Premium
The rhetoric of reform and teachers' use of ICT
Author(s) -
Vrasidas Charalambos
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
british journal of educational technology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.79
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1467-8535
pISSN - 0007-1013
DOI - 10.1111/bjet.12149
Subject(s) - rhetoric , information and communications technology , the internet , european union , empirical research , face (sociological concept) , scale (ratio) , public relations , political science , sociology , pedagogy , mathematics education , psychology , business , computer science , social science , geography , philosophy , linguistics , cartography , epistemology , world wide web , law , economic policy
During the last two decades, the C yprus E ducation S ystem has been undergoing systematic reform efforts. Within the spirit of change, efforts have been made to equip all public schools with computers and provide them with access to the internet. Compared with other European Union countries, C yprus infrastructure is one of the most developed. However, as our research shows, the adoption of technology does not match the rhetoric of reform that dominates education discourse. In order to examine the challenges and opportunities primary school teachers face in efforts to integrate technology in the classroom, four in‐depth case studies of schools were developed and a large scale survey was conducted across public schools. This paper discusses the method, the design and the results from our research, drawing on both survey findings and rich qualitative data. Theoretical discussions provide further empirical grounding of technology adoption models and illustrate barriers to effective adoption of ICT .