Investing Time in Technology: Teachers’ Value Beliefs and Time Cost Profiles for Classroom Technology Integration

Abstract

Background

Teachers’ value beliefs toward technology are important factors influencing their technology integration practices. Despite the complexity of value beliefs, past research in this area has tended to treat value beliefs as one monolithic factor. More work is needed to identify groups of teachers with different value belief patterns and how these groups of teachers use technology in the classroom. This understanding would help inform intervention strategies that can shift teachers’ value beliefs and technology use in specific and purposeful ways.

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to examine naturally occurring profiles comprising of teachers’ positive value beliefs and time cost perception toward technology integration, and how value belief profiles are linked to teachers’ classroom technology use.

Participants

The sample for this study consisted of 648 high school teachers teaching a variety of content domains from 16 schools in a Midwestern state in the United States.

Research Design

The study featured a nonexperimental survey research design.

Data Collection and Analysis

Teachers at participating schools were invited to take an online survey during the spring of the 2016–2017 academic year. We employed a person-centered, latent profile analysis of different types of value beliefs, including intrinsic value, attainment value, utility value, and time cost perception. We then used hierarchical linear modeling to test the ways in which value profile membership was linked to how teachers used technology in the classroom.

Findings

Results from latent profile analysis showed overall corresponding patterns of intrinsic, utility, and attainment value. On the other hand, perceived time cost was found to play an important role in differentiating profile groups. Two profiles of teachers had high positive value beliefs but differed in terms of their time cost perceptions. Importantly, technology value profile membership was shown to be salient in predicting how much teachers used technology for more central, high-impact tasks in the classroom, such as use of digital content and use of technology for differentiation and assessment purposes.

Conclusions

Our results suggest that teacher education and professional development programs should target shifting teachers to increasingly more adaptive value belief profiles. The present study further contributes to this effort by describing the typology of teachers’ value beliefs that can be used to inform specific intervention strategies. Such programs are needed because teachers’ value beliefs are central predictors of how they use technology, especially for instructional tasks that may matter most for improving student outcomes.