Conceptualising Welsh Secondary School Teachers’ Pedagogic Use of Technology: A Case Study

The educational landscape in Wales in relation to digital technology is changing. Playing catch up with the wider sector across the globe, recent Welsh curriculum reform has placed a significant emphasis on developing learners' digital skills across all areas of the curriculum (Welsh Government, 2018). The launch of Curriculum for Wales (Welsh Government, 2015a) and more specifically, the Digital Competence Framework (Welsh Government, 2018) has seen the introduction of digital competence as a cross-curriculum responsibility (Crick, 2021). Inevitably, these changes require teachers across Wales to update and adapt their teaching practices with technology. The COVID-19 pandemic provides an additional dimension relevant to the context of this research. Curriculum reform in Wales and the aftermath of a global pandemic has left teachers “at a crossroads” (Jones and Kessler, 2020, p.1) whereby they are responding to an evolving curriculum and sector.

This longitudinal study adopted a Design-Based Research approach which involved working with practitioners in the field for an extended period. A rigorous combination of data collection methods were used throughout the study including a survey, semi-structured interviews and a series of action learning workshops. An initial survey with secondary school teachers across Wales captured a diverse range of voices and offered a ‘wide angle lens’ on the research topic (Toerien and Wilkinson, 2004). Following the survey, several semi-structured interviews and action learning workshops were conducted with teachers working at a single case school. Throughout interviews and workshops, various data collection tools were used to elicit participant views, including open-ended questions and cultural probes (Gaver, 1999). The rigorous combination of data collection methods and tools used in this study offered a novel way of collecting data which generated rich, detailed descriptions of participants' lived experiences. As a result of reflexive thematic analysis of the data, eleven themes were developed: landscape, attitudes and beliefs, reliable infrastructure, supportive management, continuing professional development, knowledge and skills, confidence, creativity, careful planning, sharing good practice and collaborative networks. These key themes informed the development of the ‘Pedagogic Use of Technology Process’ conceptual model.

The most significant contribution of this research is the developed conceptual model which demonstrates the ‘Pedagogic Use of Technology Process’. The model conceptualises Welsh secondary school teachers’ pedagogic use of technology in their teaching, including the stages and overall process to achieve this.