Abstract:

This study unpacks the cultural conceptions held by four primary school teachers regarding childhood. It explores how these influence the participants’ technology integration and learning design. This study departs from the knowledge that teachers’ pedagogical beliefs influence their technology use in teaching and learning. It extends the knowledge by exploring teachers’ conceptions of childhood as an additional influence on integration. The data, drawn from questionnaires and semi-structured interviews, were unpacked using phenomenological analysis and discussed through the resulting outcome space. The findings suggest that where teachers hold a medical model of childhood, their pedagogy tends towards teacher-controlled technology and where teachers’ hold a social model, pedagogy tends towards learner-autonomy and learner-controlled technology. As learner autonomy and the resulting digital skills are the aim of integration, interventions to facilitate integration should therefore include long term professional development to make visible the cultural biases underpinning deficit models of childhood and to facilitate the adoption of empowering models and pedagogies. This study is relevant to teachers, teacher mentors and school leaders in the compulsory education sector and in initial teacher training and teacher development. Recommendations are provided for unpacking and overcoming teachers’ cultural biases and for professional
development.

Keywords:

Childhood, teacher beliefs, technology integration, learning design, pedagogy.