What do upper secondary school teachers want to know from research on the use of ICT and how does this inform a research design?

Anders D. Olofsson,Göran Fransson,J. Ola Lindberg

doi:10.1007/s10639-017-9590-5

Anders D. Olofsson, Göran Fransson + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-017-9590-5

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Abstract

This study investigates what teachers taking part in a longitudinal research project on the use of ICT for teaching and learning in three upper secondary schools in Sweden want to learn more about. At the beginning of the project eighty-four teachers were invited to respond to a questionnaire relating to what teachers wanted to learn more about during their participation in a research project, both for themselves, their colleagues and their students. The questionnaire consisted of Likert-scale and open-ended questions. Sixty teachers responded, thereby yielding a response rate of 71%. In focus in this paper is a qualitative content analysis of the open-ended questions. The analysis revealed six desired areas of learning: (a) technological aspects, (b) how to use ICT for teaching and learning, (c) the Learning Management System (LMS), (d) safety and plagiarism, (e) best practice and (f) collaboration and professional development. The aspects of knowledge addressed in these themes were analysed and discussed in relation to the TPACK model. A conclusion that can be drawn from the analysis is that the teachers inquired different forms of knowledge and that interpretation of ‘technological pedagogical content knowledge’ only emerged in one of the themes. This study then informed the research design in multiple ways, the two most apparent being a survey of students acknowledging teachers’ expressed research interests and the design and implementation of a formative intervention group interview.

Highlights

In research on the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in K-12 schools, several studies have been conducted on teachers’ opinions, experiences, actions or practices from the researchers’ own perspectives or interest in specific questions, issues or challenges
The possibilities and challenges of using ICT for teaching and learning that research reports is followed by a brief description of the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) model (Mishra and Koehler 2008; Koehler and Mishra 2009) that is used as a part of the analysis
In total 37% of the respondents have worked at the upper secondary school level for more than 10 years and 25% have worked at that level for over 20 years

Summary

Introduction

In research on the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in K-12 schools, several studies have been conducted on teachers’ opinions, experiences, actions or practices from the researchers’ own perspectives or interest in specific questions, issues or challenges. The following sections present the context of the study and the method used for data collection, the thematically ordered result of the content analysis and the discussion, the conclusions and notes about the circumstances under which teachers participate in research. At both an international (OECD 2001, 2015) and national Swedish level (Government Inquiry 2014:13; Delegation for ICT in Schools 1999), policy discussions about the use of ICT in K-12 schools have been ongoing. This recommendation seems to be a guiding principle in the research project ‘Making a digital difference? An investigation of new technologies in secondary schools’ led by Professor Neil Selwyn, which focuses on the ‘state of the actual’ rather than the ‘state of the art’ of educational technology in Australian secondary schools (Bulfin et al 2016)

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