Elsevier

Computers & Education

Volume 59, Issue 4, December 2012, Pages 1089-1098
Computers & Education

Pre-service teachers' perspectives of the diffusion of information and communications technologies (ICTs) and the effect of case-based discussions (CBDs)

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2012.04.007Get rights and content

Abstract

This study investigates pre-service teachers' perspectives of the diffusion of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in elementary education and the effect of case-based discussions (CBDs). The sample consisted of 170 first-year pre-service teachers from elementary teacher education programs of the largest teacher education college in Turkey. The cases used in the study were obtained from a case repository at http://ornekolay.org, indexing teaching cases from elementary classrooms of the capital city of Turkey. The cases were mainly text-based and presented stories of elementary teachers' in-class usage of ICTs. A quasi-experimental pretest-posttest design was executed to test the effect of pre-service teachers' perspectives on ICTs diffusion in elementary teaching. Three scales were developed based on Rogers' Diffusion of Innovation Theory (2003) to measure pre-service teachers' preferred innovativeness, innovation perceptions, and innovation decisions in the use of ICTs. The results showed that pre-service teachers had pre-established perspectives, mainly positive, about the diffusion of ICTs in elementary teaching; their perceptions about innovativeness and relative advantage were the main indicators of persuasion and decision; and CBDs positively affected their perceptions such that their computer-related persuasion and decisions positively increased.

Highlights

► Introduces a case repository and use of CBDs in teacher education. ► Pre-service teachers' perspectives on ICT use in teaching are generally positive. ► CBDs improve pre-service teachers' perspectives on ICT use in teaching. ► Explores indicators of persuasion and decision to use ICT in teaching.

Introduction

Teacher educators face difficulties in providing their pre-service teachers with real classroom practice. As a result, pre-service teachers lack the practice necessary to develop personal views and attitudes toward teaching. This universal problem also impacts the educational system in Turkey. Teacher education in Turkey is a 4-year, postsecondary program. Pre-service teachers receive about 150 course credits of training in the teaching profession, technology, and their subject area, including lectures and laboratory activities.

All faculties of teacher education in Turkey follow a standardized curriculum prescribed by the Higher Education Council (YOK, 2007). These faculties teach within three domains: pedagogy, subject areas, and general culture. The classroom teaching program of the pedagogical domain consists of 48 h (including a teaching practicum), while the majority of the courses are related to the subject teaching domain, consisting of 92 h. The rest of the 38 h are related to general culture. The teaching practicum encompasses three courses of field experience during the 4-year teacher education. Course one, called ‘Teaching Experience-1’ (4 h), is in the second semester of the third year, and the other two, named ‘Teaching Practice-1‘ and ‘Teaching Practice-2’ (6 h), are in the first and second semesters of the fourth year. Each semester constitutes 14 weeks. It is the final session in which students are required to do actual teaching.

The amount of teaching practice may not sufficient for the pre-service teachers to thoroughly observe and experience classroom issues such as information and communication technologies (ICTs) usage. Meanwhile, research has shown that when case-based discussions (CBDs) are used in student-teacher education, they have significant potential for enhancing pre-service teachers' perceptions of, preferences for, and attitudes toward the use of ICTs in elementary classrooms (Barnett, 2008; Bennett, 2004; Han & Kinzer, 2007; Heitzmann, 2008; Wright, 1996; Yadav, 2008). It is also known that users' perceptions, preferences, and attitudes are important factors in the diffusion of innovation, in accordance with the theories of technology acceptance and diffusion (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980; Davis, 1989; Davis, Bagozzi, & Warshaw, 1989; Ely, 1990; Hall & Hord, 1987; Rogers, 1962, 1983, 2003; Wejnert, 2002). The discussion of classroom stories can illustrate how computer technologies are applied to real classroom situations (Barnett, 1991; Barnett & Tyson, 1999; Van den Berg, Jansen, & Blijleven, 2004). This process is important in facilitating pre-service teachers' transitions from school to the work environment (Sears & Hersh, 1998), with much emphasis on the need for replacing inert knowledge with learning grounded in contextualized, meaningful settings (Putnam & Borko, 2000). Therefore, the present study proposes that the use of CBDs in elementary teacher education will support the diffusion of ICTs from the perspectives of pre-service teachers. Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations (DOI) theory (2003) was used as a framework to develop scales to measure this potential diffusion of innovations.

According to Rogers (2003), diffusion is the process by which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among the members of a social system. Rogers defined the 5 attributes of innovations as relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability. Relative advantage is the degree to which an innovation is perceived as being better than the thing that it supersedes. Compatibility is the degree to which an innovation is perceived as being consistent with the existing values, past experiences, and needs of the potential adopters. Complexity (as opposed to ease of use) is the degree to which an innovation is perceived as being relatively difficult to understand and use. Trialability is the degree to which an innovation may be experimented with on a limited basis. Observability is the degree to which the results of an innovation are visible to others. According to Rogers, innovativeness is “the degree to which an individual or other unit of adoption is relatively earlier in adopting new ideas than other members of a system (Rogers, 1983, p. 242).” Adopter categories are the classifications of members of a social system on the basis of innovativeness. The 5 adopter categories are the innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards. Rogers presented a model of the innovation-decision process conceptualized into 5 stages: knowledge, persuasion, decision, implementation, and confirmation. Knowledge occurs when an individual is exposed to the innovation's existence and gains some understanding of how it functions. Persuasion occurs when an individual forms a favorable or unfavorable attitude toward the innovation. Decision occurs when an individual engages in activities that lead to a choice to adopt or reject the innovation. Implementation occurs when an individual (or another decision-making unit) puts an innovation into use. Confirmation occurs when an individual (or another decision-making unit) seeks reinforcement of an innovation-decision already made; he or she may then reverse that previous decision if exposed to conflicting messages about the innovation.

The potential for diffusion, not actual diffusion, is under consideration in this study, since pre-service teacher education is given outside of real classrooms in Turkey, similar to most other countries. There are few or no opportunities for pre-service teachers to experience and use innovation in real classrooms. By reading and discussing classroom cases on the use of ICTs in teaching, however, pre-service teachers can see the relative advantage, complexity, compatibility, observability, or trialability of ICTs and the role of teachers before they become involved in real classrooms. In this study, the potential effects of CBDs on the diffusion of ICTs were explored with a focus on pre-service teachers' perception of ICTs, adopter categories, and decisions for ICTs. The pre-service teachers' perceptions were affected by reading and discussing cases of teachers' use of ICTs in elementary education. The ICTs included word processing; spreadsheets; information searching, sharing, and presenting; graphic editing; and video editing tools that pre-service teachers had been taught to use in their Introductory Computer Course before the CBDs were presented.

Case-method teaching has a long history in law, business, medicine, and education (Heitzmann, 2008; Schrader et al., 2003; Williams, 1992). Cases have been used in education through a variety of methods, such as case written analysis, case discussion, and case development (Kim & Hannafin, 2008). Williams (1992) put forward the idea that cognitive apprenticeship and anchored instruction can be useful models for case-based scenarios for creating social context for instruction in that it enables students to see the utility of knowledge and to understand the conditions for its use.

Theorists have characterized “cases” as individual knowledge represented and retrieved in the form of stories (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989; Kolodner, 1993; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Shank, Berman, & Macpherson, 1999). Methods have been developed to explore the effects of CBDs in teacher education. Such research has been carried out in various subject areas, including literacy, family and consumer sciences, science education, special education, educational psychology, music education, drama, physical education, physics education, mathematics education, and more (Anderson & Baker, 1999; Barnett, 1991, 2008; Bonk, Angeli, Malikowski, & Supplee, 2001; Conway, 1999; Griffith & Laframboise, 1997; Kaste, 2004; Mccammon, Miller, & Norris, 1997; Mcwilliam & Snyder, 1999; O'farrell, 2000; Richardson, 1997; Wright, 1996; Yadav, 2008; Yadav & Koehler, 2007). These studies emphasized the ability of real-life, CBDs to create bridges between theory and practice. They explored the idea that CBDs enhance various social and intellectual skills such as problem solving, decision making, critical thinking, reflection, empathy, and communication. CBDs further benefit teacher education by encouraging practical thinking, knowledge transfer, situated thinking, debate, questioning, multiple perspectives, professional behavior, empathy, shared knowledge, democratic life, historical perspective, and systems knowledge.

Shulman (1992) emphasized the importance of discussion and facilitation as well as the content of the case. She asserts that cases do not teach themselves without discussion as a process. Levin (1993) believes that discussion is very crucial in learning from cases. She found that, even though some participants were more apt to listen than to speak, their thinking still changed after discussion. The ideas and perspectives of others in the group influenced them to rethink previous thoughts; therefore, the content and the context of the case discussion might create internal cognitive conflict. Participants exchange ideas and problem solutions. They share personal experience and stories, in the social interaction among peers during a case discussion. However, the participants' previous understanding and experiences, personal background, and individual interests determined what they understood from the case and its discussion (Levin & Powell, 1997). The present study further explores that the CBDs used in training pre-service teachers affect their intention to behave future in the classroom, such as their intention to technology use in the classroom.

Section snippets

Questions

Three interrelated research questions formed the basis of the study. 1) What are the perspectives of pre-service teachers about the diffusion of ICTs in teaching elementary classrooms? 2) What is the path model of the students' perspectives? 3) What are the effects of CBDs on pre-service teachers' perspectives on the diffusion of computer technology in elementary classroom teaching?

Participants

The participants of this research initially consisted of 193 first-year students taking an introductory computer

Results

Table 1 summarizes the statistical analyses of the pretests, posttests, and t-tests. The ISS pretest results revealed that the participants had already self-perceived themselves as belonging to the adopter categories of Innovator (mean = 3.79), Early Majority (mean = 3.70), and Adopter (mean = 3.53), but not Late Majority (mean = 1.95) or Laggard (mean = 1.25).

The posttest results revealed increases for self-perception as Innovator (mean = 4.11), Adopter (mean = 3.90), and Laggard

Discussion

The diffusion of technology is an important issue within the human sciences (Chuttur, 2009). Therefore, many models have been developed to explain and predict the process of technology diffusion. In the present study, the diffusion of ICTs was explored from the perspectives of pre-service teachers within the context of elementary school classrooms. The results showed that the pre-service teachers generally self-perceived themselves within the categories of Innovator or Adopter rather than Late

Conclusion

In conclusion, this study has shown that pre-service teachers already had perspectives, mainly positive, on the diffusion of ICTs in elementary teaching; their perceptions of innovativeness and the relative advantage in the use of ICTs in elementary teaching were the main indicators of their persuasion and decision to use such ICTs themselves; and CBDs positively affected their perceptions to further increase their levels of persuasion and decision. Hence, the creation of case repositories and

Sami Sahin is an Assist. Prof. of Gazi University, Ankara, Turkey. His research interests include case-based teaching methods, technology acceptance, and educational measurement.

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    Sami Sahin is an Assist. Prof. of Gazi University, Ankara, Turkey. His research interests include case-based teaching methods, technology acceptance, and educational measurement.

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