EARLI Conference - Munich 2013 Symposium: Educational technology acceptance- Explaining non-significant intention-behavior effects Full paper title: An e-maturity analysis explains intention-behavior disjunctions in technology adoption in UK schools Abstract This paper addresses the problem of non-significant intention-behavior effects in educational technology adoption, based on a reanalysis of data from the Impact09 project, a UK-government funded evaluation of technology use in high schools in England that had been selected as representing outstanding Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) innovation. The reanalysis focuses on intentionality and teleology, and attempts to combine an ecological perspective with a critical analysis of the intention-behavior correlations among participants, particularly teachers and head teachers. The concept of self-regulation is also considered as a determinant of behavior. The study reports a qualitative analysis of extensive interview data from four schools, and makes use of Underwood’s concept of ‘linkage e-maturity’. Traditional models of technology acceptance often assumed a steady trajectory of innovation, but such studies failed to explain uneven patterns of adoption. In this reanalysis, an emphasis on learning practices and e-maturity, interpreted within local and system-wide ecological contexts, better explained uneven adoption patterns. Presentation by Colin Harrison, Carmen Tomás, Charles Crook

1. SIG: Learning and Instruction with Computers
Symposium: Educational technology acceptance-
Explaining non-significant intention-behavior effects
An e-maturity analysis explains
intention-behavior disjunctions in
technology adoption in UK schools
Colin Harrison 1
Carmen Tomás 2
Charles Crook 1
1
Learning Sciences Research Institute, University of Nottingham
2
Nottingham Trent University

2. 1. Presents a reanalysis of the Becta Impact09 project * results
2. An ecological perspective leads to deeper understanding of
technology adoption
3. Underwood’s ‘linkage’ e-maturity model provides additional granularity
on adoption
4. Conflicting intentionality vectors are shown to create barriers to
change
5. Bagozzi’s ideas on self-regulation explain some intention-behavior
discrepancies.
* Crook, C., Harrison, C, Farrington-Flint, L., Tomás, C. & Underwood, J. (2010).
The impact of technology: Value-added classroom practice. Final Report. Coventry:
Becta.
Key points:
Harrison, Tomás and Crook - Intention-behavior disjunctions in technology adoption

3.  ICT and learning: “explanatory case studies”
 How is ICT impacting learning?
 Approach emphasizes:
 Ecology of learning
 Alternative representations of ICT for learning
 Nine schools, each a national leader in ICT innovation:
 ICT across the curriculum
 personal computing
 learning platform/VLE
 3-Phase data collection:
 PHASE I Deep audit of school and teacher recruitment [n=60 interviews]
 PHASE II Detailed teacher logs of individual lessons [n=85]
 PHASE III Interviews with teachers who submitted teacher logs to contrast representations of
their own teaching with those of two others [n=45]
1. The Impact 09 project
Harrison, Tomás and Crook - Intention-behavior disjunctions in technology adoption

4. 2. An ecological perspective on how the
technological and pedagogical knowledge of
teachers is changing the nature of learning
Updates to the learner model:
- The learning environment; scaffolding
- Freedom to initiate/select topics
- Freedom to choose learning goals
- Freedom to choose learning pathways
- Freedom to select resources
Updates to the pedagogical model:
- Freedom to regulate learning:
- When?
- How?
- With whom?
- For how long?
Updates to the feedback model:
- Monitoring models
- Volition models
- Motivation models
- Evaluation models
- Assessment models
Harrison, Tomás and Crook - Intention-behavior disjunctions in technology adoption

5. 3. What is the anticipated ‘end-state’ of adoption?
Underwood’s ‘linkage’ e-maturity model
provides additional granularity
• An ecological model captures some of the complexity of
learning models, but does not necessarily provide data
on causal factors
• Jean Underwood’s ‘e-maturity’ evaluations have explored
the learner, teacher and system-level factors that impact
adoption at an institutional level.
• We were particularly interested in Underwood’s ‘linkage’
e-maturity, which focused on the extent to which there
was robust and system-wide institutional adoption of
technologies for learning that linked student, home and
school.
Harrison, Tomás and Crook - Intention-behavior disjunctions in technology adoption

6. 3. The need for a re-analysis:
Underwood’s ‘linkage’ e-maturity model
provides additional granularity on adoption
• Underwood’s ‘linkage’ e-maturity (Underwood, 2007)
Harrison, Tomás and Crook - Intention-behavior disjunctions in technology adoption

7. 3. The need for a re-analysis:
Underwood’s ‘linkage’ e-maturity model
provides additional granularity on adoption
• Underwood’s ‘linkage’ e-maturity (Underwood, 2007)
Harrison, Tomás and Crook - Intention-behavior disjunctions in technology adoption

8. 3. The need for a re-analysis:
Underwood’s ‘linkage’ e-maturity model
provides additional granularity on adoption
• Underwood’s ‘linkage’ e-maturity (Underwood, 2007)
Where did we find this level of
• linkage e-maturity?
What intention-behavior vectors
were associated with this
level of adoption?
Could conflicting intention-
behavior vectors explain
an absence of linkage e-
maturity?
Harrison, Tomás and Crook - Intention-behavior disjunctions in technology adoption

9. 3. The need for a re-analysis:
Underwood’s ‘linkage’ e-maturity model
provides additional granularity on adoption
Re-analysis of 35 hours of interview data from 4 schools:
 Lowmoor School: full linkage e-maturity
 Duke’s Wood School: teacher-level issues: uneven teacher buy-in
to adoption
 Birdsall School: teacher- and student-level issues: uneven teacher
and student engagement with technology
 Barleycroft School: system-level issues: adoption delayed by
incomplete infrastructure
Harrison, Tomás and Crook - Intention-behavior disjunctions in technology adoption

10. Full linkage e-maturity:
Lowmoor School
 An integrated system that brought together
learning, teaching and assessment for every
teacher and student across the school

sets student expectations

organizes student work

uploads resources linking to students’ timetables

monitors students’ progress

strong school-home links
Harrison, Tomás and Crook - Intention-behavior disjunctions in technology adoption

11. Harrison, Tomás and Crook - Intention-behavior disjunctions in technology adoption

12.  The scheme of work in Art for the term
 All the teacher’s lesson plans for the term
 All the resources to support each lesson
 Every upcoming homework
 Resources to support their homework
 Information on their progress in each subject
The students were able to see,
in class and from home:
Harrison, Tomás and Crook - Intention-behavior disjunctions in technology adoption

13. Updates to the learner model:
 “I hope you don’t mind… I’ve done the next three
pieces of homework that you’ve set and I’ve also
worked two or thee pages ahead. Is that alright?”
Harrison, Tomás and Crook - Intention-behavior disjunctions in technology adoption

14. 3. The need for a re-analysis:
Underwood’s ‘linkage’ e-maturity model
provides additional granularity on adoption
Underwood’s ‘linkage’ e-maturity (Underwood, 2007)
Where did we find this level of
• linkage e-maturity?
What intention-behavior
vectors
were associated with this
level of adoption?
Could conflicting intention-
behavior vectors explain
an absence of linkage e-
maturity?
Harrison, Tomás and Crook - Intention-behavior disjunctions in technology adoption

15. 4. Intentionality and adoption
Underwood’s ‘linkage’ e-maturity (Underwood, 2007)
Where did we find this level of
• linkage e-maturity?
What intention-behavior
vectors
were associated with this
level of adoption?
Could conflicting intention-
behavior vectors explain
an absence of linkage e-
maturity?
Harrison, Tomás and Crook - Intention-behavior disjunctions in technology adoption

16. 4. Intentionality and adoption
What intention-behavior vectors were associated with ICT
adoption?
Head teacher vision- coupled with determined policy: ‘ICT and learning,
interactive learning, [is] happening in every curriculum area, in every
classroom, in every lesson every day of the week, all the time.’ (Head
teacher, Lowmoor School)
A clear understanding of the need for anytime-anywhere learning: ‘If
the child doesn’t learn at half past two on a Thursday, for whatever reason,
they ought to have the facility to be able to revisit that lesson in their own time
and at their own pace’. (Head teacher, Lowmoor School)
 Emphasis on self-regulation: ‘You need to be a person who can allow
the power to sort of flow to the children … kids are … far more proficient in
finding their own information and sorting out how they want to learn’. (Head
teacher, Lowmoor School)
Harrison, Tomás and Crook - Intention-behavior disjunctions in technology adoption

17. 4. Intentionality and adoption
Intentionality-behavior vectors in other schools:
Head teacher vision outsourced: ‘‘We’ve not been huge on the “anytime-
anywhere learning” thing.... It doesn’t work as well as those who have an
interest in promoting this would claim.’ (ICT consultant, Duke’s Wood School)
Conflicting intentionality vectors: ‘It should be the students who are
picking … the ICT to use’. . (Head teacher, Birdsall School)
‘Should students decide when to use laptops? I’m not convinced.’ (Deputy
head teacher, in charge of school curriculum, Birdsall School)
[Moodle] is all very well and good, but …apart from me, the last person
that used it was 66 days ago… (Head of department, Birdsall School)
 Intentionality vectors congruent, but implementation takes time: Why
do children necessarily have to turn up and be in a building to learn… I don’t
know. Maybe there’ll be more flexibility in terms of how the curriculum’s
organized.… It could well be that mobile technologies allow students
different ways of learning. (Senior manager, Barleycroft School)
Harrison, Tomás and Crook - Intention-behavior disjunctions in technology adoption

18. 5. Bagozzi’s (2007) argued for a socio-contextual paradigm
shift to explain intention-behavior discrepancies.
 More emphasis on understanding end-state goals: ‘‘We’ve not been huge
on the “anytime-anywhere learning” thing.... It doesn’t work as well as those who have an
interest in promoting this would claim.’ (ICT consultant, Duke’s Wood School)
 Deeper analysis of intentionality vectors across the ecosystem: ‘It
should be the students who are picking … the ICT to use’. . (Head teacher, Birdsall School)
‘Should students decide when to use laptops? I’m not convinced.’ (Deputy head teacher, in
charge of school curriculum, Birdsall School)
[Moodle] is all very well and good, but …apart from me, the last person that used it was 66
days ago… (Head of department, Birdsall School)
 Intentionality is determined by self-regulation:
Why do children necessarily have to turn up and be in a building to learn… I don’t know. Maybe there’ll be more flexibility in terms of how the curriculum’s organized.… It could well be
that mobile technologies allow students different ways of learning. (Senior manager, Barleycroft School)
 Self-regulation is ‘transcendental’ (agency is not always explicable):
The teleology of technological change operates through human and systemic causal
systems, with deterministic processes that are often felt and presumed rather than agentive
Harrison, Tomás and Crook - Intention-behavior disjunctions in technology adoption

19. 1. Presents a reanalysis of the Becta Impact09 project * results
2. An ecological perspective leads to deeper understanding of
technology adoption
3. Underwood’s ‘linkage’ e-maturity model provides additional granularity
on adoption
4. Conflicting intentionality vectors are shown to create barriers to
change
5. Bagozzi’s ideas on self-regulation explain some intention-behavior
discrepancies.
*Crook, C., Harrison, C, Farrington-Flint, L., Tomás, C. & Underwood, J. (2010). The impact of
technology: Value-added classroom practice. Final Report. Coventry: Becta.
Key points:
Harrison, Tomás and Crook - Intention-behavior disjunctions in technology adoption

20. SIG: Learning and Instruction with Computers
Symposium: Educational technology acceptance-
Explaining non-significant intention-behavior effects
An e-maturity analysis explains
intention-behavior disjunctions in
technology adoption in UK schools
Colin Harrison 1
Carmen Tomás 2
Charles Crook 1
1
Learning Sciences Research Institute, University of Nottingham
2
Nottingham Trent University
Thank you!
colin.harrison@nottingham.ac.uk
carmen.tomas@ntu.ac.uk