Anderson, B. A. (2012). Testing the effectiveness of professional development for integrating technology in an urban Iowa middle school (Publication No. 3532953) [Doctoral dissertation, Northcentral University]. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global.

Abstract:

“The purpose of this quantitative one-group pretest-posttest design study was to test the effectiveness of professional development for integrating technology in the curriculum of an urban Iowa middle school. Iowa middle school teachers are expected to integrate technology, to comply with Iowa Core Curriculum standards, by 2014. The participants were 30 teachers who had not been assigned to other mandatory professional development during the time allotted for the professional development for this study. Participants completed the Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge (TPACK) survey as a pretest and posttest to assess their technological knowledge (TK), technological and pedagogical knowledge (TPK), technological and content knowledge (TCK), and technological pedagogical and content knowledge (TPACK). A one-tailed paired t-test indicated significant differences between the means of the pretest and posttest responses for all the TPACK constructs as indicated by the following: a) TK p =.0001; b) TCK p =.0001; TPK p =.0002; and TPACK p =.0001. The effect size, as determined by Cohen’s d, ranged from high (.84) for TPACK to medium (.42) for TK. The TPACK framework was the basis for the professional development sessions designed to help teachers in determining best practices for integrating technology in the curriculum. Each participant created a technology-enhanced lesson as a part of their professional development. The open-ended TPACK survey question was used to ascertain if teachers or students were the primary users of technology and whether it was being used for general purposes or for learning the content. Answers were sorted in categories of general/student usage, general/instructor usage, content-specific/student usage, and content-specific/instructor usage. A McNemar’s chi square test revealed a significant increase in reported content-specific/student usage on the posttest ( p =.016). Data gathered using the International Society for Technology in Education’s (ISTE) classroom observation tool (icot) substantiated these findings. A Wilcoxon signed ranks test indicated overall student technology use (mdn =30) was greater than overall teacher technology use during the 50 minute classroom observations ( mdn =6.0, z =2.37, p <.05, r =.60. A second Wilcoxon test showed student technology for learning content (mdn =24) was greater than teacher technology use for learning content during the classroom observations (mdn =6.0, z =2.01, p <.05, r =.61. Critical reflection about the implemented technology-enhanced lessons, as indicated by responses of a majority of interviewed teachers, shows an application of TPACK framework constructs. The quantitative data suggests significant increases in all TPACK constructs following the intervention. The observation and interview presented converging data for the self-reported TPACK survey data. However no pretest data were gathered for the observations or interviews. A larger random sample of teachers in all subject areas and adding the observation and interview data as pretests would strengthen the findings.”