Teachers' and Students' Perspectives on Good Teaching Using Technology in Elementary Classrooms

Teachers' and Students' Perspectives on Good Teaching Using Technology in Elementary Classrooms

Insook Han, Seungyeon Han, Won Sug Shin
DOI: 10.4018/IJICTE.2019070108
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Abstract

This article describes good teaching with technology from both teachers' and students' perspectives through analyzing two distinctive cases of teaching practices with technology in K-12 settings. Data was generated from teacher interviews, classroom observation, student interviews, and student reflection journals. From the analysis of these data, the authors identified four categories of behavior that were considered emblematic of good teaching with technology: deliberate instructional design, enhanced engagement, adaptive instruction, and a respectful learning environment. In addition, while teachers restructured the curriculum and integrated technologies in a way that was more meaningful for students, teachers' beliefs were embedded in their approaches towards instructional design and teaching practices, which resulted in the seamless integration of technology with sound pedagogy in a content-specific way. The results of the study provided practical guidelines for good teaching with technology and implications on what role technology should take in teaching practices.
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1. Introduction

Rapid development in technology and the widespread use of social media have changed the educational landscape. However, despite the increased accessibility of resources, expanded communication opportunities, and enhanced collaborative capacity, not every class fully benefits from the new technology (Pittman & Gaines, 2015). It may be attributed to the discrepancy between what research suggests that teachers do and what teachers actually can accomplish. While previous literature seems to define exemplary technology-integrated teaching as one that embraces learner-centered teaching practices (Admiraal et al., 2017; Ertmer & Ottenbreit-Leftwich, 2010) and teachers’ constructivist pedagogical beliefs (Kim, Kim, Lee, Spector, & DeMeester, 2013; Liu, 2011), these findings do not readily match teachers’ performances using technology. For instance, even teachers who hold constructivist beliefs tend to implement lecture-based teaching due to their limited understanding of appropriately integrating technology (Liu, 2011).

Although a successful experience of using technology is essential for teachers to change their instructional practices (Miller, 2008), previous research failed to provide teachers with practical instructional guidelines for what will work best regarding technology uses in K-12 classrooms. Numerous studies quantitatively examined factors associated with teachers' technology integration by using self-report surveys (e.g., Liu, Ritzhaupt, Dawson, & Barron, 2017). However, these studies neither described evidence on how technology promoted instructional practices nor explicated how teachers' belief, knowledge, and prior experiences shaped their instructional decisions regarding the use of technology. Besides, these studies only focused on teachers’ perspectives without considering students’ perception, and thus limit our understanding about what good teaching with technology is in classrooms.

Therefore, using a qualitative approach, this study investigated two distinctive cases of technology use in K-12 settings and described evidence on the components of good teaching with technology as perceived by teachers and students; the study also examined the intersection of their knowledge, beliefs, and professional development experiences.

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