Educational Technology alum Frank Gomez Jr. recently published research measuring teacher self-efficacy using technology to deliver instruction to students in urban K-12 classrooms.
Gomez graduated from Boise State with a doctorate in educational technology in 2020 and designed the study as part of his dissertation research. The study explores questions on teachers’ beliefs about how well they use technology in their teaching can affect their ability to use technology effectively during instruction, with a specific focus on urban schools with students from diverse racial, cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds.
The study, co-authored by Boise State educational technology faculty Jesús Trespalacios, Yu-Chang Hsu and Dazhi Yang, appears in Springer, an online database of articles and books dedicated to advancing science.
For the study, Gomez developed a scale for teachers to gauge and report their confidence integrating technology into their teaching practices. Gomez aligned the scale to International Society for Technology in Education standards, which provide a roadmap for the effective use of technology in schools across the globe.
Results indicated that 327 participating teachers had, on average, a “fair” level of confidence in both using and integrating technology in their classrooms. The research concluded that professional development is key to raising teacher self-efficacy, since teachers who believe they are able to effectively deliver content using technology actually do teach better using it. Results of this study and prior research indicate that confidence and self-efficacy gained through teacher development can directly impact teachers’ abilities to effectively deliver lessons using technology in urban classrooms.
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