Evaluation as an educational development to improve practice: teacher ICT knowledge, skills and integration

Evaluation as an educational development to improve practice: teacher ICT knowledge, skills and integration

Over the past ten years innovations in the use of ICT in schools have moved from introducing them into the classroom, integrating into teaching and learning, through to sophisticated e-learning practices that will continue to evolve. The continued progress in innovation in e-learning requires different and innovative ways of conceptualising, measuring and evaluating the educational developments. Underlying the aim of integrating and improving the use of ICT by students is an assumption that teachers themselves are competent and confident in the use of ICT in terms of teaching and learning. In 2001 over 95 percent of teachers interviewed in Western Australian (WA ) schools indicated that they assessed themselves as having more than a basic level of ICT operational skill. The majority of these teachers were not, however, confident about applying ICT to facilitate student learning. This chapter will consider a conceptual framework that represents factors of importance in understanding and measuring the ICT competence of teachers. It was developed initially in 2006 to assess the level and nature of ICT knowledge and skills among WA public school teachers and to establish to what extent teachers were integrating their ICT knowledge and skills in classrooms. The evaluation methodology was innovative in that it used psychometric measurement to validate teachers’ self-reported ICT knowledge and skills, the ways in which they use ICT and the extent to which they promoted the use of ICT in student learning against an objective online test of teacher ICT competence and integration. Structural equation modeling was then used to analyse the relationships between ICT skills and knowledge, ICT integration within learning, and the other factors identified in the conceptual framework. This conceptual framework and methodology has since been used nationally and internationally to assess teacher competence and utilisation of ICT and e-learning.