Source: Teachers and Teaching Theory and Practice, Volume 15, Issue 1, pages 5 – 23. (February 2009)
This trend study was designed to investigate a current trend and pattern, as well as a development of teachers' concerns about technology integration in the curriculum.
The research questions in this study were:
1. What pattern and trend of concern profiles over a four-year period were revealed in teachers' responses to the SoC Questionnaire about technology integration into the classroom?
2. Were there any significant percentile differences over a four-year period in concern profiles among teachers with different perceptions of their levels of implementation status?
3. Did the present study support Hall et al.'s (1977) hypothesized development of concern profiles for teachers with different perceptions of their levels of implementation status over the period of four years of this study?
The study was conducted by repeated cross-sectional studies, applying the same research instrument to different samples of subjects at different points, over a period of four years during 2004-2007.
The study involved convenience samples from 2004 to 2007. Data was collected from in-service teachers (graduate students) in all sections of two major educational graduate courses (Educational Research and Educational Psychology) at a Midwestern public university in the USA across the period of four years. All participants were recruited at the beginning of the summer semesters between 2004 and 2007. The numbers of volunteers who participated in the study and completed the research instruments were as follows: 83 in 2004, 64 in 2005, 63 in 2006, and 65 in 2007. The total number of participants was 275 in-service teachers. All participants received the same instructions to complete the consent forms and the required research instruments in the first two weeks of the summer courses from 2004 to 2007.
The Stages of Concerns (SoC) Questionnaire was used to assess teachers' seven stages of concern: Awareness, Informational, Personal, Management, Consequence, Collaboration, and Refocusing.
The study found patterns of concern typical for teachers at different levels of their professional development as well as distinct and stable differences between technology user sub-groups over four years. Specifically, (1) teachers' concern profile as a whole were very intense in the stages of Informational, Personal, and Refocusing; (2) there were statistical significant differences in concern profile among teachers with three levels of perceptions of their technology implementation status; and (3) the concern profile for each of the three user groups did not support Hall, George, and Rutherford's hypothesis of 1977 regarding the development of concern profiles for the three different user groups. International implications for teachers' technology integration are discussed.
Reference
Hall, G. E., George, A. A. and Rutherford, W. L. (1977). Measuring stages of concern about the innovation: A manual for use of the SoC questionnaire. Southwest Educational Development Laboratory , Austin, TX.
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