Professional Development as a Means to Increasing Teachers’ Self-Efficacy for Technology Integration

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore the importance of the integration of technology into educational classrooms and why teachers are reluctant to embrace this integration. Further, this study systemically evaluated the effects of professional development on teacher change in beliefs in and use of the given workshop focus (technology) and on learning outcomes in participant’s classroom. The Stages of Concern Questionnaire (SOCQ) was administered to a treatment group of teachers who agreed to participate in a 40-hour workshop of intense technology training and to a control group of teachers who attended other technology workshops on a volunteer basis. Data were analyzed with the statistical software SPSS for Windows version 11.0. Two one-way repeated measures of Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) at the simple effect level were performed to examine the mean differences between the treatment group and the control group. The analysis results indicated a significant increase for the treatment group mean scores on the personal subscale and no significant increase or decrease for the control group. No significant differences (p = .05) occurred between the control group and the treatment group indicating that 40-hours of intense technology training may not be the answer to technology training for teachers. The data indicated an increase in all of the subscales, from pre-test to post-test, for the treatment group. The intense technology training workshop helped improve the integration of technology in the classrooms of the teachers who attended the workshop, but not to the extent that this workshop is the best way to provide professional development.