Lutheran school teachers’ instructional usage of the interactive whiteboard

The purpose of this mixed methods study was twofold. First, the study
assessed whether Davis’ (1989) Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) was
useful in predicting instructional usage of the interactive whiteboard (IWB), as
reported by K-8 teachers. Second, the study set out to understand what
motivated those teachers to use the IWB for classroom instruction, and to further
describe the ways in which they used them. Through surveying 155 teachers
and 40 administrators of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS) schools,
the researcher used multiple regression and moderator analyses to examine
whether the TAM model helped explain teachers’ reported teacher-centered and
student-centered instructional IWB usage. The researcher followed this by oneon-
one interviews with 5 of the teachers surveyed. With the data gathered from
the interviews and open-ended items from the original surveys, an analysis using qualitative methods was performed. The results from the qualitative analysis
were then used to help refine and explain the quantitative findings.
The results of the study’s quantitative phase indicated two variables
adapted from the TAM, teachers’ perceived usefulness and perceived ease of
use of the IWB, contributed to the prediction of teacher-centered instructional
usage of the device. Further it was found that the perceived usefulness variable
contributed to the prediction of student-centered instructional usage. Moderator
analysis indicated the variable for teachers’ IWB technological pedagogical
content knowledge, adapted from Mishra and Koehler’s (2006) technological
pedagogical content knowledge framework, moderated the relationships between
the variable perceived ease of use of the IWB and teacher and student-centered
instructional usage respectively, as well as between the variable perceived
usefulness of the IWB and teacher-centered instructional usage.
The qualitative phase results revealed those teachers surveyed used their IWBs
in a variety of ways for both teacher-centered and student-centered instruction.
Teachers frequently reported they were motivated to use the device by its overall
user-friendliness and its utility as an instructional tool. Central to the teachers’
discussion of its utility were ways in which the tool positively impacted the
students during instruction. Specifically how it engaged students by attracting
their attention, keeping them focused, and offering them a better way to learn.