February 2000 — Features
Print this article | Email this articleClick here to receive your FREE subscription to T.H.E. Journal
New Insights on Technology Adoption in Schools
We know that the Internet affects student learning, but the research about how teachers adopt technology and telecommunications and use it to enrich teaching and learning is still ongoing. We have found that Hall and Hord’s Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM) (1987) and Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations (1995) framework need extension in order to describe the systemic process in which technological, individual, organizational and pedagogical factors interact throughout the life span of an instructional technology program.
An Integrated Technology Adoption and Diffusion Model
Through our evaluations of several educational technology initiatives, especially the Boulder Valley Internet Project (Sherry, Lawyer-Brook and Black 1997; Sherry 1997), we found that teachers generally go through four distinct stages as they develop expertise with the Internet and the World Wide Web. Our Integrated Technology Adoption and Diffusion Model (Sherry 1998; Sherry 1999) describes a learning and adoption trajectory. In other words, a cyclic process in which teachers evolve from learners (teacher-trainees) to adopters of educational technology, to co-learners/co-explorers with their students in the classroom and, finally, to a reaffirmation/rejection decision.
It is at this final stage that teachers decide whether the use of telecommunications to enhance teaching and learning is working for them. Is the use of telecommunications contributing to their self-efficacy as teachers? Is it compatible with their personal vision of learning, and worth the time and effort that they have put into mastering a new set of skills?
Figure 1 depicts our "new model" of the learning/adoption trajectory. In this research-based model, the "reaffirmers" go on to build capacity within their school and among their fellow teachers. They assist their colleagues with troubleshooting equipment, give in-service sessions at their schools, serve on technology planning committees, and become the new round of peer trainers and change agents for their colleagues. If they move to another school, they continue operating at this level, thereby adding a portability dimension to their skills.
At each of these four stages, there are professional development strategies that work. For example, training may be more appropriate once an "advertising campaign" that informs teachers, parents and administrators about student successes and promising educational practices using technology in the classroom is in place. Learning communities can also be more easily formed at later stages.
Further Evolution of the Technology Adoption Model
Based on three years of evaluation of The WEB Project (http://www.webproject.org), a Technology Innovation Challenge Grant in Vermont, we found that the learning/adoption trajectory model was validated (Sherry, L., Billig, S. and Perry, S. 1999). Data for the 1998-99 academic year for The WEB Project were gathered from numerous sources. These include interviews, focus groups, classroom observation, surveys of students, teachers, and administrators, threaded discussions, student projects posted on The WEB Exchange Web site, and many more. A cross-case analysis was performed between participating sites to identify general trends, and data were analyzed to ascertain the project’s early impact on student performance.
