In this review, a synthesis of studies related to the use of digital technology was conducted to illustrate the factors affecting technology integration and to develop the definition of a digitally competent teacher. As of august 2016, the keywords “ICT”, “primary teacher” and “technology integration” were searched in three electronic databases: springer link, jstor and ebscohost since these are three of the most common academic databases (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/list_of_academic_databases_and_search_engines) which researchers use and were chosen to provide an over-view of the focus concerning teachers’ use of digital technology presented in this article. In total, the search generated 947 studies, the abstract, introduction and conclusion of each article were read. After eliminating duplicate studies, a total of 409 studies remained. The inclusion criteria for selecting the studies for this analysis were that (a) the subjects were pre-service or in-service teachers, (b) research included primary education, (c) it was an empirical research and (d) it was published in a peer-reviewed journal. After this procedure, 27 studies were selected as shown in Table 1, which served as the source of data for our analysis presented in this article.
Table 1 The selected studies on primary teacher’s use of digital technology (n = 27) Findings
The review covered studies at primary school level, and included three methodologies; quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods. The percentage of quantitative studies was 40.8% where information was sourced from surveys. 37.0% were qualitative studies where data was collected from online communication, classroom observations, project based and inquiry learning activities, teachers’ reflections and evaluation on activities, interviews, one-to-one discussion meetings, focus groups and informal conversations. The mixed methods studies accounted for 22.2%. After reading the articles, a concept map was developed (Fig. 1) to categorize the factors which affect primary teachers’ use of digital technology.
A total of four main areas were identified including the school culture, teachers’ knowledge, attitude and skills. Descriptions of the results found in the studies, characteristics and classification are shown in Table 2.
Table 2 The classification of studies according to the affecting factors School Culture
Teachers’ knowledge, attitudes and skills were both influenced by and influenced the school culture, since there was a reciprocal relationship between the school culture and the teacher. A school culture empowering quality teacher training allowed primary teachers to work collaboratively, reflect on the process and share the new knowledge (Hsu and Kuan 2013; Tondeur et al. 2016). It was suggested that in primary schools such learning opportunities must be provided for the teachers (Getenet et al. 2016). Working on local projects with digital technology, contributed towards teachers’ training and innovation (Tondeur et al. 2016) especially when adequate resources were available and feedback was provided during workshops on lesson design and teacher instruction (Getenet et al. 2016).
Furthermore, the school culture effected the teachers’ attitudes towards technology integration (Apeanti 2016). When the teachers were respected and valued for their work, they were motivated to use technology more often (Tondeur et al. 2016). Findings indicated that for a supportive school culture in primary education, digitally competent leaders, technical help and encouragement were required to integrate technology (Kim and Keller 2011; Omwenga and Nyabero 2016; Tezci 2011). Hsu and kuan (2013) found that the amount of time allocated to training and the teachers’ perceived support from the school, were the two most influential factors to technology integration. Further, when teachers collaborated and shared their projects more ideas were developed (Tondeur et al. 2016).
Teachers’ Knowledge
In the category of teachers’ knowledge, various areas such as teachers’ knowledge on themselves, on the students and on technology itself were identified. Teachers’ knowledge was related to what, how and why technology was used.
Knowledge on how to integrate technology in the classroom was reported by various researchers (Gu et al. 2013; Mishra and Koehler 2006; Orlando and Attard 2016). It was not enough to provide primary teachers with new technological tools; they also needed to know how to use them and the strategies for teaching purpose to meet the various needs of the students. For example, during digital story telling students were given the opportunity to safely share their stories, when using different digital approaches to express themselves (Duveskog et al. 2012).
Gu et al. (2013) found that there were differences between how teachers and students used technology and how they perceived its importance. Consequently, this knowledge could help teachers prepare more motivating lessons with adequate resources, considering also the affordances of multimodal activity that could be beneficial in reaching the digitally native students (Lenters and Winters 2013; Wake and Whittingham 2013). Besides, the new generation of teachers are themselves the digital natives, and could better understand and communicate with these students (Orlando and Attard 2016).
Mishra and Koehler (2006) further illustrated the teachers’ knowledge on the use of technology for the teaching purpose, in the technological, pedagogical and content knowledge (TPACK) framework, where effective technology integration occurs at the intersection area, of teachers’ technology knowledge (TK), pedagogy knowledge (PK) and content knowledge (CK). TPACK was not about developing expertise in individual technologies, but rather a mind set to help teachers plan effective technology integration, within the areas of technology, pedagogy and content (Dalton 2012). Research differentiated between knowledge on traditional curricula and curricula with technology; the latter were more complex and varied, and allowed for innovation in the subject content presented in the classroom (Aesaert et al. 2013).
It was found that one of the important factors to integrate technology was the teachers’ readiness to use it, when novice teachers experienced higher readiness than veterans (Inan and Lowther 2010). However, the use of technology was not influenced by the teachers’ age but by the number of years in service, where teachers with less than five years teaching experience, used technology less than those with longer service (Gu et al. 2013).
Teachers’ Attitude
Teachers’ attitudes toward the use of digital technology, in primary education were found to be related to teachers’ confidence, beliefs and self-efficacy, and with a significant relation to school culture.
Studies indicated that initially elementary teachers did not feel confident when teaching with technology and that their self-efficacy beliefs improved with time, when they observed and worked with their colleagues (Al-awidi and Alghazo 2012; Wake and Whittingham 2013). Technology was looked upon as a tool to help teachers deliver a better lesson, but with experience, it was considered for the educational development of the students (Wake and Whittingham 2013). Further training preservice teachers with explicit instructions, fostered positive changes in their beliefs and behaviours towards technology integration (Rehmat and Bailey 2014). Research on pre-service teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs could give insight on their confidence to integrate technology and allow for better pre-service teacher training (Lemon and Garvis 2016) while on the other hand effective technology training could contribute towards developing teachers’ positive attitudes and perceptions (Apeanti 2016). It was noted that novice primary teachers experienced device conflict since they were still learning how to use technology in their teaching practice (Orlando and Attard 2016) which indicated that they were not experts in technology integration (Wake and Whittingham 2013).
In a study conducted between two pre-service teachers’ cohorts in 2006 and 2012, barak (2014) found that teachers’ aptitudes towards the use of technology changed. In the first cohort, teachers depicted digital technologies as inefficient tools that weakened the teachers’ authority and brought about distractions in the classroom. On the other hand, the second teachers’ cohort indicated that digital technologies were beneficial to exploit teaching and learning experiences (Barak 2014). Consequently, in a recent study, primary school teachers showed great enthusiasm when using blogs to teach a foreign language (Al-Qallaf and Al-Mutairi 2016). It was observed that students were more motivated, worked independently and wrote longer sentences with fewer spelling and grammar mistakes (Al-Qallaf and Al-Mutairi 2016).
Generally, teachers’ attitudes and confidence in using technology did not depend only on its availability, as confident teachers exploited what technology was available for the benefits of the students (Wastiau et al. 2013). Teachers’ confidence and belief that technology was important for students’ learning were the main factors, which contributed towards technology integration, and also affected the students’ confidence to use it (Al-awidi and Alghazo 2012; Wastiau et al. 2013). However, Tezci (2011) concluded that having a computer and access to the internet were perceived by the teachers as influencing factors in enhancing the school culture towards technology integration.
Teachers’ Skills
Primary school teachers’ skills were mainly related to information management and visual literacy, to enhance their teaching practices. It was argued that teachers must consider multimodal activity for reading and writing activity (Wake and Whittingham 2013).
When using technology with fifth-grade students, teachers lacked the visual literacy (Wang et al. 2011) and the skill to choose the best information provided on the internet (Al-Qallaf and Al-Mutairi 2016). This was also evident after inquiring on sixth graders’ use of blogs, ms power point (ppt) and the internet; it was also found that students lacked the skills to assess information, take notes and synthesize the information (Al-qallaf and Al-mutairi 2016; Wang et al. 2011). Furthermore, in chile, Brun (2014) found that teachers only used a few digital resources mostly projectors and computers, where the ‘traditional’ teaching and learning methods were applied. Sun et al. (2014) stated that the way teachers interacted with the students, when giving instructions and asking questions with technology, influenced the students’ understanding of new concepts and encouraged more collaborative inquiry. It was suggested that in order to move away from the traditional ways of teaching and learning, teachers must apply inquiry activities, such as project based learning and problem based learning, which are more child-centred and constructivist in their approach (Tondeur et al. 2016).
The integration of technology challenged the teachers’ traditional methods of teaching and developed new skills such as applying the constructivist approach to teaching, learning, and orchestration, where the teacher fulfilled various roles and systematically organised different activities with technology, depending on students’ needs (Wake and Whittingham 2013). Nevertheless, teaching methods were noted to be evolving rather than in revolution with traditional teaching methods and depended on the type of digital technology being used (Orlando and Attard 2016). At primary level a distinction was noted between fixed and mobile technology, such as the interactive whiteboard (IWB) and ipads, where the former could be used with traditional ways of teaching, but the latter, due to their mobility required different classroom management and changes in teachers’ and students’ roles (Orlando and Attard 2016). Further, Anastasiades and Vitalaki (2011) found that teachers who daily-integrated digital technology in their practices found it easier to promote safety issues related to the internet by discussing the topic with the students.