Why does technology integration fail? Teacher beliefs and content developer assumptions in an Indian initiative
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Why does technology integration fail? Teacher beliefs and content developer assumptions in an Indian initiative Vijaya Sherry Chand1 · Ketan Satish Deshmukh1 · Anurag Shukla1
© Association for Educational Communications and Technology 2020
Abstract This paper explores technology integration and the role of teacher beliefs in this integration to assess a ‘smart-class’ initiative that was introduced in 3173 Grade 7–8 classrooms of 1609 public schools in India in 2017. It first reports on the impact of the initiative at the end of its first year, using a sample of 2574 children drawn from 155 project schools and 155 non-project schools. A two-level multivariate analysis did not indicate any significant effect of the project on student subject knowledge, attitude towards subject and subject self-efficacy beliefs. A follow-up interpretive study that used the open-ended responses of 170 project teachers and four in-depth case studies revealed that the e-content supplied supported some traditional beliefs of teachers while challenging others; the latter, however, led to resistance that hindered learning processes. Thus, both support and challenge seem to have led to a reproduction of the traditional classroom, resulting in no significant differences in outcomes between project and non-project classrooms. The paper calls for greater awareness among content developers of how their beliefs can subvert technology integration, and for supportive professional development of teachers that will help them incorporate technology in their pedagogical practice. Keywords Technology integration · Teacher beliefs · ICT outcomes assessment · ‘Smart’ classroom
Introduction Amidst growing concern about a ‘learning crisis’ in public schools in the developing world (World Bank 2018), countries such as India are turning to Information and Communication Technology (ICT)-led interventions in schools in the belief that technology by itself can * Vijaya Sherry Chand [email protected] Ketan Satish Deshmukh [email protected] Anurag Shukla [email protected] 1
Ravi J. Matthai Centre for Educational Innovation, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, Ahmedabad 380015, India
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improve learning levels (Negroponte et al. 2006). Informed by this “technocentric thinking” (Papert 1993), policy and practice have tended to focus on introducing ICT in schools (Trucano 2012, 2015) and assessing its impact on learning outcomes. But since any technology is part of a complex web of interactions among pedagogical, cultural and institutional practices, it is often difficult to identify and control the factors that influence the efficacy of ICT. Hence, it is no surprise that assessments of the impact of ICT on outcomes have shown “mixed evidence with a pattern of null results” (Bulman and Fairlie 2016)— positive results in some cases (Muralidharan et al. 2019; Naik et al. 2016) and no or negative effect in others (Fuchs and Woessmann 2004; Peña-López 2015). The realization that technology is enmeshed in h
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