Faculty of Education - Theses

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End date: 2009 × Start date: 2004 × Type: Doctorate × Subject: Computer assisted instruction × Subject: Victoria ×

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    Teachers' use of ICT in the secondary school: investigating the impact of change on teachers' use of ICT
    Kitchen, Timothy Paul ( 2007)
    This thesis investigates the impact of four initiatives (the provision of a desktop computer, the change of operating systems from Windows to Linux, the compulsory use of a Learning Management System (LMS) and the implementation of professional development) on the use of Information Communications Technologies (ICT) as perceived by secondary teachers at an independent school in Melbourne's East. A mix of qualitative and quantitative data were gathered for this case study by surveying the secondary teaching staff, interviewing six teachers and two key leaders of ICT, and analysing documentation such as computer bookings and school policy records. These data were analysed and compared to that of wider local, national and international research and the following five findings were evident: 1. Evidence was found of an overall increase in the use of ICT since the four initiatives were implemented; 2. Less than half (44%) of the teachers surveyed perceived that there was an improvement in the quality of their use of ICT as a result of the changes, the majority (52%) perceived that no change had occurred for them with 4% claiming that the quality of their use of ICT had actually decreased as a result of changes; 3. At least one of the teachers interviewed demonstrated some profound improvements in their use of ICT as a result of the four initiatives; 4. The provision of personal access to a desktop computer was perceived by the teachers to have had the most impact on improving the use of ICT, followed by the implementation of the LMS and the PD program; S. The change of operating systems from Windows to Linux was perceived by the majority of teachers as a having a negative influence on their use and development of ICT. This study should be of benefit to school administrators who are in the processes of implementing initiatives to help improve the use of ICT by their teachers. It could also be helpful for teachers who are wanting to develop their professional attributes in relation to the use of ICT and make ICT a more effective tool in the teaching and learning process.
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    Prensky's digital immigrants: the life of Science and English teachers with digital learning technologies in a progressive school
    Ashton-Smith, Norma ( 2008)
    Computer based technologies are widely presented as the dominant cultural artefact of our time and a key to the reinvention of teaching and learning in schools. To explain the slower than expected uptake of new technologies in schools and to locate the teacher in this issue, Prensky (2001) coined the term "Digital Immigrant". The phrase has since had wide currency amongst Information Technology consultants and educational managers. This ethnogenic study examines the umwelt of Prensky's "Digital Immigrants" in the English and Science Departments within Southern School, a well established, innovative, liberal progressive school, in outer Melbourne. In their conversations over three years with the author (Director of Curriculum with broad responsibilities for the quality of the curriculum and teaching in the school) the teachers present narrative accounts of the transformation of their pedagogical reasoning in the normative space of teaching with the new learning technologies. The accounts of the social and cultural meaning they construct for themselves and the ways in which their identity and agency as educators have been informed by Harr�'s "Positioning Theory". This is the key analytical tool used in locating each teacher in their own storylines. In these everyday conversations they offer accounts of the local moral order of the school at a particular period of time as it is transformed by new technologies. Foucault's "Technologies of Self' offers a secondary account of the way they transform themselves. The fine grained analysis of their agential positioning and modes of self governance offers an alternative image to Prensky's "Digital Immigrant." This study, and others like it, makes a contribution to New Institutional Theory that seeks to monitor and forcibly delimit the paths that self cultivation takes. Teacher self cultivation is both the conscious production of the self and the transformation of the communal conditions of future self-production. It is shown here dealing with the hard choices and potentially irredeemable losses of liberal education.