Understanding What Administrators See as Barriers to the Adoption of Technology for Learning and Intervention Measures to Overcome the Barriers
by David S. Bail
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Chapter 2 -- Literature Review
Introduction
Chapter 1 introduced the Riverside Unified School District (RUSD), a public kindergarten through twelfth grade (K-12) school district located in Riverside County, California. With 34,500 K-12 students, 4,500 adult students (completing high school graduation), 2,685 employees, and forty-one schools, the district is the largest in Riverside County and the twelfth largest public school district in California.
After performing a scan of environmental threats and opportunities, believing that a performance gap existed, on October 24, 1990 the school board adopted a Strategic Plan which had been authored by a committee consisting of parents, community members, students, and staff, as an effort to reach out so that the community would feel a higher degree of commitment to and ownership of the schools. Intended to "chart the future of Riverside Unified School District as it enters the decade of the nineties and beyond," the Plan contained ten strategies directed at making schools more effective, relevant, and reflective of community desires. One of the strategies involved greater use of technology (Strategic Plan, 1990) in a goal setting forth that, "Technology shall be adopted in the instructional and operational programs of the district." Given that technology has been shown to be useful for educational reform for learning, and that such educational reform is called for because of societal changes for which students must be prepared, the question becomes one of how technology might be successfully adopted for learning.
Since the degree of adoption of technology for learning in RUSD had not reached that goal, and since the use of technology for learning is recognized as a means of educational reform desired by districts throughout the United States, the purpose of this research has been to identify the barriers to that adoption and the intervention measures that can be taken to accelerate this change.
Theoretical Framework
Previously, barriers to the adoption of technology for learning and the intervention measures to accelerate the adoption generally have been discussed in the literature based on change theory, stages of concern and the diffusion of adoption model. Rather than looking at efforts to accelerate adoption through those models, the technology itself or how to use it, the focus of this research has been on the organizational and human factors which can be either barriers to adoption or intervention measures to overcome barriers. The objective is to illuminate the barriers to the adoption of technology for learning and discover intervention measures that might accelerate that adoption that have not previously been discussed in the technology adoption literature, using specific diagnoses and prescriptions from the learning organization model and the corporate lifecycle stages model combined with natural science processes, social psychology economic and marketing prescriptions as validating rationales for changes that succeed.
Review of the Literature
Problem
The deviation from the expected performance level is that the Riverside Unified School District of Riverside, California and many school districts in other states are not using technology to the extent envisioned (Main and Roberts, 1990; Preston, 1990; Abramson, 1995; Heaviside, Farris, Malitz, and Carpenter, 1995; Mandel, Melcher, Yang and McNamee, 1995; Pereira, Harrison, and Johnson, 1995; and Teachers and Technology, 1995).
The research purpose of this study is to address the management problem of discovering what barriers administrators see to the adoption of technology for learning. The management purpose of this study is to discover what intervention measures might be taken to overcome the barriers.
Literature About the Problem
1. Administrators' Views on Planning for and Adopting Technology
We focus first on what administrators as organizational leaders are seeing as barriers, and on what they are proposing for overcoming them. Presented here first is a learning-focused technology adoption typical of a management science and educational administrator-preferred planning technique.
Stephen J. Uebbing, superintendent of the Canandaigua City (NY) school district, in his article "Planning for Technology," regards the adoption of educational technology for learning as a system-wide organizational change effort. Stating that "in the long term, technology is sure to play a central role in transforming schools from being providers of knowledge to becoming enablers of learners," he advocates shaping a vision that "keeps an eye on the fundamental goal of exploiting the potential for technology to improve teaching and learning." According to Uebbing, the first act should be to form a team comprised of "administrators, board members, teachers, other school employees, and people in the community. No single person has either the expertise or the individual influence to effect a credible plan. The ultimate users of technology at every school must support any infusion effort." Parents, students, business partners, teacher representatives, principals, and "key" central office administrators are recommended for inclusion. Once the vision for learning is agreed to, the team should work backwards from the general to the specific, with software selection coming before specification of training needs, repair and support issues being addressed before hardware selection, and flexibility being built in through continuous collection of data and scheduled annual reviews of the plan. "The final product is a team recommendation that should enjoy widespread support as team members present the plan to constituents (The Executive Educator, 1995 November, pp. 21-23)."
In an issue dedicated to the topic of "Using Technology for Systemic Reform," (May 1995), the publication Strategies for School System Leaders on District-Level Change reported the different approaches of five school districts to introducing technology:
- West Ottawa MI is reported as being a
district-wide network for administrative uses such as: attendance;
budget information; library, inventory; student records; curriculum
databases; allow student access to research and courseware from
any computer in the system; support curriculum reforms, such
as interdisciplinary studies and the use of individual portfolios
for the assessment of performance; advanced voice mail; and advanced
video production and broadcasting throughout the district and
the community.
- Iowa City IA is reported to have pursued
a funding strategy of partnerships such as with ACT, the American
College Testing Service located there, and with more than 100
local businesses resulting in all the schools being wired by
the fall of 1995 as a necessary starting point for an integrated
system. The district is reported to be working with outside agencies
such as municipal offices, human service agencies, and local
businesses to link them all to a community technology network.
The superintendent report short term goals of an administrative
network and a network available for teachers and students seeking
information throughout the world, and long term goals of interactive
communications linking schools to the community and parents;
district and city officials are also reported to be in negotiations
with the local cable provider seeking fiber optics for the schools.
- Des Moines IA is reported to believe that
its needs are too large to be met by partnerships with the community,
so it is asking to receive 25 percent of its city's newly conceived
one cent sales tax to be used for school improvement. The district
already has fiber optic cable in place throughout, and is writing
a technology plan to present to its community. "The result
of Des Moines investment, which began with a telephone intercom
system, is a hookup to a gateway to the world, as soon as it
decides to turn on the Internet. 'I could have the Internet in
place in six weeks,' " one administrator is reported as
saying, "'I just want to get all the practices and procedures
in place before we do that.' (p. 13)"
- Boulder Valley School District CO is the beneficiary of a $89 million bond issue for school modernization and construction, of which $10 million is for technology infrastructure such as "large-trunk, high-speed data lines," in combination with an earlier $427,000 grant from the National Science Foundation and a $10,000 grant from the University of Colorado. The district has located the technology specialist, the director of research and evaluation, and the director of the Boulder Valley Internet Project all in the curriculum office. Originally conceived five years ago as a means to decentralize student records management, the network "has become a laboratory for exploring how technology can transform teaching and learning. One aspect of the project is a program that teaches students science subjects by linking them to classrooms in other countries." Reported findings from the Internet Project are that: "networking technology is most effective when managed at the district level," creating economies of scale, and making it "easier to manage release time for staff development and justifies the use of specialists, such as Management Information Systems and instructional technology personnel; installation and support of technology must come from central staff. Teachers do not have the time or the technical expertise to install and maintain their own hardware and software. The support should come from three levels: a district Management Information Services staff, an individual to support users and handle simple account maintenance, and a point person at each school. Teachers respond well to training from colleagues. Teacher/trainers appear to be at least as effective as employees whose only responsibility is staff development. Teacher/trainers share curriculum integration ideas and strategies and are familiar with classroom resources. But to do the job right, they must have support and be provided with ongoing opportunities to update their knowledge and skills (p. 7)."
"The hallmark of Bellevue Public Schools' technology program has been organization and planning. The school district in Washington State has carefully defined a strategy that makes technology the servant of reform, not the other way around. Thus teachers and other staff who want technology must first submit design proposals for how they would use the technology; a district-level committee reviews the proposals to ensure that they are guided by instructional goals. Installation is directed by an administrative team that considers issues of access and equity among schools. Training is also a big component of Bellevue's program. Incentives have moved more than 2,200 participants through meaningful training courses. With limited resources, the district has developed technology expertise among an expanding cadre of teachers (p. 9)."
It is reported that "the foundation for Bellevue's fully integrated technology system was set more than two decades ago, when the district began exploring an education reform agenda" including abandonment of letter grading for elementary schools, multi-age grouping of students, cooperative learning in math and literature-based language arts, site-based management, and computer- based learning objectives to supplement and drive restructuring objectives.
Recently the district has formed three committees to oversee vital areas of development such as the Technology Funds Administration Team for the use of the $17.7 million of bond funds for retrofitting and upgrade, the Technology Plan Review Committee consisting of administrators and community technology experts, and the Instructional Technologies Task Force which is responsible for an annual review of each school's technology use, with a goal of including "involvement of a representative sample of teachers from each school (p. 10)."
"Bellevue has a school-focused culture and a tradition of asking teachers to identify their needs. The district has extended that tradition to the technology program. Technology is placed in school buildings or classrooms largely at the request of teachers, who must develop innovative programs for its use and justify their need for the equipment in the plans they submit to the Instructional Technologies Task Force. This policy has led to the voluntary expansion of technology and assures commitment to the goals of the program (p. 10)."
The programs of Bellevue and Boulder seem more curriculum- and reform-linked than others emphasizing hardware. "Considering instructional needs first and only then discussing the right configuration of hardware," is also the advise of assistant superintendent Hope W. Erickson of the Eanes Independent School District in Texas (Erickson, 1994, June), who also advises forming small groups of teachers and administrators, sometimes including parents and students, to "tie technology to school change." Metzger (1995, Winter) agrees, calling for "broad goals and objectives for computer use, technology needs and applications to meet the district's educational goals (p. 27)."
Administrators need to be aware of what their community members are thinking. As an example, one community member raises the possibility that technology may be used either as an adjunct to the current curriculum and methodology or alternatively for a restructured school. In his article "Technology as Support for School Structure and School Restructuring," Denis Newman, division scientist with Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Inc. of Cambridge MA, reporting on a National Science Foundation supported project called Earth Lab, writes in the influential education journal Phi Delta Kappan (1992, December) that "schools can adopt computer technology without making any changes in their goals or organization, or technology can be a catalyst in the creation of new structures for learning." Labeling as acceptable one alternative of little or no change, he asserts that "much of the widespread implementation of computer technologies in schools is, in fact, quite compatible with existing structures." For example, he writes, Integrated Learning Systems or courseware can be used in labs to present the curriculum sequentially and in its traditionally segmented subject areas, essentially duplicating the current pedagogy with the exception of allowing learning to occur at each individual's preferred pace. The other alternative scenario is requiring change for school restructuring with technologies specifically molded to that task, such as "coordination around a shared data base as a new activity that emerged because of the LAN technology...making a more seamless connection between school contexts." Most important for management purposes, "the technology design itself does not determine the impact on the school. The contrast is largely in the way the technologies are typically used (pp. 308-315)," a matter of vision.
Addressing the theme of modification of instructional design, Lon Stettler (1995, September), director of standards, assessment, and information management for the Hamilton City (OH) school district, writes in "Planning a la Mode: Match Your Technology Mix to Students' Learning Patterns," that there are four modes of using technology for learning dependent on an individual student's preferred learning style and mastery of any given subject area. Each of the four modes have implications as to the proper mix of hardware, software, other media, setting, and activities appropriate to each of the learning modes, which are "acquier, retriever, constructor, and presenter ." An acquier is most akin to the role of students in current school settings as a recipient of instruction; a retriever builds meaning as a scanner and surfer; a constructor is one who retrieves information to create a written report; while a presenter is one who learns by retrieving information and constructing a multimedia report to share the learning with others--learning by teaching (Electronic School, pp. A28-A29).
2. Views of Teachers' Acceptance of Technology, and Barriers Faced
We turn next to how administrators are advised to see teachers acceptance of the use of technology for learning, the issue of the teacher's role changing, and barriers faced by the adoption.
Weisglass (1991) emphasizes breaking down the isolation of instructors, providing opportunities for expression of instructors' feelings about the change, addressing those concerns and establishing support networks, suggesting that merely providing information about a proposal "is not sufficient to overcome the obstacles to change caused by the culture of schools" and the instructors' "lack of awareness of the need for change (p. 32)." McCaslin and Torres (1992) recommend that "teacher educators planning inservice education programs ensure (through practical examples and application of microcomputer use for teaching and learning activities) that teachers understand the value of microcomputers and that they reinforce the teachers' confidence in computer use by demonstrating how microcomputers can be used in computer conferencing and electronic mail."
Hamilton and Thompson (1992) in their study of "The Adoption and Diffusion of an Electronic Network for Education" write that "initial and current perceptions of the EEE [Electronic Education Exchange, a network between college faculty, practicing teachers, and student teachers] in five categories: relative advantage, compatibility, triability, complexity, and observability" are valid predictors of acceptance or rejection of the innovation, and that developers can enhance the odds of acceptance by taking these perceptions into account and performing necessary modifications. Surry and Gustafson (1994) confirmed the perceptions of compatibility, complexity, and relative advantage as "important considerations when introducing an innovation into instructional settings," in their paper "The Role of Perceptions in the Adoption of Computer-Based Learning" for on-site staff development.
Needham (1986) writes that "communications technologies have the potential to transform the educational process" with faculty being faced with "the demand that they look again at the essentials of teaching and learning." In "Are Communications Technologies in Education a Threat to Faculty?", Needham postulates that teachers may be afforded greater opportunities for specialization and role differentiation, but that "realizing the potential of this technology requires that administrators and policymakers help faculty develop new skills and courseware development." Other perceived threats at the community college level about which Needham was writing were the possibilities of "a reduction in the number and status of teachers" and a "greater individualization of learning, permitting students to progress at their own speed and freeing teachers from repetitious analysis and prescription" concomitant with the possibility of "upset of traditional power relationships in the learning process, with teachers relinquishing authority and students assuming more control over their own learning."
Educator, consultant and columnist Crawford Killian (1994) writes in "Why Teachers Fear the Internet" that "fear of the Net has several causes: technological, pedagogical, and psychological. To some extent each cause aggravates the other two, but technology comes first." Technologically, Killian witnessed teachers being subject to training which was "fearsomely technical," then returning to schools where technology was "old, inadequate, or not even installed," and with no access to any support staff. Teachers were expected to use technology as an addition to their classroom activities with no allowance made for time impacts or reduction of other duties. Some teachers did not see where the technology fit into the curriculum at all, and their students did not get on line. Other worries facing teachers were accessibility to a few risqué subjects on the net, while others desired the security of a curriculum that was defined by "texts, exercises, and activities aimed at a clear outcome. Providing access to the storehouses of the Internet...students can range freely through outside information...essentially free of the local teacher defined curriculum." Such freedom raises an unfounded fear about students' need for teachers: "do they really need teachers?" The answer is yes, but in a changed role, as a guide to resources and an advisor for evaluating the validity and usefulness of the information found rather than as a giver of knowledge (pp. 86-87).
Identifying the Problem
Dr. David Thornburg (1991), known as a consultant to school districts on restructuring, author, futurist, and an educator long concerned with the linking of technology and education, begins his book Edutrends 2010 quoting philosopher Eric Hoffer, that "in times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists (p. 7)." He begins his recommendations for increasing the use of technology by observing that, "For the vast majority of teachers, the two issues limiting technology use will be access and education. Of these, education must be addressed first. Rapid changes on the technological horizon suggest that, unless educators first understand the utility of the devices being brought into their classrooms, the technology risks becoming outdated while teachers try to figure out how (or why) to use it. This suggests that intensive and ubiquitous access to staff development on the proper uses of educational technology become a high national priority. Once educators understand both why and how technology helps the educational process, access to this technology needs to be provided--along with sufficient release time for educators to restructure lessons in ways that take advantage of these tools. Both education and access are continuing rather than one-shot issues, so staff development in these areas needs to be ongoing, just as it is in industry. The cost of doing this job properly is minuscule compared to the cost of lost opportunity to our nation if we fail to properly equip students for life in the 21st century (pp. 158-159)."
Thornburg continues his recommendations with advocacy of adequate budgets for facility and utility needs, equipment repair and replacement, and staff development, with continuous scanning of technological and educational advances for new application in the classroom, and addressing of the legal areas of multi-state credentials to better enable distance learning and modification of copyright laws regarding the re-use of copyrighted materials in multimedia projects of students. Finally he addresses the matter of the structure of the traditional six period day, and whether it needs to be revised to allow integrated "thematic curricula" and other changes to encourage learners (pp. 156-160).
On a more extreme angle, as a means of getting attention by comparing the inherently socially conservative organizational change resistance of school bureaucracy to that of the former Soviet Union and Mikhail Gorbachev, Professor Seymour Papert, holder of the Lego Chair for Learning Research at MIT and former associate of educational psychology pioneer Jean Piaget, proposes a posture education should avoid when he writes that: "A closer look carries many lessons about the pain and difficulty of changing a large, stable, well-rooted social structure. One of the most important of these is about how a system defends itself against recognizing the depth of its problems and the need for fundamental change....remedies the bureaucratic mind proposes indiscriminately for every situation: Issue orders; tighten controls (The Children's Machine: Rethinking School in the Age of the Computer ,1993, pp. 205, 209)."
Papert writes that even when a teacher desires to bring technology into her classroom for learning, she must overcome hurdles of getting funds for equipment, finding meaningful staff development and the time to attend it, possibly facing obstacles at her site through an instructional design emphasizing either computer labs (as an immunological response to the invasion of the school by technology), and finally even opposition to her delivery of instruction by a different method or in some other sequence than that of the approved curriculum. His recommendations to overcome such obstacles are to restructure the school to "provide space for a process in which she can believe...create a technology community that cuts across the boundaries of schools..." or if necessary to allow change, provide a system that allows government funded citizens' alternative [charter] schools (pp. 213-215). "The problem is to break away from School's uniformity...calling hierarchy into question is the crux of the problem of educational change (p. 212)."
In their article "The Role of Technology in the Systemic Reform of Education and Training," Lane and Cassidy (1994) write that: "During the last decade, it has become obvious that the contributions of teachers, administrators, and the use of technology have made important changes in the lives of students. What became apparent is that the successes in the classroom needed to be viewed in the larger context of the educational system and curricular reform. The changes in the larger system were needed in order to enable wider spread changes in the classroom (p. J-1)."
Cassidy and Lane (1994) write that technology can transform teaching and learning. Quoting Dr. Linda Roberts, then director of the Office of Educational Technology, U.S. Department of Education, from her 1994 work Education Technology: Tools for Transforming Teaching and Learning, they report her belief that "to accomplish that job, technology must be an integral part of your school or community's overall plan to move all children toward high academic standards (p. J-11)." They further quote from Jane L. David's article "Restructuring and Technology: Partners in Change" (1991) as follows: "The concepts behind restructuring the education system and the technology that can contribute to that effort are both part of the Information Age. Together they reinforce a new viewpoint that magnifies their potential to change education. To the extent that restructuring and technology are twisted to fit the Industrial Age of the past, they will not affect educational practice. To the extent that restructuring and technology are driven by challenging goals for students and supported by long-term commitments to change and investment in human resources, they will increase the productivity of our schools--and ultimately of our society (p. J-6)."
As reported earlier, Mandel, Melcher, Yang and McNamee's April 17, 1995 Business Week cover story "Will Schools Ever Get Better?" expressed concerns regarding the apparent lack of progress in schools despite infusions of resources and technology applications to-date. Also as noted earlier (Newman, McCaslin and Torres, Killian, Thornburg, and Papert), technology has been reported as being used, disused, and unused in classrooms with little or no change from the traditional curriculum, instructional design, and methods. Such piecemeal, occasional, and adjunct uses of technology appended to traditional classroom instruction appear to have been shown by this review of the literature to have not met the need, as compared to the potential benefit from systemic reform of learning and teaching including the integrated use of technology.
