Research proposal: Can ICT Help Teachers? Nancy Castonguay Research Methodology in Education – Section 65 C Section Instructor: Clifford Falk April 17, 2008
Table of Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Context. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 The Impact of Workload. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Current Thought on Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7 Time Versus Utility. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9 Research Questions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 PreNet Versus NetGen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Online Questionnaire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Journal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Interview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Reporting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14 Works Cited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15 Appendix. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15 2
Introduction My interest in ICT stems from wanting to make my task manageable. During my first year of teaching, I found myself servicing over 120 students each day, all of whom relied on me to lead them to success. Not having my own classroom, as it is the case for many secondary school teachers in this district, I found myself having to cart around the equivalent of a small filing cabinet, just so that I had the necessary materials to teach the day’s lesson. It was then that I decided, even though none of my courses were ‘online’, that I would create a website from which students could retrieve any of their course materials at any given point in time. Granted, it took some time to build the website, but it lightened my workload considerably as I never had to run around during or after school to fetch materials for my students. Four years later, my website has evolved into a wealth of resources and learning objects, forums and blogs, daily agendas and special bulletins. Each year, I find new ways of using my webspace to lighten my workload. Context Teachers’ workload is one of the main reasons teachers quit their jobs (Tang & Yeung, 1999). The type of workload involved, if one is to leave no child behind, requires a teacher to have been blessed with super‐human powers. It is humanly impossible to service all children as they should be, says Gleibermann (2007), a fifteen year teaching veteran of the San Francisco Bay area. In order to do the job right, a secondary school teacher would have to spend 140 hours per week on preparation, after‐hours tutoring, assessment, and collaboration. The reason for this, he explains, relates to simple mathematics. Today’s school system is “based on a 19th‐ 3
century factory model that cycles 150 students a day through a teacher’s classroom, a process that was never intended to ensure that all students achieved high‐level skills” (Gleibermann, 2007, p. 456). In many ways Gleibermann is the quintessential teacher, working insane hours and still wondering at the end of the day if he has done enough. Many studies affirm that the use of ICT can support and even enhance learning, however, how ICT relates to reducing a teacher’s workload has not been overly explored. Teachers are encouraged to incorporate ICT in their practice to accommodate the changing characteristics of the learner. Today’s high school student was born into the digital world therefore methodologies that connect the ‘digital native’ with learning, using the new language of ICT, are best suited to engage him or her at all cognitive levels (Prensky, 2001). The Net provides students with a vast repertoire of educational content, which can adapted to the learner’s individual needs with the appropriate guidance. Furthermore, the unique design affordances of ICT can support effective learning as it is described by Anderson (2004). He argues that effective learning consists of 4 overlapping types of experiences: learner‐centered, knowledge‐centered, assessment‐centered, and community‐centered (Anderson, 2004). The Net makes it possible for students to explore and construct knowledge at their own pace, and to give feedback to one‐another by joining learning communities or by creating them. While many teachers are reluctant to invest time to incorporate ICT in their practice, it seems justified to think that ICT could assist in restoring the balance such that the teacher’s workload is decreased and more time is spend on teaching rather than on unrelated tasks.
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The Impact of Workload The impact of workload on teachers and on education cannot be overstated. The two studies I am about to introduce indicate that the consequences of a heavy workload affect every aspect of the education system, from its institutions to generations of students to come. A system depleted of adequate staffing exacerbates the initial problem of the workload. If there are not enough teachers in a subject area, it is natural to think that class sizes will continue to increase if student enrollment remains constant, and so will the workload. Further, a heavy workload increases stress levels. If present for a prolonged period of time, stress can result in serious health issues including burnout. Teachers are not the sole bearers of this anomaly in the system; there is a cost to all concerned. If there are not enough teachers to teach, learning will suffer. Harden (1999) suggests that teachers who are experiencing symptoms of burnout are likely to be more negative about teaching and less productive. Moreover, there is the financial cost of stress‐related illness to consider. About 20 million days are lost each year in the UK due to workload related stress (Harden, 1999). Barmby (2006) believes that workload plays a central role in being able to recruit and retain teachers. Currently, the U.K., and many other OECD countries, are experiencing a shortage of secondary teachers in the subject areas of math, science, technology, modern languages, computer science and English (England). In 2000/2001 alone, 33,710 full time teachers left the teaching profession in England, that is, England lost 9.3 % of its full time secondary teachers (Barmby, 2006).
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In 2004, Barmby set out to find why teachers were leaving the profession, and why they were not easily recruited. From a pool of 5510 teachers, for which personal information was made available through the records of the Student Loan Company, 246 teachers were selected to participate in the study. At the onset, 100 letters were mailed to randomly selected addresses in order to recruit a small group of teachers who would serve to develop a suitable tool. 22 participants were recruited from the original 100 and participated in a series of recorded telephone interviews, from which a 4 point scale questionnaire was developed to address 3 areas of focus: reasons to go into teaching, reasons not to go into teaching, and reasons for leaving teaching. For the main study, 246 teachers from the same 5510 sample were selected to respond to the questionnaire. Participants were also asked to answer some straight forward, open‐ended questions pertaining to the 3 areas of focus. What Barmby concluded from the data collected was that, workload and student behavior were at the top of the list for both not entering the field and for leaving the field. In a table illustrating the main 23 contributors for not entering the field, workload came second to pupil behavior. Similarly, in a table illustrating the main reason of 18 for leaving the teaching profession, workload came in first place. Tang & Yeung (1999) orchestrated a similar study aiming at identifying the underlying causes of stress and related health issues in Hong Kong teachers. Driven by issues of productivity and cost effectiveness, they undertook the challenge of finding out what was causing Hong Kong teachers to suffer from stress and burn out.
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In order to develop a tool pertinent to the challenges in the Asian education system and to the teachers of Hong Kong, they began by interviewing retired teachers to establish a possible list of stressors. 20 teachers participated in this process via face‐to‐face interviews, and 29 items, which would later form the basis for a 5 point questionnaire, were generated. The questionnaire was structured such that the level of stress for each item could be analyzed, 1 being indicative of causing no stress, and 5 being indicative of causing excessive stress. The questionnaire was distributed to 500 secondary teachers of the Hong Kong area during the first half of the academic year, and 261 were turned in for analysis. Of the 261, only 259 were admissible (134 males / 127 females). Tang & Yeung (1999) insured that the selected participants were representative of the area’s demographic layout. Schools were ranked in ‘bands’ according to the level of academic achievement of its students. In doing so, they reduced the bias of their sample since teachers working with learning difficulties might experience more stress than those working with higher achievers. Based on the responses from their participants, Tang & Yeung (1999) concluded that the number one cause for stress and burnout in teachers was workload related. This, they said, should be cause enough to encourage further studies into possible solutions to the teachers’ workload problem. Current Thought on Strategies I did not find any evidence to suggest that the Hong Kong board of education reacted in any way to the findings of Tang & Yeung. However, the initiatives of the English government with respect to teacher shortage are well documented. One initiative that perked my interest was one in which the English government set out to identify ways to ‘modernize’ its education
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system. The ‘Transforming the School Workforce: Pathfinder Project’, directed by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES), undertook the task of defining and reducing teachers’ workload. 32 schools were chosen to be representative of all England, and received extra funding to support initiatives to bring balance into teachers’ lives. The goal was to see how the re‐structuring would decrease the number of hours teachers worked, and to facilitate release teachers so they could focus on actual teaching. Funding was infused into the 32 schools, providing access to additional support staff, new ICT, training and consulting. Butt and Lance (2005) analyzed the data collected over the 1 year period, and summarized the views of teachers who participated in the study. Data collection and reporting was accomplished in several ways. Questionnaires inspired from the previous research, STRB (2000) and PriceWaterhousCooper (2001) which pertained to workload and job satisfaction, were filled out by participants at the beginning and at the end of the study. Over the 1 year period, a special team from the University of Birmingham conducted interviews, and collected observation data in conjunction with the DfES. Participating teachers reported that they worked on average 52 hours per week, approximately 2092 hours per year. Of yearly hours, 110 were spent working during holidays, and 9.7 per week were spent working during the evening. Additional data collected defined the distribution of the workload as follows: actual teaching time 42%, other pupil contact 13 %, supporting learning 6 %, school & staff management 7%, extra curricular 10%, administrative duties 22%. At the end of the study, the workload had not been significantly reduced. However, it is possible that this may have been the result of the huge learning experienced by
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participants as they worked to change how they worked. What is of particular interest are the subsequent recommendations made by teachers. As one might expect, recommendations included increased preparation time, smaller class sizes, and additional support staff. What was surprising was the recommendation that the role of ICT should play an increased role in teacher support. More hardware and software geared toward workload management was requested, albeit for administrative ends. Time Versus Utility It is surprising to me the data collected in the Pathfinder Project did not indicate any reluctance from teachers with respect to ICT, given that they all had to learn to use new technology as part of the initiative. It has been my experience that teachers are reluctant to using new technology for the simple reason that it takes time to master it, something which they are already short on. It is however a valid question: what is the cost involved in using ICT to support teachers? And does it in fact reduce the workload? Sheard et al. (2001) suggest that, when it comes to providing course material online, time spent on ICT is often not worth the utility. Sheard et al. probed into the following questions: What is the cost to teachers for web‐ based instruction? What motivates teachers to use ICT to deliver instruction? From a sample of 200 staff members of the Faculty of Information Technology at Monash University (Australia), Sheard et al. (2001) were able to draw some conclusion as to the motivation behind the use of ICT in course delivery. In order to canvas faculty members, questionnaires were distributed to 180 staff members, those who had agreed to participate in the survey. Questions aimed at finding out what types of resources were provided for the 9
course and what percentage of these materials was also made available on the web. It also questioned participants on the time required to set up and maintain a web page. Finally, the questionnaire provided space for open‐ended comments. Of the 180 questionnaires distributed, 93 were returned. 86% of the 93 reported to having a web page. 40% said that 100% of their course materials were available online. 70% developed and maintained their own website, while 20% shared the task with colleagues. On average, participants reported that the initial cost for setting up a web page was of 20.6 hours pre‐semester, and 3.7 hours per week for the site’s maintenance. These percentages reflect time spent on providing all course materials via the web. Those who only provided some online materials spent 10 hours less at the onset and 1 hour less each week for maintenance. Open‐ended comments varied in their position of time versus utility. Some teachers reported that providing course materials online had several benefits. For one, they were spending less time printing and photocopying for their students. They also felt that there was a saving in paper cost to the institution, although most students printed the materials elsewhere. Some teachers said that providing materials online encouraged students to be more responsible. Other faculty members felt that the effort was not worth the end result. As they shared, many students still demanded they be provided with printouts of course materials, doubling the workload of the instructor. Also, it was mentioned that having all materials online was not beneficial to students since they took advantage of the fact that all they needed was available online to not attend lectures. 10
Research Questions The literature reviews I have provided suggest that there are some serious anomalies in education systems around the world, and not much promise for a solution. The excessive workload of secondary teachers has been widely documented, although strangely enough, not much research has been done to try and resolve this problem. Nevertheless, the impact of teachers’ workload cannot be ignored. The Pathfinder Project helped to identify some possible strategies for reducing teachers’ workload. What showed some promise was the increase in government funding. Gee! Who would have thought? The use of ICT was identified as a possible tool that might help teachers manage their work load. Some college teachers did report that there were some benefits to using ICT in course delivery and that it might have saved some time, while others did not agree because the time required to develop a web page and to maintain it was counter productive if one’s aim was to reduce the workload. PreNet Versus NetGen Rotem (2007) presents an interesting argument, explaining that IT is integrated into the educational system for the wrong reasons. The current rationale for IT integration, described by Rotem as the PreNet paradigm, is fundamentally flawed because it is based on the premise that it will increase learning (Rotem, 2007). With the use of IT we expect that our students will meet higher standards of achievement. The NetGen, or the ‘digital native’ (Gleibermann, 2007) however, does not need anyone to help him connect with ICT. Rotem points out, “[the] NetGen learner is both participant and contributor, connecting diversely and instantaneously with a group of like‐minded colleagues, some of whom he or she may never have met, in common 11
fields of interest” (Rotem, 2007, p.2). The PreNet paradigm according to Rotem, is the real obstruction to the modernization of the education system. The subject of this proposed research then, is not to see how ICT can increase or support learning but rather, if it can be used to decrease teachers’ workload. One of the elements of a secondary teacher’s workload is to provide students with the necessary material to support learning. Students will generally receive materials daily in the form of worksheets, handouts, and class notes. However, because of absenteeism and some students’ lack of organizational skills, this can be a never‐ending task. Out of 150 students which go through a classroom on any given day, some will be away for various reasons (illness, extra‐curricular activities, extended leave). Keeping up with the constant demand for classroom materials is time consuming, preparing packages for students who will be away for an extended period of time also requires a great deal of preparation outside school hours. The research I propose is to investigate if the effort is worth the time spent on providing all class materials and a daily course calendar online. Methodology For the purpose of this research, only secondary school teachers who have already developed a paper based and fixed structure for a course will be recruited. Another pre‐ requisite for participation will be that all materials and daily course calendars be made available in digital format. Since the idea is to see if a class website will save the teacher time, 2 periods will be required for this study, one to collect data on the current practice, and one to collect data after a class website has been constructed. In the case where participants are teaching the 12
same subject twice in the same year, the project may be competed in two 5 months periods. Period 1 (10 months or 5 months depending on the occurrence of the course) should serve to establish the amount of time spent on copying, preparing and distributing extra paper‐based materials to students. Since templates for class websites are readily available at our school, the task of uploading and itemizing the course materials will be done by competent volunteer students. Participants will not have to design or make changes to their web pages, all will be done for them in exchange for their participation. Period 2 should be of equal length as period 1, and should serve to record the instances when extra materials were requested. Online Questionnaire A survey which will determine the level of interest within the district will be sent out using via emails to all secondary school teachers in the Abbotsford area since this information is readily available on AbbyNet, our communications provider. While it is expected that the teachers who are most likely to volunteer for this study will be those who are most frustrated with the constant demand for course materials, this will not create a noticeable bias in the sample. The rationale for this is that while underprivileged student populations may have a higher rate of absenteeism, the more privileged student population compensated for this by participating in more extra‐curricular activities and taking time off to travel with their parents. Once teachers have expressed an interest in the project, a study sample of between 5 and 10 participants will be chosen to reflect a variety of subject areas. Another criterion for participation will be that the participating teacher does not have his/her own classroom. In order to get materials for students, teachers who do not have their own classroom must meet
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students after hours where there materials are stored. Generally, it is not feasible to carry extra materials for students who may or may not be present the next day. Journaling Participants will be asked to use their attendance to gage the frequency for demands of extra materials. They will be asked to record when they have had to meet students outside school hours to give them materials, and if they have had to put work packages together for students who are ill or are going to be away. Interviews Weekly phone interviews, recorded with the permission of teachers, will be conducted to establish how having to provide students with extra materials has impacted each teacher’s week. At the end of period 1, a table will be constructed to reflect the amount of minutes spent on such tasks as well as the perceived impact on the teacher. For period 2 of the study, there will be only 1 interview at the end of the period when teachers will be asked to describe the difference aweb‐based course materials have made in their workload. They will also be asked to share any perceived draw backs and benefits that are not workload related. Reporting the evidence When analyzing the data collected over the 2 periods of data collections, it will be important to include the amount of time spent to create the webpage in order to see if the effort was justified for the teacher’s sake. It will also be important to include teachers overall impressions of the impact of the class website. 14
Works Cited Anderson, T. (2004). Theory and practice of online learning. Athabasca, AB: Athabasca University. Barmby, P. (2006). Improving teacher recruitment and retention: the importance of workload and pupil behavior. Educational Research, 48(3), 247‐265. Butt, G., & Lance, A. (2005). Secondary Teacher Workload and Job Satisfaction: Do Successful Strategies for Change Exist?. Educational Management Administration Leadership, 33(4), 401‐422. Gleibermann, E. (2007). Nothing Will Leave No Children Behind. Educational Digest, 72(8), 19‐ 25. Harder, R.M. (1999). Stress, pressure and burnout in teachers: is the swan exhausted?. Medical Teacher, 21(3), 245‐247. Prensky, M. (2001). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5), 1‐6. Tang, T., & Yeung, A.S. (1999). Hong Kong Teachers' Sources of Stress, Burnout, and Job Satisfaction. 22p. / Taper presented at the International Conference on Teacher Education (Hong Kong, February 22‐24, 1999). (ED429954) Appendix – Other sources consulted Banyard, P., Underwood, J., & Twiner, A. (2006). Do Enhanced Communication Technologies Inhibit or Facilitate Self‐Regulated Learning?. European Journal of Education, 41(3/4), 475‐489. British Columbia Annual Reports (2006). Teacher Statistics 2001/2002 – 2005/2006 Full‐Year Summary Report, Vancouver, BC: Province.
Harris, S. (2002). Transforming the School Workforce Pathfinder Project. Educational Review, 16(1), 107‐ 111. Rotem, A. (2007). The School’s Website as a Virtual Learning Environment. The Turkish Online Journal of Education Technology, 6(3), 1‐12. Selwood, I., & Pilkington, R. (2005). Teacher Workload: Using ICT to Release Time to Teach. Educational Review, 57(2), 163‐174.
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