Elsevier

Computers & Education

Volume 51, Issue 1, August 2008, Pages 439-447
Computers & Education

‘First do no harm’: Factors influencing teachers’ ability and willingness to use ICT in their subject teaching

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2007.06.001Get rights and content

Abstract

The paper reports on a Department of Culture, Museums and Sport (DCMS) funded project which provided modest amounts of time for teachers to be freed from their classroom teaching to explore the use of information and communications technology (ICT) in their subject teaching, and to meet up together to discuss their use of new technology. The funding was sufficient to provide a day of supply cover for two groups of secondary teachers in different curriculum subjects (history and science) to meet towards the start of the academic year to discuss their use of ICT, a day of supply cover to work on their ideas and interests, and a day to meet together again towards the end of the year to share ideas and experiences.

The rationale behind the project was to allow teachers the freedom to explore their own areas of interest in the area of ICT and to avoid a prescriptive or ‘coverage’ based approach. There was a conscious attempt to avoid target setting and audits and teachers were encouraged to come to the end of year meeting even if they had nothing ‘to put on the table’.

The concluding section of the paper describes the outcomes of the project. The main issue to emerge was the highly positive reaction of the teachers involved. Whilst for some there were significant ICT outputs, all those involved found the process useful and enjoyable, especially the collaborative sharing process in the final session. This was in marked contrast to other ICT training experiences which many of the teachers had been involved with.

Section snippets

The context of the research

Over the past decade, there has been considerable pressure on teachers in the United Kingdom (UK) to use information and communications technology (ICT) in their subject teaching. Politicians outlined a positive vision of the beneficent and transformative influence which ICT would have on educational outcomes (see, for example, Blair, 1995, Blair, 1997, Clarke, 2003) and a series of policy documents talked up the importance of the United Kingdom developing a technologically sophisticated

Rationale for the research design

Although a decade ago there was some evidence of teacher antipathy or ‘ideological’ opposition to the use of ICT – the belief that new technology had little or nothing to offer in particular subject disciplines (see, for example, Easdown, 1994, Summers and Easdown, 1996), more recently, there is evidence to suggest that many teachers are more positive about the possible benefits of using ICT in subject teaching (Easdown, 2000, Haydn, 2004). The research design was predicated on the proposition

The structure of the project

The funding for the project supported the formation of two groups of secondary teachers in science and history. The choice of subjects reflected the curriculum specialisms of the university tutors involved, and all the teachers involved in the project were members of the regional initial teacher education (ITE) partnership. At history and science mentor meetings and in letters to the history and science mentors active in the ITE partnership, teachers were invited to participate in the project,

Processes and outcomes

The discussions on previous use of ICT elicited considerable comment on participants’ experiences of New Opportunities Fund (NOF) training in the use of ICT in subject teaching. The vehemence of teachers’ views was one of the most striking aspects of the feedback from the initial research workshops. The most positive comment was that the training ‘was not a complete failure’, but generally, comments were disparaging and negative:

  • ‘A waste of money … and created a lot of resentment.’

  • ‘It was like a

Evaluation

Feedback from participants was obtained by devoting the last session of the research workshops to reflection on participants’ involvement in the project (audio or video recorded), by follow up emails and by subsequent face to face conversations with those involved. By these means, some comment was elicited from 31 of the 37 participants (three teachers had to leave before the end of the afternoon, and two made no comment and two of these did not respond to follow up emails). ‘Internal’

‘First do no harm’

Given the history of teacher development in the use of ICT we believe the maxim taken from the medical profession of, ‘first do no harm’ is a sensible starting point. Although not all the teachers involved in the project made major strides in embedding ICT into their subject teaching, there were no instances of teacher ‘regression’ or ‘allergic reaction’ to the research workshops, such as that reported in their experiences of NOF training. Almost all the participants reported that they had

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