"Powerpoint is the new chalk and talk": Using Bourdieu's theory of practice to examine Jamaican teachers' post-pandemic EdTech practices

• In Event: Leadership, Digital Transformation, and Critical Media Literacy: Evaluating Educational Innovations Across Contexts

Proposal

Motivations:
The idea that technology will ‘transform’ stagnant education systems is one that has driven its incorporation into education policies around the world (Selwyn, 2016). This is particularly the case in low- and middle-income country contexts where technology is embraced with the hope that it will enhance science and innovation, and drive socio-economic development (Hennessy et al., 2021). It is often assumed, however, that simply providing access to technology is enough to achieve learning outcomes, and teachers are blamed when targets are not met (Sancho-Gil et al., 2020). This was evident in pre-pandemic Jamaica where, in response to global trends in education, teachers were publicly called upon to embrace available educational technologies (EdTech).

Globally, the COVID-19 pandemic forced a rapid pivot to online teaching and the use of different virtual tools to engage learners. In Jamaica, the government provided thousands of teachers with laptops, tablets and training to equip teachers with the tools needed to teach online (Jamaica Gleaner, 2020). Post-pandemic, the call to use EdTech in classrooms continues, however, public discussions rarely go beyond the concept of access. This conceptualisation limits an understanding of the complex realities of classrooms, and the negotiations of technology use that exist between students, teachers, schools, and the wider education system (Puckett & Rafalow, 2022).

This paper seeks to examine the pandemic and post-pandemic realities of Jamaican teachers, to understand how they use EdTech in their teaching, and what factors influence their technology-driven classroom practices. As the 2025 CIES conference explores how teaching and teacher education in a digital society can be envisioned, this paper contributes to the wider discourse by reporting and examining the experiences of teachers in a Global South context.

Study design:
This paper is based on an exploratory qualitative study conducted in 2023, which focused principally on the role that teachers’ EdTech self-efficacy plays in their classroom technology use and how Jamaican science teachers understand the role of technology in education post-pandemic. The study used semi-structured interviews to map changes in Jamaican teachers’ EdTech use patterns before, during, and after the pandemic. The seven teacher participants were public school, secondary-level science teachers at three different schools across Kingston, who had taught remotely during the pandemic.

The study made use of Bourdieu’s theory of practice to examine the social and cultural contexts in which teachers’ technology practices occur. Bourdieu’s theory of practice employs the concept that an individual’s behaviour (practice) is the result of their dispositions (habitus) and their position (capital) within the current social system (field) (Beckman et al., 2018). This theory allows for a look beyond the concept of access to technology, to gain an understanding of internal and external factors that affect teachers’ experiences within their specific contexts.

Results:
Thematic analysis allowed for the development of four main themes. The primary theme of technological habitus provides a lens through which the three other themes can be examined.

Theme one: Technological habitus
The concept of the teacher's technological habitus emerged from the differences and commonalities of teachers’ pandemic and post-pandemic experiences. Expanding on Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, technological habitus is understood as a teacher’s beliefs about the role of technology in education, how they use EdTech in their classroom, and their professional development (PD) experiences. The study defined three different types of technological habitus among the seven research participants; that of the hesitant, the practical, and the enthusiastic EdTech user. The examination of this specific form of habitus allows for a nuanced understanding of how teachers develop their EdTech skills and navigate the complexities of post-pandemic classroom technology use.

Theme two: Technological capital
The intensive virtual teaching period increased the availability of professional development and individual online learning experiences. This led to the accumulation of technological capital, resulting in a digital upskilling that was modulated by each teacher's technological habitus.

Theme three: School culture
The school’s provision of technology-related PD, and the concept of the school as a safe space for support and collaboration were factors that led to the construction of positive school culture. Due to the different types of technological habitus among the teachers, each teacher perceived their school’s culture differently, and therefore had varying experiences of using technology within the field.

Theme four: Post-pandemic negotiations
The pandemic made all teachers more aware of the challenges of using technology to achieve learning, pushing them to negotiate with the costs and benefits of EdTech use. As a result, teachers’ post-pandemic negotiations are influenced both by the perceived challenges of EdTech, and by their technological habitus.

Conclusion:
The pandemic pushed teachers to recognise the value of EdTech, and increased their confidence and competence using a range of EdTech tools. However, the work of improving the frequency and quality of teachers’ EdTech use should not stop here; teachers require ongoing support to maintain changes in practice. The findings of the study indicate the significant role that teachers’ technological habitus plays in their accumulation of technological capital, how they interact with their schools’ culture of technology use, and how they navigate technology use post-pandemic. This confirms the need for the burden of EdTech integration to shift from the individual teacher to the wider school, through the establishment of a school-wide technology strategy and provision of continuous PD to support teachers’ EdTech practices (Chew et al., 2018). Education leaders should also be aware that teachers are not a homogenous group and require different levels of support.

In the English-speaking Caribbean, there is a paucity of research that examines the structural and social factors that influence teachers’ understandings of, and capacities to embrace EdTech, particularly at the level of secondary education. This paper contributes to the discourse around teachers' of digital technologies, and provides an alternative framing to the ways in which teachers can be considered as learners. Just as the discourse about technology in schools needs to go beyond ‘access’, the conversation around teachers and EdTech use needs to go beyond ‘professional development’ to recognise that technological habitus plays a significant role in teachers’ EdTech competence, confidence, and classroom practices.

Author

• Amma Spence, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge