Factors affecting teachers’ use of ICT as a professional tool outside the classroom

Abstract

In the recent years there has been wide interest in the implementation of the ICT in educational institutions. Much of the research on ICT in education has pointed to the role of computers in classroom, particularly in the process of teaching and learning. These studies have highlighted how ICTs reconfigure classroom practice, create new variety of learning practices, change teachers’ and students’ role or improve students’ engagement and outcomes, among others (Crook et al., 2010).

Within the field of ICT integration considerable attention has also been given to the factors that influence teachers use of ICT in the school (Mumtaz, 2000; Zhao, & Frank, 2003). In these literature, a common classification that divides these factors between teacher and school level has been made (Jones, 2004; Tondeur et al., 2008). While the studies we mentioned earlier mainly focus on the use of ICT in teaching and learning, we could not find any study that addressed which factors influence the use of ICT as a professional tool outside the classroom.

The purpose of this research is to develop and test a model of some of the factors that explain primary and secondary school teachers’ professional use of ICT outside the classroom. Based on a review of the literature, our model is made of two types of professional use of the Internet. A first supportive use linked to classroom preparation’s activities such as finding supplemental information for lessons (Orr, 2006) and preparing worksheets for the pupils (van Braak et al., 2004). And a second management use that relates to teachers’ general duties in the functioning of schools as organisations.

This study adopts a perspective focused on theories of organisation development to analyse the factors that affect teachers’ professional use of ICT. We define organisational development as a process that it is directly linked to variations in the organizational approaches, structures, relations and procedures with the aim of guaranteeing a better adaptation to the context of the organisation and, consequently, more probabilities of success (Anderson, 2010; Brown, Leach, & Covey, 2008). From a theoretical point of view, the implementation of ICT as part of an organisational structure is strongly associated with organisational development (Jones, 2004; Mumtaz, 2000; Underwood et al., 2010; Zhao, & Frank, 2003).