Understanding ICT classroom issues encountered by teachers : the application of Dooyeweerd's philosophy

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) have become increasingly important in education and teaching roles and the integration of ICT into classrooms has become essential. Literature provides evidence of various issues hindering the successful integration of ICT in education; for example, a lack of access to computers and lack of training. Yet when these issues are addressed there is little or no evidence of improvement in ICT use in the classroom. This thesis argues that understanding a Teacher’s ICT use requires attention to many everyday life experience issues; what this study calls Down-to-Earth (DTE) issues. DTE relates to how occurrences in the classroom affect a user's experiences of ICT - (for example, technology disappointments, stress, thinking up another option every time, and so on). Theoretical literatures on the subject of the ICT use of educators often misses or takes for granted many DTE issues important to Teachers because of the difficulties involved in logging these diverse everyday issues. However, a philosophically-based method has emerged that provides a new way of understanding ICT use from a DTE perspective. Many authors, such as Ahmad and Basden (2013) made use of aspects to reveal DTE issues in IS Mandatory use. The primary purpose of this study is how Dooyeweerd’s philosophy can help us understand the everyday issues Teachers face with the use of ICT in the classroom. These DTE issues are diverse, deep and value-laden, and are meaningful in the everyday experience of ICT use. Interpretive research with the use of in-depth interviews was conducted with twenty Primary School Teachers from three schools in Salford, across subjects and year groups. There were no gender restrictions as both male and female participants were included. The use of open-ended questions helped explore the topic deeply and produced a rich account from each participant. The transcribed interview was then analysed using Dooyeweerd’s suite of aspects as a conceptual tool based on his philosophy of everyday life. The results of this study showed that Dooyeweerd's aspects when applied to transcripts of open interviews are able to reveal the diversity of issues, uncover the deep issues and encourage Teachers to be reflective about their values, making it easy to separate out what is meaningful to the interviewee from what is meaningful to the Researcher. This provides rich data that can be analysed by cohorts, such as gender, years and schools. A number of important findings have been obtained from various cohorts. First, a distinctive difference are the amount of issues male Teachers found meaningful in the formative aspect compared to issues in the economic aspect preoccupying female Teachers. The implication of the results is that the current literature on Teachers’ ICT use is not rich enough, especially in terms of everyday life experiences, and is misleading as a guide in research and practice. As such, theories would benefit from taking DTE issues into account. This study will help literatures on ICT education widen their focus and take all aspects into account. This study provides practitioners, policy-makers and the wider research community with a reliable basis to consider the DTE issues of Teachers alongside wider strategic goals and thus make more sensitive judgments in matters of policy formation and best practice