Assignment 1 - Review of Research

For this assignment, I am using an article titled "Teachers’ perceptions of the barriers to technology integration and practices with technology under situated professional development". It is by T.J. Kopcha and was published in Computers & Education in 2012.

Research questions:

1. How do teachers perceive the common barriers to technology integration after engaging in a program of situated professional development over a two-year period?
2. How do those perceptions change as teachers’ professional development transitions from full-time mentoring to teacher-led communities of practice?
3. What were teachers’ instructional practices under teacher-led communities of practice and how do they relate to their perceptions of the barriers?

Theoretical perspective:

This research is based on situated learning theory. The idea is that sustained, situated professional development (mentoring, followed by the establishment of communities of practice) is effective in improving teachers' attitudes about using technology in the classroom and helping them overcome the barriers to technology integration.

Research paradigm:

The study was a mixed method, case study with both quantitative and qualitative aspects. The researcher acted as a participant-observer. The purpose of the study was more to inform theory than to generalize across populations.

Specific methodology:

The study was a mixed method, longitudinal case-study and gathered data using surveys, focused interviews, and video-taped observations. Descriptive statistics were calculated on the survey and observations items. Interview data were analyzed using inductive analysis. Triangulation was used to validate the findings from each method. The study used a purposive sample including 18 teachers from one elementary school. All of the teachers were involved in a mentoring program. 

Findings: 

The teachers' ratings of the barriers to technology integration in the areas of vision, beliefs, and access were relatively high (indicating that they were able to overcome the barrier) for both years. Ratings for the barriers of professional development and time were lower but still closer to neutral than negative. Ratings in all five areas decreased slightly from year one to year two. Interview results also indicated that time and professional development were the biggest problems. Teachers were observed using technology in ways that supported learning, even a full year after the mentoring phase ended, but once again, the lowest ratings had to do with time.

Conclusions:

The study suggests that sustained, situated professional development (mentoring) can improve teachers' attitudes about technology integration, not just in theory but in an applied setting. The communities of practice (year two) however did not appear to help as much and teachers did not make as much progress without the mentor.

How does this research relate to yours?

I am also planning to study the effect of a similar systems-based mentoring program on teachers' attitudes toward technology integration. I hope to use a similar survey/interview/observation approach and will also act as a participant-observer. However, I will not be able to conduct my study over two years as this researcher did. In addition, I will not be studying the change that takes place when the mentor leaves and only the communities of practice remain. I will focus on the mentoring alone and will probably only look at what changes take place over one semester. Also, I plan to collect some baseline data on the teachers in my mentoring program. This study did not collect any data until after the first year. It is this baseline data collection and analysis that will constitute my action research project. So, technically, the action research project will examine teachers attitudes toward technology integration and their practices in the classroom prior to participating in a mentoring program. Other differences in my study and Dr. Kopcha's include school size (my school is larger), level (high school instead of elementary school), and private rather than public.

What are your impressions of the project?

I think Dr. Kopcha learned a great deal about the effect of a mentoring program on teachers' attitudes toward technology integration and their actual performance in the classroom. I've met with Dr. Kopcha and discussed my research ideas with him. He was particularly interested in my idea of doing the pre-mentoring data collection as an action research project. Ultimately, I hope to gather additional information that can help to generalize his results and provide further implications for teacher professional development.

References:

Kopcha, T. J. (2012). Teachers' perceptions of the barriers to technology integration and practices with technology under situated professional development. Computers & Education, 59 , 1109-1121. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2012.05.014