Crosschecking teachers’ perspectives on learning in a one-to-one environment with their actual classroom behavior – a longitudinal study

Abstract

One-to-one laptop initiatives have become prevalent in schools aiming to enhance active learning and assist students in developing twenty-first-century skills. This paper reports on a qualitative investigation of teachers in a junior high school in Northern Israel, who were gradually implementing one-to-one computing. The research reported in this paper is based on longitudinal data collected over a five-year period and included all of the teachers who participated in the project. We triangulated teachers’ perspectives and actual behavior by employing classroom observations, followed up with semi-structured interviews. This study aims to map teachers’ perspectives on changes in teaching in one-to-one computing settings, and the pedagogical strategies that they use in one-to-one classrooms. To explore the depth of change in teaching, teachers’ perspectives were mapped based on the SAMR framework, while the TEUCT-TEUIT approach was employed to categorize pedagogical strategies. The findings pointed to several benefits of using a laptop for teaching, as well as classroom management problems and technological problems while teaching. Analysis of the interviews revealed four categories which appeared in the original TEUCT/ TEUCT scales, alongside three additional categories which did not appear in the original scales, and emerged bottom-up from our data. Furthermore, findings indicated that some of the categories originally included in TEUCT, should rather be included in the TEUIT scale. The findings point to a change in teaching strategies, from a more teacher-centered teaching approach to a more student-centered learning approach.