Technology Adoption Concerns and Help-Seeking From Teacher Educators Authoring, Implementing, and Researching Equity-Focused Simulations

• In Event: Critical Perspectives on Using Simulations to Broaden Participation in Computer Science Through K–12 Teacher Education

Abstract

Objectives or purposes: Equity focused simulations have been used for teacher education (Self, 2016), including CS teacher education (Robinson et al., 2018). As authentic simulations improve learning outcomes (Hamstra et al., 2014), we asked teacher-educators to author simulations, utilizing their ability to contextualize educational materials (Ennis, 1994; Hillaire et al., 2020). In this study, we examine the support needed for teacher-educators’ adoption of Teacher Moments to innovate their pedagogy through authoring, implementing, and researching equity-focused simulations in K-12 CS teacher education.

Theoretical framework: We examine teacher-educators’ technology adoption of Teacher Moments by considering two aspects: 1) help-seeking, because technology can only effectively facilitate learning if teacher-educators are confident in their understanding of the complete process (Ertmer & Ottenbreit-Leftwich, 2010); and 2) technology concerns, because a Concerns Based Adoption Model (CBAM) suggests concerns help to evaluate technology adoption (Hord et al., 2006).

Methods: Twelve teacher-educators participated in a two-day workshop on authoring simulations using Teacher Moments in October of 2019, followed by nine monthly virtual meetings. In the second meeting, nine participants attended and discussed a video of the first participant implementing Teacher Moments in their classroom, after which they completed a survey. We used thematic analysis on survey responses (Braun & Clarke, 2006), calculating agreement of nominal categories for three raters with Fleiss’ Kappa (Zapf et al., 2016) using the irr package (Gamer et al., 2019) in R (R Core Team, 2018).

Data sources: For each of the three stages of authoring, implementing, and researching, the survey asked participants 1) if they required support (yes/no) as a measure of help-seeking, and 2) if Teacher Moments could benefit from additional supports (yes/no) as a measure of concerns. Answers of “yes” resulted in a follow-up prompt of “If Yes, then explain.”

Results: Of the nine teacher-educators at the second virtual meeting who responded to the survey, four said they would seek help during authoring, three during implementation, and eight during research. Conversely, they had more technology concerns around authoring (five) and implementation (five) than they did for researching (three). Fleiss' kappa showed excellent agreement between three raters (κ=.94, p < .0001) categorizing these 28 responses into seven themes. The three themes of peer-feedback, facilitation, and unsure: 1) spanned at least two of the phases of authoring, implementing, and researching; and 2) were mentioned in both help-seeking and technology concerns (see Table 1).

In terms of peer-feedback, participants expressed a desire to bounce ideas off one another throughout the process of authoring, implementing, and researching. The theme of unsure represented responses where participants thought they would seek help or expressed concerns about the technology but could not specifically state what help they needed or concerns they had. When talking about facilitation, online facilitation was specifically mentioned as something for which they needed help and had concerns.

Scientific significance: Fostering collaboration between teacher-educators on facilitation and navigating uncertainty appears critical when supporting teacher-educators’ adoption of innovative pedagogies such as using Teacher Moments to author, implement, and research authentic equity focused educational simulations.

Authors

• Garron Hillaire, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• Laura Larke

• Alison Fang

• Justin Fire Reich, Massachusetts Institute of Technology