ACCESS TO CLASSROOM COMPUTERS Although subject-matter
responsibilities clearly affect teachers' opinions of the relevance of computers to their instructional agenda, frequent use of computers is much more likely when teachers have convenient access to a substantial number of them and
when that access is convenient. Moreover, the effects of access to computers and subject-matter responsibilities on frequency of use are difficult to disentangle because access and subject-matter are related as well.
That is, teachers of some subjects are much more likely to have many computers available in their own classroom than are teachers of other subjects. Computer-Student Ratios in Classrooms
In particular, more than 80% of secondary teachers of computer education classes, two-thirds (67%) of business education teachers and 23% of vocational education teachers had a ratio of computers-to-students in their classroom
of at least 1-to-4; that is, if they had 24 students, they had at least 6 computers. In comparison, that density of classroom computer access prevailed for only one in ten academic secondary teachers and only 5% of elementary
teachers. Only 7% of science teachers had a 1:4 ratio of computers to students in their classroom, only 2% of the social studies teachers did, and none of the 30 foreign language teachers studied for the analysis in Table 3 had
that many computers in their classroom. In fact, among the secondary academic subjects, for only English and science did a majority of teachers have any computers in their classroom. At the elementary level, a small
number of computers, typically one or two, were present in the classrooms of most teachers, whether teachers of self-contained classes or subject specialists.
FIGURE 3: CLASSROOM USE AND ACCESS BY SUBJECT TAUGHT
TABLE 3: CLASSROOM COMPUTER-STUDENT RATIO BY SUBJECT & LEVEL Number of Classroom Computers Needed For Frequent Use
Not surprisingly, for every subject-level combination examined, the more computers present in the classroom, the more likely that a teacher will have students use them
frequently. This holds true even among just the computer-assigning teachers, and it also holds true even when including classes that use computer labs or media centers as
well—the more computers in the classroom, the greater the level of student use. For elementary teachers and for secondary English teachers, even small numbers of
computers in their own classroom lead half of them to use computers regularly with students. For most other subjects, there has to be a substantial number of computers
present (in our analysis, a 1:4 ratio of computers to students) for a majority of computer-assigning teachers to make computer activities a regular and frequent
component of their classroom practice. But when that happens, a majority of secondary social studies, science, and math computer-assigning teachers become frequent computer-assigning teachers.
Table 4 presents these findings.
In contrast, among elementary teachers, although having some computers in the classroom makes frequent computer use more likely, having a 1:4 ratio of
computers-to-students in the classroom does not appear to be as necessary a condition of frequent use.
FIGURE 4: PERCENT OF COMPUTER-ASSIGNING TEACHERS TABLE 4: PERCENT OF COMPUTER-ASSIGNING TEACHERS Computer Access in Labs and Media Centers versus Classrooms
Teachers without a sufficient number of computers in their classroom generally have access to shared school or department facilities—specialized computer laboratories or
more general resource areas such as a library or media center. Typically, computer labs and libraries accommodate many more students at one time than computer-present
classrooms do. (The typical lab has 21 computers; the typical classroom with any computers at all has only 2 of them.) Thus, teachers with only one or two classroom
computers may have their students use computers in a lab instead of using the limited number in the classroom. Indeed, most teachers who give computer-based assignments
do make some use of a computer lab or media center, and 46% of teachers who have at least one computer in their classroom report using shared facilities as much as their
classroom computers anyway. Even among teachers who have their students use computers only sometimes (i.e., not frequently), three-fourths of them do so in a room
where there is at least one computer for every four students (most often a computer lab or media center). This seems to be the case across most subjects.
In sum, most teachers who use computers with their students, particularly at the secondary levels, use them in some room where there are a substantial number of
computers present. If they don't have a large number in their classroom, they will use a computer lab (but they will use computers less often than if they had them in their
classroom). If they don't have enough computers in any location, they just won't have students use them at all.
WHOSE STUDENTS USE COMPUTERS FREQUENTLY, BY CLASSROOM
COMPUTER-STUDENT RATIO, BY SUBJECT & LEVEL.
WHOSE STUDENTS USE COMPUTERS FREQUENTLY, BY CLASSROOM
COMPUTER-STUDENT RATIO, BY SUBJECT & LEVEL.