The role of teachers in the digital transformation of education is recognized as a very important and complex holistic phenomenon (Ertmer & Ottenbreit-Leftwich, 2010; Wohlfart & Wagner, 2022). But which factors promote the lasting implementation of digital tools by teachers? Research shows that successful integration of existing or new digital tools depends on knowledge of and access to, as well as time to explore them (Tondeur et al., 2012). Teachers’ willingness and ability to integrate technology is also influenced by their attitudes or personal fears (Njiku, 2022; Wilson et al., 2020), and exposure to a student-centered constructivist pedagogical approach during teacher education can have a positive effect on digital literacy development and integration of digital tools in teaching practice (Chai et al., 2013). Contrary to the study results, we are far from an exhaustive integration of digital tools in formal education. The International Computer and Information Literacy Study 2018 (ICILS) shows that around 49 % of teachers used digital tools on a day-to-day basis and highlights considerable differences in the availability of technological infrastructure and conditions for professional learning across countries (Fraillon et al., 2019). With the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, teachers no longer had the liberty to choose whether to incorporate digital tools into their teaching, as the circumstances made this inevitable (Wohlfart et al., 2021). Within the past three years, schools were forced to adapt and re-adapt to varying situations to fulfil their educational mission. Teachers are central in this environment and especially affected by this process of digital transformation, which makes their experiences particularly interesting and relevant. Current research, however, has often relied on one point of data collection. These studies therefore struggle in explaining individual dependencies in transformation processes. With our study, we aim to better understand how the past years have affected the experience with digital tools in the context of teaching. Analogously, we examine whether the Covid-19 pandemic has thereby led to a sustainable transformation of teachers’ acceptance and usage of digital tools.

Our study is based on an extended version of Davis’ (1986) widely accepted technology acceptance model (TAM). The core of the model consists of the variables perceived usefulness and perceived ease-of-use. In addition, the model describes the variable attitude towards using as a direct product of the former two variables in explaining user motivation for usage of a certain technology. Notwithstanding, these three core variables fail to fully explain the actual use of technologies. This is due to the influence of an array of external factors that determine user acceptance. Previous research has discussed and highlighted in detail the interaction and relevance of considering further external variables such as subjective standards (perception of how important the use of technology is to other people) or self-efficacy (one’s own ability to deal with technology) (Burton-Jones & Hubona, 2006; Lee et al., 2003). To gather a better understanding of the actual use of digital tools in teaching, we apply a refined TAM (Teo et al., 2008) as well as previous research to conduct and analyze longitudinal interviews with secondary schools’ teachers from Germany. Our study examines the following research questions:

How has teachers’ acceptance and usage of digital tools developed across time since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic?

Which factors influence a lasting integration of digital tools in teaching?

To answer our research questions, we conducted a longitudinal interview study over three years in the federal state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany. Here, the federal government suspended on-site school activities for nearly three months after the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020, re-opening for smaller groups in mid-June of the same year. Teachers, meanwhile, were required to enable distance learning and therefore produce appropriate learning content and transmit this to students. The mutations of the virus over the course of the next years led to iterative restrictions of school life and parallel on-site and distance teaching and learning. With our study design, we wanted to capture specific situations and relevant changes without delay or falsification caused by the dynamics involved with remembered experience over time (Becker et al., 2002). Thus, we conducted three rounds of interviews with the same teachers at secondary schools in 2020, 2021 and 2022. The first round of interviews in May and June of 2020 focused the experience which 15 teachers had with this unfamiliar situation. With a semi-structured interview guide, we asked the interviewees about their personal experiences with the adoption of digital tools in times of distance teaching. We followed up on these interviews with the same teachers in May and June of 2021 (n=12) and 2022 (n=10) respectively, interested in the personal development of the interviewed teachers and changes in the adoption of digital tools in face-to-face teaching over time. The 37 interviews lasted between 29 and 66 minutes, were audio-recorded, and transcribed – leading to a comprehensive database of about 400 pages of single-spaced transcribed text. We performed an iterative qualitative content analysis on the 37 transcripts according to Mayring (2015) with deductive categories based on the literature review (e.g. perceived usefulness, tools applied, infrastructure, etc.) as well as inductive categories that emerged from the transcribed interview material (e.g. changes, classroom management, school development etc.). The first two rounds of qualitative data analysis resulted in 42 codes and 2.177 coded segments (status of 18.01.2023).

The analysis of interviews from 2020 indicate contrary to previous literature, that Covid-19 as an external factor has a universal impact on all variables along the TAM and thereby positively and directly affects the acceptance and usage of digital tools in teaching. Furthermore, we identified three vital external factors: (1) regulations and specifications, (2) technological infrastructure and (3) the heterogeneity of students and teachers (Wohlfart et al. 2021). With the second collection of interviews, we wanted to better understand how teachers’ usage and acceptance of specific digital tools developed across time and experience. The findings highlight the development of user motivation of most teachers and while some inhibiting external factors remained (e.g. lack of infrastructure), others had been overcome (e.g. universal regulations/specifications). Overall, the acceptance and integration of digital tools increased over the first year. With the third round of interviews, we expect to find valuable information concerning lasting adaption of digital tools in face-to-face teaching and better understand why this may not be the case for all teachers. With this, we hope to derive lessons learned from this unique situation and conclude the pandemic to have been (at least in parts) a catalyst for digital transformation in education.

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