Evaluation as an Educational Development to Improve Practice: Teacher ICT Knowledge, Skills and Integration

Abstract

This chapter refers to two evaluations conducted by the author in the emerging environment of information and communication technology (ICT) adoption in schools, which can be considered to contribute actively to technology education and hence to advancing the concerns of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education. The first evaluation provided a benchmark demonstrating how ICT innovation was conceptualised, measured and evaluated in 2001. The focus was on meeting set targets, and the skills of teachers’ access, use and levels of integration were secondary considerations. The second evaluation considered an innovative approach to evaluation that commenced with the development of a conceptual framework to represent factors of importance in understanding and measuring the ICT competence of teachers. It was developed initially in 2006 to assess the level and nature of ICT knowledge and skills among Western Australian public (government or state) school teachers and to establish to what extent teachers were integrating their ICT knowledge and skills in classrooms. As is elaborated below, the evaluation methodology in the second evaluation used psychometric measurement to validate teachers’ self-reported ICT knowledge and skills, the ways in which they used ICTs and the extent to which they promoted the use of ICTs in student learning against an objective online test of teacher ICT competence and integration.