Quite understandably, teachers of different subjects also have different objectives for their students' computer
use. (See Table 11 for overall differences and see supplementary Table A-5 for numerical percentages.) Some of the differences are self-evident—for example, that English teachers are more likely than other teachers to
use computers to help students improve their writing, or that computer teachers are more apt than others to have "improving computer skills" as a principal objective. However, other patterns of objectives chosen in response
to this survey question suggest that different pedagogical perspectives may characterize teachers of different subjects. For example, the teachers most likely to believe that a main objective for using computers is
"remediation of skills not previously learned" are business education teachers (82% of which selected this objective). (Also, math teachers were more likely than others were to make this choice, clearly by using
computer-based drills and games for that purpose.) Foreign language and vocational education teachers were more likely than other teachers were to value computers for helping students to work at learning their subject
independently from others. FIGURE 11: PERCENT OF TEACHERS HOLDING THE FOLLOWING OBJECTIVES
TABLE 11. SUBJECT-MATTER TEACHERS MORE LIKELY AND LESS LIKELY THAN AVERAGE TO NAME EACH OBJECTIVE AMONG THEIR MOST IMPORTANT OBJECTIVES FOR
AMONG THEIR 3 MOST IMPORTANT
STUDENT COMPUTER USE.
What is also interesting is to identify the subjects whose teachers are least likely to select a given objective as among their most important ones for having students use computers. Foreign language teachers, for example, were much less likely than others to select "learning to work collaboratively," while math teachers were the least likely to see computers as useful for having students communicate electronically with other people. A future report in this series discusses subject-matter in terms of the teaching philosophies that these various objectives reflect.