Skill or Will? Comprehensive Conceptualization of Technology-Enhanced Teaching and its Relation to Teachers’ Professional Knowledge and Motivation

Abstract

Politicians and researchers claim that educational technologies offer great potential to enhance teaching quality. However, recent research demonstrated that even when teachers have the relevant technical infrastructure available, they rarely use the potential of technologies for teaching (Fraillon, Ainley, Schulz, Friedman, & Duckworth, 2019). Therefore, researchers investigate and discuss teachers’ professional competence as a central boundary condition for their use of technologies in the classroom (e.g., Scherer, Siddiq, & Tondeur, 2019). However, existing literature has two major weaknesses: First, there is no comprehensive conceptualization of technology integration in the classroom as previous research mostly used survey studies and therefore examined rather distal indicators of technology use. Second, even though there are well-defined models of teachers’ generic professional competencies, there is no comprehensive framework of professional competencies for technology-enhanced teaching. Considering these issues, the present dissertation targeted four aims: first, to provide and apply a reliable and comprehensive conceptualization of technology integration in classrooms; second, to augment the existing body of research with elaborated methodological approaches to enable fine-grained insights into how teachers currently integrate technologies into their teaching; third, to provide a comprehensive framework of teachers’ technology-related professional competencies by establishing a link between previous research on generic professional competencies of teachers and competencies the teachers need for technology-enhanced teaching; and fourth, to disentangle the relative role of the different components of teachers’ professional knowledge and motivation in a comprehensive way. To this end, I conducted, together with colleagues, three empirical studies in which we investigated the relation of teachers’ professional competencies and their technology-enhanced teaching. First, in a quasi-experimental approach I studied the relations of teachers’ competencies and the quality of technology-enhanced lesson plans (N = 94 German teachers varying in their relative expertise; Backfisch et al., 2020a). This approach allowed me to establish a comprehensive conceptualization of the quality of technology-enhanced teaching with clearly defined indicators. Furthermore, I investigated the relative role of teachers’ skill and will for the quality of technology-enhanced teaching. The analyses revealed that teachers’ perceived utility value regarding educational technologies, but not their professional knowledge played a crucial role for designing technology-enhanced mathematics instruction. Based on these findings, two major questions remained open which were addressed in the subsequent studies. First, it was still unclear how exactly the utility value and technology integration relate to each other, for example, which contextual aspects influence this relationship. Second, the question arose whether this relationship of teacher motivation and technology integration remains stable across contexts. Therefore, in a second study, I further examined the relative role of different components of teacher motivation and quantity and quality of technology integration with an experience sampling approach (N = 18 German teachers teaching in technology-rich classrooms). The teachers kept a teacher diary over six weeks. This approach allowed me, first, to apply the comprehensive conceptualization and indicators of technology-enhanced teaching quality to other subject domains and, second, to analyze the relation of teacher motivation and technology integration in a highly situated manner. By using a mixed method approach it became apparent that teachers’ utility value determined the quality of technology integration. Additionally, qualitative analyses showed that instructional contexts (e.g., teaching materials used) affected the overall quality of technology integration. In a third study, I further analyzed the relations between teachers’ self-efficacy, utility value, and technology integration with a survey among teachers (N = 524) teaching in a governmental initiative for full technical infrastructure in a Norwegian municipality. This study design allowed me to examine the relations of teachers’ self-efficacy on their technology integration in a fine-grained manner and to investigate the stability of the previous findings in a different educational system. Based on latent structural equation modelling, an integrated model was suggested which encompassed both (a) direct and indirect relations of self-efficacy and technology integration and (b) direct relations of utility value and technology integration. Therefore, utility value was found to be a crucial enabler for teachers’ technology integration across studies and contexts. Overall, the present dissertation contributes to the scarce theoretical and methodological background by offering, first, a comprehensive conceptualization of teachers’ technology integration. This conceptualization is based on indicators of teaching quality and evidence gained from research of effective learning through technology use. Second, the present dissertation provides a conceptualization of teachers’ professional competencies for technology-enhanced teaching, which highlights the found importance of teacher motivation for effective technology use. Additionally, the findings can be applied within teacher education to support and evaluate the quality of technology-enhanced teaching and associated professional competencies. Therefore, the present dissertation adds an important constituent to move the educational system one step further in the digitized 21st century.