Teachers' Perceptions of IWB Use and Effectiveness

In Teachers' Belief and Use of Interactive Whiteboards for Teaching and Learning authors Yalın Kılıç Türel and Tristan E. Johnson surveyed teachers in Turkey who self-reported that they had “actively” used interactive whiteboards (IWBs) in their classroom(s) for at least six months to determine how they were using IWB technology, what training they had received, and their perceptions of their ability to integrate IWB technology into their teachers. 174 teachers who taught in grades six through twelve months were selected to take a survey which asked about their use of IWB, what training they had received on this technology and a utilizing a standard Likert scale were asked to rank from strong disagree to strongly agree on 26 items related to effectiveness. As mention in a previous blog post Turkey has embarked on a major initiative to better integrate information and communication technologies (ICT) into is public school classroom.  

Most of the teachers in the study had been using IWBs for from 1-3 years (67.8%). They also reported utilizing IWBs for more that 7 hours per week (61.5%) and with high frequency (frequently 42.5% or always 36.8%). When asked to report their competency with IWB’s in the classroom the teachers mainly classified themselves as a 3(39.1%) or 4(45.4%) on a five point scale with 5 being the highest ranking.  Based on these responses it seem clear that teachers felt fairly comfortable with IWB use and many are using them for a fair amount of instructional time. However another perspective on these finding is that the vast majority of the teachers surveyed were still fairly new to the technology (using it for less that three years 93.7%) and almost 38.5 % of teachers used it for seven or less hours of instructional time per week, in other words, very little each day.  

Survey participates were also asked to indicate how they used IWB technology and if this use was frequent or seldom. The most used feature was mouse function (103 out of 174 respondents) and the lowest use (33 respondents) utilized hyperlinks. There is little discussion in the article regarding these results. Is the lack of the use of hyperlinks and the Internet the result of poor connectivity? How could one explain that drag & drop was only utilized by 78 of the respondents, or drawing by 72?  Based on these results it appears that IWB technology is underutilized and calls into question teachers’ self assessment of their own competency with IWBs.

A third section addresses how teachers received training IWB technology. Multiple sources for training were reported: through vendors (65), their education institution (65), from fellow teachers (76) and a few were mainly self-taught (26); some received training from multiple sources. Two thirds of the teachers felt like they had had or did not need additional training while 1/3 reported that they needed additional training.Finally, the results from the Likert scale portion of the study showed strong support for the impact of IWB technology on managing instructional time, increasing the visual delivery of course material, improving student learning and teachers felt that learning how to use the IWB was important to them. Lower marks were found in increasing class discussion and the ability to include student use of the board in instruction; more than half of the teachers reported that their instruction had not changed since the introduction of this new technology. While it is possible that instruction could improve without changing, for example improved in efficiency, based on the limited IWB features that teachers are using and their report that instruction had not changed, it appears that the potential of IWB technology is not being realized in these classrooms. 

David Dunning is a social psychologist who has done research into people’s ability to assess their own competence, this effect, the Dunning-Kruger effect, is named after him and his colleague Justin Kruger of Cornell University. According to this research people who are inexpert are likely to overestimate their competence. This concept may apply to teachers in this study and teacher in general may be more than a little susceptible to this type of assessment error. Much of our teaching is done in isolation, with little opportunity to observe, collaborate and/or compare our skills to others in our profession. And although trends in education are attempting to provide more measurement and comparison of instructional effectiveness there are so many confounding variables that most metrics are easily disputable if not inherently flawed. Research into the use of IWB in classroom instruction is important, but unless this results in efforts to increase the effective use of technology it is purely academic. The teachers in this study believe they are doing a good job of integrating IWB teaching into their teaching, but based on their limited use they are not. Whether Turkey and other countries are willing and able to provide the professional development required to support more effective use of their expensive educational technology initiatives remains to be seen.