Technology innovations that support technology enhanced teaching and learning and their evaluation in two Auckland secondary schools

Abstract

Technology innovations have been introduced into Auckland secondary schools to meet the needs of 21st Century learners. All secondary schools in New Zealand are required to critically and strategically review their practice to best meet the needs of their school community. Auckland secondary schools are introducing numerous innovations that support technology enhanced teaching and learning with minimal thought being allocated to the evaluation of these innovations.

This lack of evaluation means that schools are uncertain as to whether innovations are improving student outcomes. This research seeks to investigate the practices of evaluating innovations that support technology enhanced teaching and learning with the aim of identifying barriers to evaluation as well as successful evaluation practices.

This research adopted a qualitative approach to investigate the practices of evaluating innovations that support technology enhanced teaching and learning in two Auckland secondary schools using two research methods. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the Principal and the Senior Leader from each of the two schools purposively selected.

Four focus group discussions were conducted, one Middle Leader group and one Classroom Teacher group from each of the two selected schools.

This research found that Google applications and Bring Your Own Device were the most common technology innovations introduced. As a result of the technology innovations being introduced into secondary schools this research found that teacher’s pedagogy had evolved. Findings from this research identified that evaluation of technology innovations is currently being done on an ad hoc basis and when it is being conducted it is mainly through the ‘Teaching as Inquiry’ cycle and online surveys.

This research finds that there has been an explosion of technology innovations into schools, however, the evaluation practices used to assess the effectiveness of these innovations has been poor. The development of a school wide evaluation framework and the allocation of time to conduct evaluation would help schools better quantify the use of technology innovations. It is recommended that secondary schools spend time developing suitable online surveys to help with evaluation processes. Improving evaluation practices would enable teachers to identify which technology innovations were worth implementing into their classrooms.