Agency, Ideology, and Information/Communication Technology: English Language Instructor use of Instructional Technology at a South Korean College
Open Access
- Author:
- Sherman, Brandon James
- Graduate Program:
- Curriculum and Instruction
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- September 29, 2016
- Committee Members:
- Mari Haneda, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Mari Haneda, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Patrick Willard Shannon, Committee Member
Jamie Myers, Committee Member
Meredith Christine Doran, Outside Member - Keywords:
- Educational technology
English as a Foreign Language
Teacher Agency
Case Study - Abstract:
- The objective of this study was to investigate the ways that instructors think about classroom technology and how this might relate to their classroom use of it. This qualitative case study explores the relationship between instructors and classroom information/communication technology (ICT). Specifically, this study followed three native English-speaking English Language instructors at a South Korean vocational college over the course of a semester. Through a variety of data collection methods, many different aspects of the participants’ relationships with instructional ICT were explored. This study focused on participants’ espoused ideas and beliefs about what ICT was, how it was meant to be used, and what it could accomplish in a classroom setting. In addition to interviews, instructors’ actual technology usage was explored through classroom observations. The findings strongly suggest that instructors’ relationships to instructional ICT are differentiated individually by a number of factors, such as an instructor’s history of learning and teaching with ICT, their understanding of what it is, and what it can and cannot do. By exploring these individual instructors’ perspectives and their use of ICTs in their classrooms, this study makes a case that the educational impact and benefit of ICT should be understood as a result of relationships between instructors and technology, or in broader terms, relationships between humans and machines. Furthermore, it was found that instructors’ relationships with instructional technology can be understood in terms of their ability to reshape it and apply it in innovative ways to accomplish their pedagogical goals. To aid in this understanding, the findings are used to posit, develop, and refine two theoretical constructs, technological agency and ideologies of technology. These are offered as conceptual lenses through which to view one particular aspect of a instructor’s relationship to technology, that of reinterpretation of technological artifacts through the discovery of new affordances. By casting the instructor as the interpreter and employer of educational technology, and the true key to its success, this dissertation stands as a response to deterministic and/or essentialist notions of technology in classrooms.