Laptops for Teachers: An evaluation of the TELA scheme in schools (Years 4 to 6)

6. Where to next: future realities

The area of immediate concern identified in this evaluation is the need for professional learning opportunities with a focus on the pedagogies that would enable the best use of laptops and ICT at the Years 4 to 6 level.

Each year, teachers were asked to identify the ‘main’ area that they wanted to develop for their use of the laptop in their teaching role. In 2005 and 2006 teachers selected from a list of seven goals. The main, and growing, area for development in both years was to learn about ICT as a tool in teaching and learning (2005–48%: 2006–45%). Learning to use the laptop and creating resources were the next most prevalent goals chosen by fewer than 15% of teachers in both years. In 2007, the seven goals were reduced to four, so for the purposes of comparison, figures from previous years have been combined under these four categories – numbers of teachers responding each year are indicated in brackets (see Table 18).

Over three years, ‘learning about the potential of ICT to support teaching and learning’ rose from 48% to 59% as teachers’ main goal for future development. In 2007, this goal was particularly important for expert users (70%) and intermediate users (58%), just 27% of beginners had this goal. They continued to be more interested in improving skills (58%), however, the proportion of questionnaire respondents focusing on skill-related tasks remained at around a fifth. The proportion focusing specifically on ‘learning to create and develop resources’ remained at less than 15%, and ‘learning about accessing resources’ rose from less than 10% to just over 10% by 2007.

The goals in the focus groups were also mainly related to use in the classroom as a tool for teaching and learning but also focused on the support needed to achieve this main goal, including time for self-directed professional development, release time for helping reluctant laptop users and improved technological infrastructure. In 2007, the main goal for focus group teachers was to have enough computers or laptops for their children to use and to be able to integrate the laptop into the whole-class programme by having a data projector installed in their classrooms.

"To have ICT integrated throughout every learning area in my own classroom and enough computers to have at least half a group on computers in every subject and rotate them through." (2007 focus group comment)

"I would like to see at least one computer, laptop, notebook, whatever, between two children in a classroom. Either an interactive whiteboard, a data projector, easy access to the Internet, a wireless system perhaps in classrooms, so that children can find out what they need to know when they need to know it." (2007 focus group comment)

There was also a call for more professional development in such things as animation and Podcasting.

"To be more confident with my own knowledge. I am not too sure how to obtain that knowledge. Knowing what’s there and what I can use in the classroom. I’d like to explore Skype to have chats with other people to bring the distances down. Podcasting." (2007 focus group comment)

Teachers in urban focus groups who had been in the ICT PD contract said they would like to continue to visit other teachers, as when they had been to see other teachers at work it inspired them.

Teachers in this evaluation considered the laptop to be a valuable tool in the teaching and learning process and were able to describe a number of activities that fit in with the quality teaching principles, some of which would be very difficult to operationalise without a laptop, for example, the use of images at the most appropriate time and in the most appropriate place. Teacher descriptions of their ICT use, however, did not show that teachers had embraced new pedagogical practices although some teachers indicated their role in the classroom might be changing. It appears that most of the teachers in this study were using ICT to enhance and extend existing pedagogical practice. The reasons for predominance of more traditional approaches may lie in the limited professional learning opportunities as well as in the few models of innovative pedagogies, the organisational set up in schools, and leadership issues. It is for this reason that we now make recommendations for improvements in the system that supports teachers in their use of laptops for teaching and learning.