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In undertaking interviews with school management, teachers and students across the ten schools, and from early thematic analysis of the data, it emerged that three inter-linking sets of factors played an important role in shaping the level and nature of ICT integration within and across schools. For the purposes of this study, these three sets of factors or ‘pillars’ are labelled: Vision, Connectivity and Equipment. As shown in Table 3.3, these three pillars comprise important dimensions of ICT orientation and infrastructure in a school. In the case of Vision, for example, the orientation of school management, the role of ICT planning and the extent and nature of professional development for teachers and management are key dimensions. Schools vary in the extent and way in which they display each of these features. Despite this heterogeneity, these three attributes are central features of schools which appear to exhibit more ICT-based teaching and learning methods. The absence of any one of these pillars can hinder the overall effectiveness of the usage of ICT in the classroom. The research team considers the role of each of these themes in terms of the attitudes towards, and behaviours regarding, ICT usage at the school and classroom levels. This evaluation is based on the perspectives of school management, teachers and students in each case-study school. The next section describes in detail the characteristics outlined above, with evidence from the relevant literature where appropriate.

TABLE 3.3 Measures of School ICT Integration Vision

Management ICT Planning Professional Development

Connectivity Internet Connection

Internal Network Reliability

Equipment Hardware

Equipment Maintenance

3.5.1 Vision

Management

Literature highlights the important role that the school principal has in creating a vision for the direction of their school and in helping teachers to achieve the desired outcomes (Leithwood et al., 2008; Pelgrum and Law, 2003; Polizzi, 2011). The attitude of school leadership towards the use of ICT in school is very influential in fostering the culture of ICT at the local school level. Leadership in the school regarding ICT policies is typically provided by the principal, ICT co- ordinator or teachers who are interested in the ICT direction of the school. In the absence of school leadership providing a roadmap for future school ICT development, staff may not feel encouraged to adopt more ICT-based teaching methods. A lack of whole-school vision regarding ICT typically leads to a divide across classrooms, where only the teachers who wish to adopt ICT-based methods will do so.

ICT Planning

ICT planning by school management (typically principals and ICT co-ordinators) is an important aspect of the development of ICT adoption and infrastructure in a school over time. Given the funding and time constraints faced by schools, it is essential that any investment in ICT equipment, infrastructure or professional development is allocated as efficiently as possible in order to maximise the value. These decisions are made even more complex for management given the rapidly changing technologies in the ICT sector. It has become increasingly difficult to decide how to invest school resources when it is difficult to predict if this technology will continue to provide value in future years. A lack of ICT planning can result in suboptimal investments on equipment which may ultimately be detrimental to any expected increase in effective teaching and learning through ICT-based methods. Polizzi (2011) highlights how the principal is important to strategic planning at the school level and is therefore influential in the level of technology that is integrated into teaching.

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Professional Development

It has been noted above how school management plays an important role in ensuring that there is not a divide in the level of ICT use being adopted within their school. One important aspect of this is the role of management in encouraging professional development. This is important as, in any given school, there is typically a broad range in the age of teachers. It is natural to expect that different teachers, especially from different generations, have their own preferred way of teaching. For example, younger teachers who completed college with the use of a laptop could be more comfortable using this technology in a classroom setting, while a teacher who is not so familiar with using this equipment might be less inclined to do so. International research (Enyedy, 2014; Balanskat et al., 2006) examines the role of school management in providing professional development opportunities to teachers in addition to new technological infrastructure. Professional development opportunities would achieve two objectives: showing teachers innovative uses of technology in the classroom which they might not have previously been aware of and also helping teachers to become more comfortable with technology. If teachers become more comfortable with ICT, technology has an opportunity to be embedded effectively into classrooms by teachers who wish to do so.

3.5.2 Connectivity

Internet Connection

Effective ICT integration in school relies on an adequate internet connection. The majority of teachers who were interviewed consider a reliable internet connection to be important for the use of ICT-based teaching purposes. The limited time that a teacher has to conduct a class requires a reliable, seamless internet connection if technology is to be used in the class. Issues with the speed or quality of an internet connection will lead to frustration as online content cannot be accessed easily. The DCENR Schools 100Mbps Project aims to provide a high-quality internet connection to the school building which will remove one of the major barriers to more ICT-based teaching and learning in classrooms.

Internal Network Reliability

In addition to a suitable internet connection being vital to school connectivity, an equally important issue is how that connection is reliably delivered to each classroom. Although the DCENR project delivered an internet connection to the school, it is often the case that a high-quality connection is not available in every classroom. An unreliable network can be caused by a variety of reasons, such as out-of-date networking equipment (routers or LAN cable) or the walls of a school building being too thick for signal to travel effectively. This poses issues for

teachers who move between rooms, as they must factor in the condition of the classroom when preparing their lessons. Underwood et al. (2005) state that the quality of educational experiences is enhanced by embedded, reliable and high capacity broadband in the classroom. This implies that broadband must be reliable throughout the entire school building in order to benefit all students and not act as a disincentive for teachers who use rooms with poor connectivity.

3.5.3 Equipment

Hardware

ICT equipment should be suitable for a teacher to use it seamlessly during class, without the need for a complicated setup. The type of ICT equipment can vary across and within schools. Some rooms might rely on interactive whiteboards (IWB), others on a computer and projector, or a spectrum of other alternatives. Regardless of the type of technology being used in a classroom, it needs to be fit for the purpose of teachers to facilitate and encourage ICT-based teaching material. Research has found that teachers face a range of school-level barriers which limited the extent to which ICT could be adopted in their teaching (Bingimlas, 2009).

Maintenance

Another aspect of having suitable equipment is the issue of maintaining the current equipment that is in the school. Equipment like computers and projectors tends to age quickly. Williams and Hatanaka (2005) conducted a survey of 1,000 houses in Japan and found that on average, a household computer is used for approximately three years. They are typically stored for another three years before being donated or recycled. For schools, it is important to get the most value from investments in equipment. It is very important to have ongoing maintenance to deal with issues of obsolescence such as ageing hardware or technical faults. In the absence of appropriate maintenance, machines become slower and turn from being a tool for aiding teaching and learning to becoming an impediment to ICT-based teaching methods.

Each of these ‘pillars’ of ICT integration rely on each other in order for ICT to work as well as envisioned. From an early stage of this research it became clear that different schools in the case study used different techniques in achieving their ICT goals. This speaks to the unique nature of schools and the decisions made by leadership at the school level. When classifying our theoretical sample we award schools a discrete rating from 0-2 in each category. The higher the rating, the better that particular school was considered to fulfil the criteria in the categories outlined above.

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TABLE 3.4 ICT Integration Rating Scale

Cumulative Score Ranking Schools in category

0-3 Low 3

4-5 Medium 4

6 High 3

Source: Analysis of interview data.

It is possible for two schools to obtain the same rating in a category although they achieve it by different methods. The method of ranking schools is outlined in Table 3.4. The lowest possible score is 0 and the highest total score is 6. Case- study schools are grouped into categories of ‘Low’ ‘Medium’ or ‘High’ ICT readiness. For confidentiality reasons, our selected schools have been given pseudonyms, which are applied throughout this report. Figure 3.1 provides a visual profile of how each school performed in terms of Vision, Equipment and Connectivity.

FIGURE 3.1 Case-Study School ICT Integration Rating

Source: Analysis of interview data.