Technology in Education, Essay Example

Abstract

Integrating technology into curriculums holds a promise to resolve the most complicated issues in teaching and learning. Technology creates an opportunity to expand the scope of the learning process and to create an interactive learning environment. However, the relationship between teachers’ cognitive motivators and their attitudes toward technology-driven instruction is yet to be analyzed. The current paper reviews an article that investigates the relationship between teachers’ values and their commitment to technology-instruction integration. A brief overview of the article and the basic findings is provided. The paper provides a brief critique of the article and the questions for the future research.

Technology in Education

The process of integrating technologies into school curriculums is one of the most frequently discussed topics in scholarly literature. Technology has a potential to solve numerous instruction-related problems and enhance student achievement. Technology works to expand the scope of learning and creates an interactive learning environment. Given the growing complexity and sophistication of technologies, there is an urgent need to investigate the benefits of technology-instruction integration. Teachers and education professionals must have knowledge and skills needed to use technologies in classroom settings and to make technologies serve the learning needs of students. In their article, Maigo and Mei-yan (2010) discuss and analyze the relationship between teachers’ values and self-efficacy and their attitudes to instruction technology-integration. The purpose of the article is to “investigate the current situations and problems of primary school teachers’ technology-instruction integration” (Maigo & Mei-yan, 2010, p.1).

Maigo and Mei-yan (2010) discuss the issue of integrating technologies into classroom settings. The fact is that technologies can create an open learning environment (Maigo & Mei-yan, 2010). With the help of technology, any instruction can be presented via multimedia solutions (Maigo & Mei-yan, 2010). The Internet can provide access to worldwide information for students and education professionals (Maigo & Mei-yan, 2010). Yet, a whole set of factors continues to influence teachers’ attitudes to technology-instruction integration: according to Maigo and Mei-yan (2010), these factors range from teachers’ background and motivation, to the availability of technical resources, teachers’ technical skills, and even the quality of training programs for teachers. Since 1998, the Taiwanese government has invested a lot of money to buy technology equipments for primary schools; thousands of training programs have been developed, to help teachers develop adequate technical skills (Maigo & Mei-yan, 2010). Nevertheless, many questions are still waiting to be answered (Maigo & Mei-yan, 2010).

In their research, Maigo and Mei-yan (2010) sought to answer three questions: (1) what are the current problems for primary school teachers in Taipei on integrating technology into instruction?; (2) what are the most important factors impacting teachers’ attitudes to implementing technology into instruction?; and (3) do teachers’ cognitive motivators affect their commitment to integrating technology into instruction? Maigo and Mei-yan (2010) used the Internet, email and airmail to distribute questionnaires among research participants. 1,549 questionnaires were used to analyze the primary data (Maigo & Mei-yan, 2010). The authors discovered that teachers devote not more than 1-3 hours per week to the use of technology into instruction. The level of technology implementation in Taipei primary schools is low (Maigo & Mei-yan, 2010). Teachers’ age and the length of professional experience present opposite correlations with the teachers’ commitment to technology-instruction integration (Maigo & Mei-yan, 2010). Teachers face serious difficulties trying to comprehend computer-related instructional materials (Maigo & Mei-yan, 2010).

The article sheds the light on the complexities in using technology in primary school settings. Obviously, the lack of available technologies and related resources is not the main obstacle in the way to making technology-instruction integration real, effective, and justified. Rather, teachers themselves can slow down the process of creating technology-driven primary school curriculums. What Maigo and Mei-yan (2010) write about teachers’ attitudes and perceptions regarding technology-instruction integration is crucial in the sense that it will help education professionals to eliminate the barriers against effective use of technologies in primary classroom settings. Unfortunately, the authors do not provide any ideas on how such improvements could be made. For this reason, the discussed article is just the beginning of the long journey toward effective technologization of the primary school instruction in Taiwan.

References

Maigo, C.J. & Mei-yan, L.U. (2010). The study of teachers’ task values and self-efficacy on their commitment and effectiveness for technology-instruction integration. US-China Education Review, 7, 5, 1-11.