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Tātai Aho Rau : Pushing the boundaries of educational possibility
Evaluations of Information Communication Technology Professional Development (ICT PD) Programme
CORE Education was contracted to evaluate the Information and Communication Technology Professional Development (ICT PD) school clusters programmes between 1999 and 2009. The evaluation process for each cluster was carried out over a three-year period with a new intake of cluster schools annually. Teachers involved in the project took part in a series of surveys and gave feedback about their experiences. At the start of the programme teachers completed a baseline survey, determining their goals for ICT skill levels, confidence levels, frequency of the use of ICTs in teaching and learning, barriers to the use of ICTs in teaching and preferences of professional development activities. The survey was repeated at the mid-point of the project and again at the end of the three years. The three surveys determined what purposes ICTs are used for in teaching and learning and the overall effects of the programme and allowed a comparison to be made between the use of ICT in education at the start and at the end of the programme.
The common finding of the various studies is that the ICT PD programme had a significant effect on the teachers and students in cluster schools with respect to all of its key goals. There were very high levels of goal achievement reported by participants, and marked increases or changes with respect to all of the relevant Ministry’s objectives.
At the national level, the programme achieved its overall goals of:
- Significantly increasing teachers’ skills and confidence with ICTs
- Improving teachers’ understandings of the role of ICTs in teaching and learning
- Providing quality ICT-mediated learning experiences for students
The programme increased teachers’ ICT skills, confidence and understandings about ICTs, and significantly increased routine student use of a range of ICTs for learning. The programme achieved improvements in levels of participant satisfaction year on year, and achieved overall increases in skills, confidence, understanding and classroom/student usage of ICTs for learning. There were significant differences between teachers of different school sectors in their use of ICTs for most lesson related and other administrative purposes, with primary teachers reporting greater increases in such usage compared to secondary teachers. This difference may be largely explained by the generally higher levels of entry point usage amongst secondary teachers compared to primary teachers. Primary teachers were generally more focused on student acquisition of ICT skills as a benefit of ICT usage, compared to secondary teachers.
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