SLATE Guest Lecture

Merike Saar

June 29, 2022

11:00 - 12:00

SLATE, Christesgate 13, 3rd floor

Teachers’ technology use, decision-making process and concerns in data-informed teacher inquiries

Data-informed teacher inquiry into their own practices should help teachers pick the most effective teaching methods for each particular group of students and teaching situation. However, there is not much research into the thought processes that teachers employ when making these decisions. This study is an attempt at finding out how data about teaching and learning from physical classrooms, collected with digital tools, could help teachers in adjusting their teaching methods and strategies to improve practice. The study explores how 12 Estonian teachers perceive their own technology use and teacher inquiry (TI) practices, and how much this corresponds to reality. Also, how data-analysis skills satisfy their actual needs and what problems they encounter within a technology-enhanced TI process. Survey data and TI diaries are analyzed using descriptive statistics and qualitative content analysis, and the teachers’ perceived knowledge of technology and teacher inquiry is compared to their actual application of these in 18 interventions. In addition, thematic analysis is applied to TI diary entries about teachers’ sense-making and interpretation of the collected data to provide insights into teachers’ decision-making processes, which would enable improvements to teacher inquiry models and further inform the development of different teaching and learning analytics (TLA) tools. Finally, teachers’ concerns connected with TI facilitation are calculated to identify how these relate to their actual application of TI. Research questions defined for the study:


1) To what extent do teachers’ perceptions of their pedagogical, technological and TI skills correspond to their use of technology in the process of TI?
2) How do teachers make sense of and interpret the data collected during TI?
3) How do teachers’ implementation of TI relate to their concern levels about TI?

Bio

Merike Saar is an English teacher in Tallinn, Estonia and a PhD student at Tallinn University in the area of learning analytics.

‍Visiting Address:

Christiesgate 12, 2nd floor

Postal Address:

University of Bergen
PO Box 7807
N-5020 Bergen, Norway