berge@umbc.edu

Susan E Mrozowski
Distance Education Compliance Coordinator
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore HD

mrozo_s@jhuvms.hcf.jhu.edu

1/5/99

To prepare for success in the workplace, children need to become independent, critical thinkers while also learning to work collaboratively in teams (CCSSO, 1992). They must learn to find information, manipulate it, and effectively express their own ideas and the ideas of other people (Haddad, n.d.). The use of educational technology, particularly for online teaching and learning, has been recognized as helping people, young and old, in these areas of their learning.

Despite increasing acceptance of online teaching and learning there are still significant barriers to be overcome.. The purpose of this article is review selected literature regarding inhibitors to the use of educational technology in K-12. Further, we will identify barriers to online teaching in elementary, secondary, and teacher education environments and compare these results with what we would expect from the more general literature review.

Over the past two decades, computer technology has been credited with higher achievement by students, motivating students to learn, aiding instruction for special needs students, improving student attitudes toward learning, and motivating teachers while freeing them from some routine instructional tasks (Software Publishers Association, 1996). Additionally, an increase in the effective utilization of computers, networking, and other technologies has been a common element in many of the proposals made in support of a broad program of systemic and curricular reform in K-12 education (PET, 1997). Far reaching policy decisions, such as the passing into law of the Goals 2000: Educate American Act in 1994, means a significant increase in a number of provisions designed to promote the application of technology within K-12 schools.

The use of computers, standing alone and connected to the Internet is growing in K-12 education. At least one study provided evidence that students with online access perform better in certain intellectual skills. In 1996, CAST (Center for Applied Special Technology) conducted a study that isolated the impact of online use and measured its effect on student learning in the classroom.

"The Role of Online Communications in Schools: A National Study," compared the work of 500 students in fourth-grade and sixth-grade classes in 7 urban school districts (Chicago, Dayton, Detroit, Memphis, Miami, Oakland, and Washington DC)--half of the students had online access and half did not. The results showed significantly higher scores on measurements of information management, communication, and presentation of ideas for experimental groups with online access than for control groups with no online access. Therefore, under the conditions found in this study, online learning was determined to "help students become independent, critical thinkers, able to find information, organize and evaluate it, and then effectively express their new knowledge and ideas in compelling ways" (CAST, 1996, n.p.).

A review of literature indicates one historical approach is to present the large picture of technology from its earliest days to the present use of personal computers in the classroom. (Merrill et al., 1992; Poole, 1997). This basic chronological approach places the beginning of computing with the use of the abacus in 4000 BCE, called the beginning of "mechanical computing." An even earlier period is described as "pre-mechanical computing" during which people counted on their fingers and made marks on cave walls and animal bones to keep count. After the abacus, the mechanical computing period featured such highlights as the creation of the slide rule in 1621 and the invention of Boolean Logic in 1854. Developments in counting problem-solving machines in the first half of the twentieth century led to the creation of the first computers. Although the first computers were developed in the late 1940s, they were too large and expensive for use in the schools. The revolution for school computing occurred in 1976 with the creation of the personal computer system.

Technology continues to change and affect children. Throughout history, there have been significant barriers perceived by persons who believe the infusion of technology in the classroom can help teaching and learning. The following examples of barriers mentioned in the educational technology literature serve as a starting point in developing a comprehensive list of such obstacles. Leggett and Persichitte (1998) examined the history of barriers and determined that the same basic four barriers are consistently sited by teachers: time, access, resources, and expertise. They provided a detailed description of each barrier and added a fifth one: support.

A review of the literature supports Leggett and Persichitte’s contention that those five factors are very important. Viewed historically, the barriers occur repeatedly. Loughary (1966) mentions limited resources and lack of support as potential barriers to the implementation of computers in the classroom. O’Shea and Self (1983) examine the factors that affect the teachers as they try to grapple with new technology. These factors included poorly designed materials and lack of technical support, teachers’ anxiety and resentment concerning the new technology, and the lack of administrative support.

Schofield (1995) provided a detailed look into the barriers of technology use. One important factor was the belief by teachers that computer use would add little of value to current practice. Another belief that she reported was that existing educational software was not useful in the classroom. Computer anxiety based on the teachers’ unfamiliarity with computers was a major barrier since this fear affected the teachers’ sense of competence and authority in the classroom. The lack of incentives and the presence of disincentives played a role, as did the infrastructure problems, such as repairs, trouble-shooting, and maintenance. Finally, a lack of adequate training was an important barrier, especially the lack of coordination and timing between training and hardware purchase, the inability to match training to the teachers’ level of knowledge and instructional concerns, and the lack of concentrated experiential training.

Merrill et al. (1992) breaks the barriers into three basic categories: ethical issues, legal issues, and cultural issues. This approach is a departure from the earlier focus on the nuts and bolts issues of poorly designed equipment, lack of support and confusion. In the 1990s, the literature reflects a deeper analysis of the types of barriers that exist for teachers, schools, and students. Collis et al. (1996) also focuses on the possible negative side effects across cultures that are caused by computer use. The equity issue of the disparity of use between boys and girls in the classroom is mentioned. Collis notes that there is a lack of knowledge about the future negative impacts of technology on students.

Starr (1996) provides a similar assessment of barriers in the classroom. The barriers include inequality for minorities and low-income students, lack of high-end uses of technology for primary and secondary education, as compared to higher education, and the need for inexpensive connectivity and low-cost access to content that are provided on many websites for a fee.

Fisher, Dwyer, and Yocam (1996) focus on the equity issue as a barrier to technology infusion. In addition to the barriers of lack of technical support, limited funds and resources, lack of time for preparation, implementation, and review, the authors also highlight the issue of lack of access to computers by all students, as well as access to the Internet. Montgomery (1996) also addresses the issue of access and inequality for minorities and low-income students. The author also note that concern regarding the quality of the new media culture and the effect of a media that is highly commercialized and unregulated.

Sandholtz, Ringstaff, and Dwyer (1997) report somewhat similar results. The main barriers include limited access, lack of equity, potential for jealousy or greed among teachers, and a large number of technical problems. Poole (1997) noted that the barriers of inequities, such as rich versus poor, girls versus boys, whites versus minorities, and lack of equal access to information based on disparities in funding and management of different school systems were of great concern to educators.

Turkle (1997) provided a different approach to the barrier issue. Her analysis of the problem focused less on the logistics and obvious causes of difficulties. Rather, she discussed the actual role of the computer in the classroom and its impact on learning. This interesting perspective provided three inherent concerns. The first is the "seduction of simulation" and the possibility that the computer activities might lessen the students’ desire to question and think through problems carefully. Also, she wonders if the attraction for using simulations is based on the fact that it may be easier to buy a software package that allows students to conduct virtual experiments than hire and fund an additional science teacher. The second problem is the resentment felt by teachers for computer applications that serve as "overblown video games." The third potential barrier is that the computer may be creating students that are "fluent users" of technology rather than "fluent thinkers" of technology. Turkle observed a student who could use a particular software package correctly, and boasted to Turkle of her prowess. However, the student could not explain why a particular situation occurred, what the repercussions might be, or criticize or judge what she is learning. Turkle describes her as a "someone who can pronounce a word in a book but does not understand what they mean."

The slow pace of successful implementation of computer technology in the classroom is discussed by Sulla (1998). Sulla argues that it takes from three to seven years to successfully infuse technology by teachers. The stages are defined as "dynamic disequilibrium, contrived equilibrium, and reflective practitioner." The difficulty and length of time involved in the implementation of technology appears to have remained consistent over the past few decades. As computers become more and more popular in the classroom, the need for a long-term perspective is critical.

Using a framework I developed elsewhere (Berge, 1998) (see Table 1), the literature reviewed above along with others (e.g., Abdal-Haqq, 1995; Evans-Andris, 1996; Oppenheimer, 1997; Rice, 1995), suggests barriers to the use of technology in the primary and secondary classroom as falling generally into these categories: academic, cultural, and technical. Secondary areas of concern indicated in the literature involve labor-management and fiscal. Very little or no mention is made in the literature discussing barriers to the use of technology in K-12 regarding student services, legal, governance, or geographic areas.

Although technologically-mediated learning holds many advantages and promises for educators and learners, it is not well suited, nor available for all learners or in all learning situations. Social, economic, physical, or learning barriers exist and schools lack the resources to make computer/telecommunication systems available, thus denying them the advantages that technology may offer.

While the technological infrastructure is improving and access to the internet is increasing in elementary and secondary schools, there are still significant hurdles to such teaching and learning. Lack of computer access, increased time demands, differences in individual preferences, student and teacher resistance to new methods, and lack of student and faculty support services, and the lack of adequate training and technical support are all common problems faced by both students and teachers (e.g., DoIT, 1996; Furst-Bowe, 1996; Galusha, 1997; Morrison & Lauzon, 1992).

Recently a four volume series was published entitled "Wired Together: Computer-Mediated Communication in K-12" (Berge & Collins, 1998a, b, c, d). Taken together, the seventy-two (72) chapters in these four books represent a considerable body of experience in online teaching and learning in K-12, pre- and in-service teacher training. Online teaching and learning is one major type f technologically-mediated learning. The content of these books was analyzed: 1) to determine how many different barriers to online teaching were mentioned in these books, i.e., to indicate the range of the obstacles, and, 2) to determine how often a particular barrier was mentioned, i.e., to indicate the perceived severity of each barrier..

Best and Kahn (1989) stated that document analysis serves to describe prevalent conditions and to discover the relative importance of, or interest in, certain issues (p. 91). The Wired Together books were first read to find keywords that indicated barriers to online teaching. The following list of keywords were found and later used to electronically search the text of all four books: barrier, limitation, difficult, inhibitor; impede; hamper; obstruct; roadblock; thwart; delay; encumber; foil; restrain; retard; arrest; obstacle; hurdle; hinder; reticence; and lack of. Upon each occurrence of these words, the context (sentence or several sentences around the word), was read to determine if it indeed was used to indicate a barrier to online teaching and learning. This was done independently by the two authors and any discrepancies were discussed and agree upon. "Barriers," as indicated by the list of keywords above, is used here to mean "any perceived problem standing in the way of an online teachers work."

When selecting from a list of items or recalling items that have previously been heard or read, it has been shown that individuals often select the items at the beginning or end of the list. In this literature this is called primacy and recency effects (Weiner, 1985).. A different phenomenon that is often an issue in studies similar to this is attribution. Attribution theory suggests that people tend to explain the causes of their own behavior in a manner that is self-promoting (Bar-Tal, 1978; Nisbett and Ross, 1980). For instance, an individual may want to avoid attributing a performance problem in the workplace to their own behavior, and instead falsely tell themselves or others that the cause is an environmental issue out of their control (Dean, 1996; Weiner, 1980). Reports on behavior may also be significantly different simply depending upon whether the individual is self-reporting his/her behavior leading to the performance, or is an observer reporting upon others behaviors. Jones and Nisbett, (1971) suggest that actors attribute the cause of their poor performance on the environment, whereas observers focus on the people they are observing and their behaviors. Since subjects in this study were not given a list of barriers from which to react, the potential problem of primacy and recency effects are not an issue. This issue was mentioned here main with regard to issues that may threaten validity to further research. With regard to attribution effects, the reader is cautioned that this effect may account for some of the weightings found in this study. Some of the contributors to the Wired Together books were online teachers themselves while others were more or less observers (i.e., researchers; teacher educators).

While the findings herein may be interesting and useful as a start for further research, the reader is cautioned about some additional threats to both validity and reliability. An exhaustive literature review was conducted regarding barriers to distance education in primary and secondary teaching and learning in preparation for this study. Still, the current study itself reports on contributions in only the four books in the Wired Together series. With the scope being limited, these findings should be considered exploratory and generalizability is not possible.

Secondly, the categories that were derived were done so by the researcher and are based on work done in policy for higher education and the review of literature. Additionally, the study is based on the perceptions of the contributors to both the literature reviewed and those writing for Wired Together. No independent observers or other means were used to attempt to verify what was reported by these authors.

Finally, each of the barriers mentioned by the subjects were forced into one category by the researchers. While we may agree on the category, it is certainly recognized by us that many barriers could be listed in multiple categories. As one example only, it is hard to conceive that the barrier listed as "intellectual property rights/ownership" and placed here in the "Labor-Management" category, could not be placed as in the "Legal" category with as much justification by someone else. Our purposes here are not to split hairs in categorizing, but rather to explore and identify as comprehensively as possible all barriers to online teaching as one significant form of distance education.

Of the 72 chapters examined, 52 (72.2%) mentioned barriers using the search terms listed above. This is significant in itself. While the instructions from the editors to the authors did not specifically ask authors to include barriers, there were suggestions that they discuss "lessons learned" and provide "tips to online teachers" based on their experiences. Most chapters that mentioned limitations to online teaching contained only a couple of the keywords. In fact, 49 of the 72 chapters (68.1%) indicated no more than four barriers. The chapters containing the highest number of "barrier" terms appear to be overview chapters written by the editors, or chapters written by teacher educators; it does not seem that online teachers ordinarily write about widespread barriers to online teaching.

Table 1 lists the barriers and their frequencies as identified in the Wired Together book series. The teachers and teacher educators authoring 52 chapters used at least one barrier term, with a total of 261 throughout the 4 books. The barriers seemed to cluster in in mainly the following areas: academic (n = 30, 11.5%), labor-management (n = 29, 11.1%), technical (n = 67, 25.7%), and cultural (n = 89, 34.1%). As expected from the review of literature, little mention of barriers were found in these books in the areas of legal, student support, and geographical.

The barriers mentioned most often by the authors of the chapters in Wired Together were:

• Concerns about the cultural change process necessary for the successful implementation of distance education
• Concerns about the pedagogical changes necessary for the effective implementation of distance education
• Lack of support for teachers/faculty members (including technical training), or mention of the lack of experience teachers/faculty have in distance education methodologies
• Lack of access (connectivity) for students or teachers/faculty members
• High cost to the district or institution, or lack of the necessary infrastructure for delivering or receiving education at a distance

One purpose of this study was to determine indicators to future research areas. Some of those discovered by this research are:

• Overall, the barriers listed by K12 online teachers and teacher educators are very similar to those described by online teachers in higher education (Berge, 1998). The weighting may be different, however. For instance, it seems that K-12 educators mention fiscal issues somewhat more than higher education.
• The barriers mentioned may change depending upon the level of the experience of the individual teacher has with teaching online.
• While different perceptions based on the experience level of an individual may not be surprising, it can also be hypothesized that barriers are perceived differently depending upon the level of experience with online teaching found within the institution or school. An instructor working in a district in which online teaching has never occurred may often perceive different barriers than that teacher she he/she be in a district that has a long history of delivering or receiving online courses (such as infrastructure issues).
• The subject area being taught may also affect the barriers experienced.
• This study involved online teachers and teacher educators using technology. Other types of participants, (i.e., important stakeholders such as school administrators; parents; students), exist and may have significantly different perceptions about the barriers to online teaching and learning within their institution.