Barriers to the effective use of technology in education

When we think of modern day education and learning, technology plays a major part with everything from research to turning in assignments and VLE's, however this blog is going to look at the barriers of the effectiveness of technology in education and will be supported by academic findings.

Laurillard and Deepwell (2014) conducted a survey on the effective use of learning technology in education within a FE environment. The main barriers and findings of the survey as are followed:

• Lack of support for teachers in incorporate technology in their teaching practice.
• Lack of credit and recognition from awarding bodies, governing bodies and other key influencers 
• Focus on targets and inspection does not encourage experimentation in new technology.
• Lack of teachers knowledge in technology.

I feel the overall theme of the findings of this survey are that teachers believe that they are under too much pressure to perform with little or no encouragement and support to change their teaching styles and experiment with new technology. 

The British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta) produced a report in 2003 also about the barriers to the use of technology in learning and looked at the perspective of the student and found the main barriers being:

• Lack of IT Equipment and correct soft and hardware.
• Lack of Technical support.
• Lack of training due to the teachers ICT ability.
• Focus on basic skills not extending ICT knowledge.

The report suggests that these barriers can be overcome with the changing of attitudes and more training provided for students and teachers alike and looking at both internal and external barriers witch may be faced. 

They state that Key Questions that education providers should be asking are;

       "What barriers do teachers in your school think affect their use of ICT?

         Is the whole school involved in, and supportive of, the process of integrating the use of ICT?

         Are ICT resources deployed so as to enable teachers to access them easily and integrate them  

         effectively?

         Is your ICT training provisions focused on pedagogy, differentiated by skill level, and arranged

         with sensitivity to teachers workloads? "

The findings show that although technology plays a massive part of teaching and within education, there are still many barriers to it's effectiveness and that on going training and development alongside encouragement is key to overcome these hurdles and produce more efficient technology based teaching environment. 

     

                                                                   Bibliography 

British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (2003) What the research says about barriers to the use of ICT in teaching, accessed on 4th December from http://www.mmiweb.org.uk/publications/ict/Research_Barriers_TandL.pdf

Laurillard, D and Deepwell, M (2014) ALT Survey on the effective use of learning technology in education, Education Technology Action Group, Accessed on 4th December from https://www.alt.ac.uk/sites/alt.ac.uk/files/public/ALTsurvey%20for%20ETAG%202014.pdf