Integrating Technology in the Classroom: Factors that Account for Teachers' Regressive Developmental Trajectories

The Coherency Diagram

According to Schoenfeld (1999, 2006), a teacher’s decision-making and problem solving is a function of the teachers’ knowledge, goals and beliefs. The teacher’s knowledge, goals and beliefs influence each other in a complex manner in every decision process embarked on by the teacher in the classroom. In seeking to represent the complex interplay between teachers’ knowledge (K), goals (G) and beliefs (B), we have devised the “KGB diagram” (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

KGB diagram: KGB region and coherency diagram

In our study, the teacher’s beliefs (B) concern teachers’ views about nature of knowledge and how knowledge is learned (Hofer & Pintrich, 1997). These conceptions of knowledge impact the teaching practices of a teacher and his or her views about students’ learning (Brownlee et al., 2002). Goals (G) are what a teacher sets to accomplish in class (Schoenfeld, 1999) and can be intrinsic to the teacher and coherent with his or her beliefs or they can be imposed upon the teacher by the school, community or other stakeholders. The knowledge of a teacher (K) includes content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge and knowledge of the students (Brandsford et al., 2000).