Abstract :
[en] The educational technology support team of the city of Luxembourg deployed 60 iPads, in a pilot phase during the school year 2014-2015, in around 120 Kindergarten classes. In order to assess whether this deployment was well received by teachers and whether it was worth extending it, we did an exploratory survey study that asked Kindergarten teachers about their reactions to the provided iPads. Moreover, we wanted to contribute to the existing body of research on enabling and hindering factors for the integration of ICT in education (Ertmer, 2005; Pelgrum, 2011).
We did send out an email to about 210 Kindergarten teachers inviting them to participate in our study and answer various questions about their use or not of the provided iPads. A mix of open and closed questions were used.
We first asked them whether they had used the iPads or not and depending on their answers they received a slightly different version of our survey. Both groups of respondents were asked to answer some questions not directly linked to the use of iPads in education: their gender, their age, the length of their work experience, how many children they have in their class, how competent they feel with using digital tools, what digital tools they use privately and for what purposes they use them, what digital tools (other than iPads) they use in their classes and for what purposes they use them, what they consider to be good teaching in Kindergarten.
Those who said they had indeed used the iPads were then asked how they had prepared themselves before using the iPads in class, why and for what purposes and for which learning & teaching activities they had used them (Leclercq & Poumay 2005), what they had expected from their use, what problems, issues and challenges they had faced, if they would want to use them more / differently in the future, what they would need to wore more / better with iPads and whether they would be willing to offer professional development sessions to other teachers.
Those who said they did not use the provided iPads were asked why they did not use the iPads, if they had thought about the use of iPads in education, if they had heard about it from colleagues, under which conditions they might consider to use them, how they would prepare themselves in case they would plan to use iPads in their class, if they wanted to visit colleagues and observe how they use them, for what purposes and activities they might want to use them, how they would use them, and what effects they would expect the iPads to have on their pupils and on their teaching.
Overall, 91 teachers filled out the survey, 63 claiming they had (at least once) used the provided iPads in their class and 28 saying they never used them.
Results will be presented at the conference and discussed in terms of teacher believes about the usefulness of tablets and digital technologies (Tondeur, Hermans, van Braak & Valcke, 2008), and more specifically how first-order and second-order barriers impact Kindergarten teachers decisions to integrate mobile ICT in their classrooms, or not (Lui & Pange, 2015).
