroom between middle and high school
teachers emerged through a qualitative type question that asked which
technologies did the science teachers feel were essential to their teaching.
Middle school teachers had strong preferences for the TV/
Although
not every one of the 55 high school science teachers who responded to the
survey answered the question of which technologies were frequently used and
essential to your instruction, 38 high school science teachers said the
computer was essential, followed by 36 indicating the overhead projector as
also essential and 26 teachers who named the TV/
As
presented in Table 1, nearly all teachers in this study reported having a
computer in their classroom (96%), with 85% of those teachers having classroom
Internet access, with a computer lab available to 82% of teachers. One could
generally conclude that this group of teachers had a computer and usually a
printer for their own professional use, and most had access to the Internet in
their classroom. Their responses indicated that teachers were using their
available technology for preparing instructional materials, accessing resources
from the Internet for their teaching, and using email to communicate with
colleagues, students and others.
Table 1
Having computer or internet
access (N=122)
|
Home Computer |
95% |
|
Home Internet |
93% |
|
Classroom Computer |
96% |
|
Classroom Internet |
85% |
|
School Library
Computer |
88% |
|
School Library
Internet |
84% |
|
Computer Lab |
82% |
From
just this data, it appeared that the science teachers in this district were far
from techno-phobic. They were generally comfortable using computers and
indicated that they were important to their instruction, although there was
little evidence that ICT was being employed to any large extent with students.
It was our feeling that the science teachers felt that having a computer for
their professional use was so critical to their teaching that though they used
the computer infrequently with students, they used it daily in preparing for
class, for grading and for frequent accessing of the Internet for information.
Table 2 presents results of how teachers perceived their knowledge to use technology in their instruction, their interest in doing so, and their perception of whether the district encouraged and supported such use.
Table 2
Competence, interest,
district support perceptions (N=122)
|
Knowledge, Interest,
or Belief |
High |
Some |
Little |
|
Knowledge of using
technology in instruction |
59% |
33% |
8% |
|
Interest in using tech
in instruction |
70% |
25% |
5% |
|
Belief that district
encourages tech |
56% |
28% |
16% |
|
Belief that district
supports tech |
54% |
25% |
21% |
More than half the respondent felt
there was encouragement and support for using technology at the district level,
but there were still teachers who felt that there was insufficient support by
the district. “Lip service” was a term used by several teachers in terms of
what the district was willing to support. Seven middle school teachers wrote in
comments that using the computer lab with their classes was problematic in
terms of scheduling, and tech support was inadequate when problems with the
technology occurred. It was noteworthy that interest in using technology was
strong at 70% with another 25% of the teachers indicating some interest, yet
many write-in comments indicated that teachers did not wish for further
training.
Anderson
& Ronnkvist (1998) found that teachers who had a ratio of one computer to
every four students in their own classrooms were three times more likely to use
computers in teaching and to assign computer tasks to their students. It did not appear that this was the situation
for any of the science teachers responding to the survey. Most of these
teachers indicated that they had only adequate access to technology. Table 3
presents data indicating both access to computers and indications of how much
teachers felt that they influenced decisions about acquiring computer software
and hardware for their school. It does not appear that teachers were greatly
involved in purchasing decisions and did not communicate often with the tech
staff. This indicates that they were not deeply involved
in the technology curricula and decision making process, thus leaving teachers
out of the decision making loop.
Table 3
Access and technology
acquisition decision-making (N=122)
|
Adequate access to
computers |
71% |
|
Communicate with tech
staff |
34 % |
|
Make software
purchasing |
23 % |
|
Input into purchasing |
36 % |
|
Receive software
catalogues |
74 % |
|
Make hardware purchase |
15 % |
|
Input into hardware
purchase |
35 % |
|
Receive hardware
catalogues |
40 % |
They
mentioned various applications they would like to have for their instruction,
especially Power Point. Some indicated the need for more hardware such as
scanners, camcorders and digital cameras, but only a handful of teachers wrote
enthusiastic comments regarding their enjoyment of infusing technology into
their classrooms and with students. Surprisingly many indicated that they would
not want additional training, even those for whom it appeared that some
additional technology training could be beneficial. It occurred to us that
perhaps teachers did not want to allocate more of their non-working hours to
compulsory workshops, even on topics that they were interested in.
According
to Ritchie & Wiberg (1994) administrative support and readily available
professional development were important variables to successful technology
integration into the curricula and teaching. These two factors were not evident
from the responses of the science teachers in this district. A third variable
noted by Ritchie & Wiberg (1994), collaborative partnerships beyond the
school, was not evident from the survey.
Is
the structure of the American high school such that teachers have little time
to plan together, to observe each other teaching, to share experiences,
resources and successes when using ICT and
technology? If such work were built into a teacher’s day, would
technology be used more with students in more extensive and in more meaningful
ways that might lead to richer understanding of science and the scientific way
of investigating and way of thinking? Our findings that science teachers were
technologically adept and interested in technology led us to believe that
changing patterns of a teacher’s day so that time was built in for interactive
work between teachers and for researching resources for teaching would lead to
better and more interesting uses of the technological resources available. It
seemed that leadership in the schools could foster greater us of technology and
involve teachers in the decision making about purchasing, training for new
applications and programs. If business professionals have time in their work
schedule for technology training, then it would seem fitting that teachers
should certainly have the same.
Computers
present opportunities for the kind of reform that the national standards call
for. They may provide and connect content and process when learning activities
are well designed. A growing database about the interests, access and use of
various computer technologies by teachers is necessary starting point for
taking advantage of these opportunities.
A
future study now being designed is to survey this same group of high school and
middle school teachers from the same district in 2006 and see what changes have
occurred. Will more teachers be using ICT in their teaching and with and by
students as would be expected? The survey will be simplified and redesigned
with less thought to providing in service and more emphasis on what science
teachers are actually doing in terms of ICT in their classrooms. Some
qualitative type questions would be appropriate to try to get at the heart of
this.
Significance
of the study to science teacher education
Why
technology has not been utilized more frequently in science classrooms remains
a question of concern, or why teachers do or do not use technology. Is the structure of the American high school
such that teachers do have too little time to plan together, to observe each
other teaching, to share experiences, resources and successes when using
technology? If such work were built into a teacher’s day, would technology be
used more with students in more extensive and in more meaningful ways that
might lead to richer understanding of science and the scientific way of
investigating and way of thinking? Our findings that science teachers were
technologically adept and interested in technology led us to believe that
changing patterns of a teacher’s day so that time was built in for interactive
work between teachers and for researching resources for teaching would lead to
better and more interesting uses of the technological resources available. If
business professionals have time in their work schedule for technology
training, then it would seem fitting that teachers should certainly have the
same.
There
is a growing interest in infusing technology into classroom instruction among
Edelson
(2001) notes that computers present an unprecedented opportunity for the kind
of reform that the national standards call for as they offer the opportunity to
connect content and process in well-designed learning activities. A growing
database about the interests, access and use of various computer technologies
by teachers is necessary starting point to taking advantage of these
opportunities.
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