Findings

Overall Prediction of Which Teachers Have Students Use Productivity Software Frequently

Most of this paper has presented analyses of how secondary math, English, science, and social studies teachers’ use of computers during class time appears to be affected by the teacher’s general beliefs towards constructivist teaching and how it is affected by the nature of the teacher’s students—attributed class ability levels, school SES, and school level, middle- or high school. However, early in the paper several other factors were also mentioned as key to the frequency that a teacher used computers during class—access to clusters of computers in the teacher’s own classroom, their orientation towards their role (between an outward “professional” orientation and an inward “private practice”), the amount of technical expertise a teacher possesses about computers (including their use of computers to accomplish their own professional tasks), whether their school provides periods of classtime that are longer than usual (“block-scheduled”), and whether they typically cover many topics or a smaller number in greater depth.

The final analysis presented here brings all of these other variables in along with the variables of clientele characteristics and personal educational philosophy and examines which combination of variables appear to best predict extensive use of specific types of software by teachers of specific secondary subjects. A total of 14 combinations of software type and subject-matter were examined—selected on the basis of their overall prominence in teaching in that subject and their plausible relationship to a constructivist teaching practice. Social studies teachers were examined in terms of their students’ use of email, presentation software (e.g., Powerpoint), multimedia authoring environments (e.g., Hyperstudio), the World Wide Web, and spreadsheet and database software. English teachers were examined on Powerpoint and Web use by students; science teachers, on Powerpoint, Web, exploratory software, and spreadsheets; and math teachers, on exploratory software, Web, and spreadsheets. Word processing was not examined in this instance because of its common presence in most computer-using teachers’ classroom practices.

Exhibit 22 provides the result of multiple regression analyses, using the admittedly crude 4-point dependent variables on which each teacher responded in terms of the frequency of their students’ use of each type of software (no use, 1 or 2 occasions, 3 to 9 occasions, 10 or more occasions). On average, the 9 independent variables explained roughly 14% to 19% of the variation in these 14 specific combinations of software and subject-matter. Typically, at least 3 predictor variables had standardized partial regression coefficients above .10 and at least 1 was above .20 in all but two cases.

The strongest predictor of frequent use of these types of software by academic secondary teachers was their technical expertise and use of computers for professional purposes. The second strongest predictor was the extent of professional engagement by the teacher—involvement in informal leadership roles at school and in more formal roles beyond the school. The third strongest predictor was the number of computers in the teacher’s own classroom. The teacher’s philosophy was the fourth strongest predictor. One could argue that technical expertise mediates the effects of a teacher’s philosophy in that more constructivist teachers may be more apt to become expert users of computers. However, even with teacher computer expertise taken out of the equations, both classroom computer density and teacher professional engagement are stronger predictors of the teacher’s frequent orchestration of student use of these productivity-oriented types of software.

Compared to these four teacher-specific predictors, student characteristics were less powerful.[11] However, high ability and, more strongly, high school-level SES, both characterize social studies students’ greater use of email, presentation, and multimedia authoring software during class, net of other factors. Those English teachers aided by block scheduling assign students to do more Web work and Powerpoint presentations. But consistently, it was the teacher-specific variables—technical expertise, access to classroom computers, professional engagement, and, to a lesser extent, having a constructivist philosophy, that predicted their use of these constructivist-compatible uses of computers during class.

[11] Note, however, that these regression models were entirely linear ones, whereas much of the bivariate analyses in this paper pointed to interaction effects among student and school characteristics and often suggested that contrasting situations often led to similar levels of computer use.