Summary, Findings, Implications, and Recommendations
To understand the rate and level of instructional technology incorporation into the teaching and learning process, the beliefs that a faculty member holds toward the construct of teaching must be the first factor examined. The second consideration must be whether instructional technology fits into the intrinsic belief system of an individual faculty member. Only after this examination will it be possible for administrators and technology personnel to adequately address and resolve extrinsic barriers.
Purpose of the Study
The purpose of this study was to explore how intrinsic fundamental beliefs about teaching, the notion of who a person is as a teacher, not extrinsic resource-based barriers, may influence faculty instructional technology incorporation.
Research Question
How does the way faculty members perceive themselves, meaning their beliefs about themselves as teachers, influence incorporation of instructional technology?
Research Methodology
This research was a multi-method study (Schutz et al., 2004) incorporating data gathered from two quantitative instruments with those gathered from a phenomenological-based qualitative instrument. The focus of a phenomenological study is an understanding of a concept or phenomenon. Understanding underlying teacher beliefs and how these beliefs relate to technology use and incorporation is well suited to phenomenological methodology. To achieve this understanding, the lived experiences of the subjects in terms of that phenomenon (Creswell, 1998) must be examined. Creswell goes on to explain that the important aspect of a phenomenological study is to describe meaning developed by a small number of individuals who have experienced the phenomenon. In the case of this study, thirty faculty members looked at the phenomena of their own teaching beliefs, teaching methods, and use of instructional technology.
Teaching Style and Instructional Technology Use
The expectation of this study was that those faculty who are more instructionist would be less inclined to incorporate instructional technology into their teaching. Conversely, those faculty who were more constructionist would be more inclined to incorporate instructional technology. Instructionist and constructionist styles were measured through the Grasha-Reichmann Teaching Style Inventory. Those faculty who scored highest as an Expert, Formal Authority, or Personal Model are classified as instructionist teachers, while those who scored the highest as a Facilitator or Delegator are classified as constructionist. Based on the above expectation, Group A should have contained the largest number of constructionist teachers, with Group B having a roughly equal number of constructionist and instructionist, and Group C having the smallest number of constructionists, but the largest number of instructionists (see Table 7). Although Group A had a slightly higher percentage of constructionists, this difference does not indicate a pattern, and essentially the same ratio of constructionists to instructionists is found across groups.
These data were then analyzed with the Kruskal-Wallis Test for Independent Samples (see Table 6). The results of this analysis clearly indicate there was no statistical significance and therefore the expectation of this study is not supported. The results do support Grasha's (1996) research that the Expert style is prevalent in higher education and is essentially found in every faculty member to some degree. The results of this study found the Expert style to be the least exclusive to grouping based on instructional technology use.