'I've never enjoyed teaching so much': Turning teachers on to learning technologies

Barnard Clarkson
School of Computing, Information and Mathematical Sciences
Edith Cowan University

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There is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than the creation of a new order of things... Whenever his (sic) enemies have the ability to attack the innovator they do so with the passion of partisans, while the others defend him sluggishly, so that the innovator and his party alike are vulnerable. Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince.

Introduction

Many people involved in learning technologies in schools (or LT, meaning advanced computing, communications and educational technologies) find it difficult to continue being change agents all the time, and although often rewarding, find it can be frustrating too. For many less techno-literate teachers, their 3Rs may be a choice of Resistance, Renaissance or Retirement. How do some teachers choose to re-energise their career using learning technology to change their teaching, and their students' learning?

There is sufficient evidence that learning technologies have an effect on the quality of the learning process to warrant careful investigation (eg Dwyer, 1992, Means et al, 1993, Software Publishers Association, 1994). Despite this the only study some educators are demonstrating is studied ignorance. Many people admit that they are happy non-users, even, sadly, our current state Minister for Education. What characteristics make some people more interested than others in adopting LT in schools?

It is too easy to be glib and supportive about the adoption of LT in schools; in fact Selwyn (1997) points out that much of the research about educational computing suffers from being either too overtly optimistic, or it avoids qualitative methodologies in its analysis of the role of computers and computing in education and society. This paper is part of a research project that seeks others' views and perspectives, without offering quick answers; the perspectives offered here are intended simply to provide an organising framework to begin analysis, and if that proves to have weaknesses then it too should be improved or discarded in the search for 'better' understandings.

Australians are renowned as embracers of technology and confident inventors, from the stump-jump plough to the wine cask. As a nation we have adopted television, installed VCRs, bought mobile phones and attached to the Internet faster than most other nations (eg ABC online news, 11 June 1998). In fact adopting technology seems to be an Australian enchantment. Nevertheless this willingness does not apply to everyone. Roblyer (1996) reported in an American journal that many people in our society have "a deep reluctance to using technology and will not use those resources that may be available to them to take the place of teacher-directed ones" (p.12), and I feel sure that most educators would agree the Australian experience is very similar.

Educational technology's availability has not empowered significant parts of the teaching profession; nor has it penetrated the most important part of schools, the classroom (Mehlinger, 1996). I therefore wonder what turns classroom teachers on to LT? Further, what steps should a school, a system, or a teacher take if they wish to participate in a technology-rich classroom? Is there in fact a series of steps? Are these steps immutable or is fast-tracking possible? And on the flip-side, what factors turn educators off LT and technology-rich classrooms?

An organising perspective

What identifies willing changers? Should people who feel nervous and incompetent get help to solve their nervousness first or their incompetence first? Is there a sufficiently large number who have been turned off LT to warrant separate investigation? Perhaps attitudinal/personality factors are the critical determinants? Is this an instance of the famous Keating J-curve of development, and we are simply in the trough before thee rise?

To provide an organising perspective, I propose to address four categories, namely global, local and personal and developmental factors. Between them they may prove the basis for an analytical sweep that may provide some useful understanding about the challenge of integrating LT into schools and universities.

Both global and local factors are external to the teacher. Global or environmental factors include the political and social environments which may be publicly supportive of the use of technology in classrooms; the media's coverage of LT in schools, politicians support etc. Local factors include attitudes to change at the school at which they teach, the peers with whom they mix, the encouragement and empowerment from their principal etc; including the teaching styles and professional development models espoused. Personal factors include personality traits and previous experiences which affect the decisions a teacher may make about using LT in their teaching. Developmental factors consider the characteristics which determine and alter the process of change over time.

Global and local factors

There have been many technological innovations aimed at schools over the years. Textbooks, moving pictures (Edison saw teacher-free classrooms with students excited by great educational films; in the end the dream remained unfulfilled when no-one developed enough 'software', ie curriculum-oriented moving pictures, according to Cohen, 1988), educational television and integrated learning machines are simply a few of the better known ones. The path is strewn with unfulfilled promises, and one result has been to make some teachers more cynical about any technology in schools (eg McKenzie, 1998). So LT shares with previous innovations factors like large cost and requiring significant classroom change to ensure best utilisation. There are some factors which set LT apart from previous technological innovations in schools, including the grass roots support and also the eclectic and largely ideology-free support base. Are all these factors enough to ensure that, maybe this time, we have a chance to change schools for the better?

Let us be clear, the intention is not to make schools technological oases or technological deserts; most LT supporters are genuinely interested in more fundamental change in learning environments, and it is clear to them that LT seems be a catalyst to make schools better places of learning, not technology.

Media coverage of communications technology topics like the Internet and the World Wide Web has increased markedly over the last two years; for example more and more newspapers have added a web version of their paper (see for example the Australian website at [http://www.TheAustralian.com.au]). This increase in public coverage could affect teachers who have been on the outer of LT users in their school.

Local factors include how the teachers feel supported by their community, whether their principals encourage the integration of LT, and even uses it themselves, and what programs the school runs in support. Active CyberCafe groups in schools like Beckenham Primary School in WA [http://www.eddept.wa.edu.au/schools/5084.htm] do provide some encouragement for all staff. Schools that run more significant change programs for example the ACOT (Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow) program should provide good modelling for other teachers, which may be very important. An Australian ACOT site of interest is Apollo Parkways Primary School in Melbourne [http://www.apollo.vic.edu.au/]. The ACOT researchers describe an evolutionary process with stages that they label Entry, Adoption, Adaptation, Appropriation and Invention. The evolution is the result of new patterns of teaching and learning which have tended to emerge at all their ACOT sites (their longitudinal research has been active since 1985).

Nevertheless it is also clear that different schools have adopted LTs at different rate; some are hardly using them, and others regard themselves as highly integrated users of educational technology. Therefore, although public and local support may be important, the personal factors must also be important.

Personal factors

So what about the teachers themselves? What personal perspectives are important? Perhaps some psychological differences between educators are a predicting factor? A model of change first proposed by Dr Everett Rogers (1983) over thirty years ago describes the diffusion of innovations in social contexts, and is a powerful tool for providing an understanding of the way a change process moves through a community. Whether you wish to describe the gradual adoption of a new type of hybrid wheat in a farming community, or the rate at which a society turns to using kindergartens, Rogers suggests that different groupings of people adopt these changes at different rates. His model describes five categories from innovators, who adopt new ideas very quickly, through to laggards who wait until they have no choice. His work explores the relationship between communications and innovation. He has shown that news of new tools (a telecommunications application, for example) travel by interpersonal connections. So, a person's choice to adopt some new tool is more dependent on who shares the news of the tool, than how well the tool can actually assist that non-user.

The groups are Innovators (about 2.5%), Early adopters (about 13.5%), Early majority (about 34%), the Late majority (about 34%) and the Laggards (about 16%). There are three important features of his model. Firstly, the traits of the groups are predictable, but still fit within the community values of that group - so even a community of Klu Klux Klan members may possess the relative trait differences, even if not one of them was as innovative as a large alternative community in the deserts of New Mexico (which would also evidence such internal differences). Secondly, no matter what the innovation or the societal level, similar proportions of people fall into these trait groups; and finally, the opinions of the most innovative members of any social system are often not trusted by most of their peers.

These people are responsible for introducing change, and this very process is unsettling for most people. The first person with a web page is regarded as a social deviant rather than a person to model. It is when the next group, the Early adopters, start to move that those in the larger groupings take notice. Rogers calls this second group opinion leaders, and it is this group who can help the process of change by making non-users more receptive to an innovation adoption. According to Rogers opinion leaders tend to be more cosmopolitan, have slightly higher social status, and tend to be at the hubs of the systems' interpersonal webs.

It is these opinion leaders in a school or district who, by informal communication for example, and by will be more persuasive in any change process. Clearly it would be useful to identify such people in any school or district group and charge them with a change role; but Rogers warns that these people can lose their value if overused because they will lose their 'normal' status within that community.

Developmental change

Peter Senge (1990) describes a situation called Limits to Growth, and analyses factors which come into play as a development progresses through a system. His spin on the growing numbers of teachers disenchanted by LT may be that there are new factors coming in to play as the 'market' reaches greater 'saturation'. Growth is not a linear process; Hungry Jacks do not market their hamburgers the same way now that they are approaching market saturation, as they did in the beginning (for example the two-for-one offers are not typical of a 'young' market). This represents a new factor, market saturation, imposing a limit to the growth process which was not evident initially. A similar process can be seen when we learn a new activity, say tennis. Our initial progress may be rapid as our confidence and competence builds, but then we encounter our natural ability limits 'which can only be overcome by learning new techniques that may come "less naturally"' (Senge, 1990, p. 380). The limits to growth are often not evident to those involved. Perhaps the changes which lead to their frustration or avoidance are caused by quite different factors than the initial factors that led to the growth.

Some applications

How do these models and descriptions help? Rogers research may make it easier to identify more willing adopters. Differentiated ways of dealing with identifiable groups is important. Rogers suggests strategies for working with each of these groups; for example the best way to deal with laggards, who would rather wait until an innovation is unavoidable, may be to wait until they retire! Less flippantly, it may seem at first glance that people involved in progressing innovation should work with those most likely to change. Equity issues, however, may suggest that working with laggard groups could reduce the differences between have and have-not groups. Rogers counsels that, by observing carefully the characteristics of resistant groups, it may be possible to identify levers that actually make it easier for them to change. We need to be critical observers of our world so that we are sensitive to possibly unobvious but still predictable factors in the system we are observing (Senge, 1990).

Simple psychographic or reductionist analyses are not enough, however, as sometimes whole schools are confident technology adopters, and yet other schools have few or even no adopters. Consider River Oaks School in Canada [http://www.riveroaks.edu.yorku.ca/Riveroaks/Riveroakshome.html] and Springfield State Elementary School in Queensland. Springfield has joined the Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow (ACOT) International program, an Apple Computer initiative and one of the world's leading research programs that studies what happens when teachers and students are given routine access to technology. Springfield School is unique in the ACOT program as it is the only school designed from the ground up as an ACOT model, according to press releases last year in ABC Informatica, March 4, 1997, media release at [http://www.abc.it/News/Marzo/ACOT_AU.html]

Conclusion

Many writers warn that the process of integrating LT into our schools will be a slow one. Even if the rate of change cannot be altered, simply acknowledging that the process is a long one may be a useful learning experience for educators. This paper asks if analysing characteristics based on global, local and personal and developmental characteristics may be a better way to develop strategies which will allow change to proceed more fruitfully.

References

ABC Informatica, March 4, 1997. Media release at http://www.abc.it/News/Marzo/ACOT_AU.html
ABC online news, 11 June 1998, http://www.abc.net.au/news/98/06/11/980611_140.htm

Cohen, D. K. (1988). Educational technology and school organisation. In R. S. Nickerson and P. R. Zodhaites (Eds), Technology in education: Looking towards 2020, 231-264. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum & Associates.

Dwyer, D. C. (1991). Changes in teachers' beliefs and practices in technology-rich classrooms. Educational Leadership, May, 45-52.

McKenzie, J. (1998). Secrets of Success - Professional Development. http://fromnowon.org/eschool/secrets.html [10vi1998]

Means, B. et al (1993). Using technology to support education reforms. Report for US Department of Education, Washington DC.

Mehlinger, H. (1996). School reform in the information age. Phi Delta Kappan, Feb, 400-407.

Roblyer, M. D. (1996, September). Is research giving us the answers (and the questions) we need? Learning and Leading with Technology, 24, 14-18.

Rogers, E. M. (1983). Diffusion of innovations. New York: The Free Press.

Selwyn, N. (1997). The continuing weaknesses of educational research. British Journal of Educational Technology, 28, 305-307.

Senge, P. M. (1990). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organisation. Doubleday/Currency.

Barnard Clarkson
School of Computing, Information and Mathematical Sciences
Edith Cowan University
b.clarkson@ecu.edu.au

Please cite as: Clarkson, B. (1998). 'I've never enjoyed teaching so much': Turning teachers on to learning technologies. In C. McBeath and R. Atkinson (Eds), Planning for Progress, Partnership and Profit. Proceedings EdTech'98. Perth: Australian Society for Educational Technology. http://www.aset.org.au/confs/edtech98/pubs/articles/clarkson.html


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