1. Introduction
Identifying the value of technology in schools has challenged educational researchers for more than 20 years. Part of the problem is our evolving understanding of how technology accentuates student learning. Rapid changes in the technology itself also hamper research. Finally, the inter-twining of complex variables in such a rich environment as a school precludes the pure isolation necessary to determine cause and effect.
Over the past decade, many articles have appeared in popular and educational journals pro-viding anecdotal evidence of changes that educational technology can make in schools. Even though other empirical articles have provided quantitative and qualitative evidence of these changes, most schools rarely base their technology decisions on specific published research find-ings. Instead, school leaders often start by thinking about the intended results that technology should provide within their school environment. Next, these leaders take certain actions regarding the attainment, allocation, use, and support of technology. Consequently, this study was framed to consider the question ‘‘What actions can school personnel take that most effectively lead to their desired results regarding the integration of technology in schools?’’
We considered seven factors (planning, leadership, curriculum alignment, professional devel-opment, technology use, teacher openness to change, and teacher non-school computer use) and five outcomes in the areas of teacher skill (level of teacher technology competency and technology integration), teacher morale, and perceived student learning (impact on content acquisition and impact on higher order thinking skills). While there undoubtedly are a large number of possible variables that may affect the complexity of technology integration within the schools, we limited our factors to those that were most supported in the literature while including both teacher-related and school-related factors. Data was collected through structured interviews with teachers and administrators, teacher surveys, and examination of school technology use plans. In the next sections, we discuss the previous research and literature that led us to define the seven factors and five outcomes used in our study. We begin with the seven independent variables.