Session Information
16 SES 12 A, ICT in Primary Schools
Paper Session
Contribution
This century is characterised as an era of rapid technological changes (Judy & D’ Amico, 1997). There are great opportunities offered by the Internet and communication technologies. However, the need for training and education of the citizens to be competent in the use of these technologies also emerged (Mannila et al., 2018). At the European Union, citizens acknowledge the importance of training for digital skills and consider it among the top five digital priorities in their countries (European Commission, 2023a). The European Commission introduced a scheme to support the European citizens and to prepare them for this digital era. The Digital Decade policy programme 2030 aims to transform public services, businesses, skills, and infrastructures in Europe by 2030 in order to achieve the objectives and targets for the Europe’s digital transformation (European Commission, 2023b).
Education will be the main pilar in order to address this need for developing digital skills and to support this transformative process. Digital education is the systematic use of digital technologies in teaching and learning in formal and in non-formal education within a community, and the essential technological equipment required to support this educational process (Lynn et al., 2022). Early in 2018, EU introduced the Digital Education Action Plan (DEAP) 2018 – 2020. In September 2020, the new DEAP 2021 – 2027 was introduced by the European Commission as an initiative for this digital era. DEAP includes a vision of inclusive and accessible digital education and has two strategic priorities: fostering a high performing digital education ecosystem and developing digital skills and competences for the European citizens (European Commission, 2023c). Even though the European Union does not interfere in the national education system of its member states, it can affect their policies through initiatives and collective targets (Staude, 2011).
The purpose of this study is to track the process of achieving digital education and to offer suggestions for its progress. This study uses technology integration as an indicator to investigate to what extent teachers use technology for their teaching and their students’ learning. Integration of digital technologies in education systems refers to the embedding of technology to enhance teaching and learning (Conrads et al., 2017). On average less than 40% of educators across the EU feel ready to use digital technologies in teaching, with divergences between EU Member States (OECD, 2018, as quoted in European Commission, 2023c).
This study focuses specifically on the case of Greece. However, it offers recommendations for any European country that aims to enact their digital policies in accordance with the DEAP.
Taking into account the great importance of the technological integration for digital education policies and the need of tracking the process of enactment of these policies, this study aims to examine the progress of the technological integration in the Greek state-funded schools. The research questions are:
1) To what extent do primary school teachers in state-funded schools in Greece currently integrate technology in their lessons?
2) Which factors predict technology integration in state-funded primary schools in Greece?
3) When pre-specified key factors are controlled, is technology integration explained by between-group effects or within-group effects?
Method
This study uses a policy enactment framework and explores this with empirical data. Previous work on context and factor related policy enactment, such as that of Perryman et al. (2017) and Keddie (2019) have utilized a ‘fourfold heuristic’ (Keddie, 2019, p. 7) constituted by ‘situated, material, professional and external dimensions’ (Braun et al., 2011, p. 585). In Keddie’s (2019, p. 11) work, the factors for policy enactment are presented in a more elaborated mode: • Material factors (such as staffing, infrastructure, and school budget) • Situated factors (such as school setting, history, and intake) • Professional factors (such as teacher values and commitments) • External factors (such as local and national policy and systemic support, expectations, and pressures) Survey data of 205 class teachers in 32 state-funded primary schools in Greece are used to explore the policy enactment in relation to these factors. Convenience sampling was used. However, the schools were located across the country. In the sample, there were urban, semi-urban and rural schools. The analysis of the data was multi-level. The model discussed was a fully nested model since all the classroom teachers were located within one school. The analysis was done with the R programming language in the R Studio.
Expected Outcomes
This paper will present the findings for the policy enactment in relation to the four aforementioned factors. One of the key findings is that the Greek educational system is not yet ready to succeed in technology integration. The Greek state-funded schools do not have the necessary technological equipment. Furthermore, not every school has the same access to technological equipment and digital integration and the rural schools lack significant equipment compared to the semi-urban and urban ones. Furthermore, technology integration is mainly explained by teacher-level factors and not school-level factors. Currently, the policy in Greece adopts a top-down approach. This study suggests a bottom-up policy approach. The policy makers should collaborate with teachers and other stakeholders to ensure sustainable and scalable systemic change to achieve digital education. To conclude, although the European Commission aims through initiatives and funding to improve the factors, which are statistically significant predictors of technology integration and are linked to capacity building, there should be more support to have the desirable outcome. To achieve digital education and technology integration, it is imperative that more and higher quality professional development courses are offered to teachers.
References
Braun, A., Ball, S. J., Maguire, M., & Hoskins, K. (2011). Taking context seriously: towards explaining policy enactments in the secondary school. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 32(4), 585-596. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2011.601555 Conrads, J., Rasmussen, M., Winters, N., Geniets, A., & Langer, L. (2017). Digital education policies in Europe and beyond: Key design principles for more effective policies. Joint Research Centre, European Commission. European Commission. (2023a). 2030 Digital Decade: report on the state of the Digital Decade 2023, Publications Office of the European Union. https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2759/318547 European Commission. (2023b). The Digital Decade policy programme 2030 [Infographic]. Retrieved May 27, 2023, from https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/policy-programme-path-digital-decade-factsheet?fbclid=IwAR2B_bnZ16SlJ4Sk82nFA79qAaHfh7AmxJHOlSAj6hNKZUhFRDcVGBToj8g European Commission. (2023c). Digital Education Action Plan (2021-2027). Retrieved May 13, 2023, from https://education.ec.europa.eu/focus-topics/digital-education/action-plan Judy, R. W., & D' Amico, C. (1997). Workforce 2020: Work and workers in the 21st century. (Report No ISBN-1-55813-061-6). Hudson Institute, Herman Kahn Center, Indianapolis. Keddie, Α. (2019). Context matters: primary schools and academies reform in England. Journal of Education Policy, 34(1), 6-21. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2017.1402959 Lynn, T., Rosati, P., Conway, E., Curran, D., Fox, G., & O’Gorman, C. (2022). Digital education. In Digital Towns: Accelerating and Measuring the Digital Transformation of Rural Societies and Economies (pp. 133-150). Cham: Springer International Publishing. Mannila, L., Nordén, L. Å., & Pears, A. (2018, August). Digital competence, teacher self-efficacy and training needs. In Proceedings of the 2018 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research (pp. 78-85). Perryman, J., Ball, S. J., Braun, A., & Maguire, M. (2017). Translating policy: governmentality and the reflective teacher. Journal of Education Policy, 32(6), 745-756. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2017.1309072 Staude, E. (2011). National Education Systems in the European Union. [Master’s thesis, Washington University]. Washington University Open Scholarship Institutional Repository. https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1457&context=etd
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