Motivating Teachers with New Technology

Different values and expectations promote different motivation factors for each individual. In the case of motivating teachers to want to experiment and teach with new technology tools, winning a $150,000 technology grant is an extreme motivator for many teachers and quite intimidating for others. This situation occurred at the K-5 elementary school where I teach six years ago. We received $50,000 for hardware, $50,000 for software and $50,000 for professional development to be used over a three-year period of the grant. Out of our 45 staff members, 15 teachers were extremely resistant to the laptops that were given to them, along with a plethora of software, and the training to learn how to use the laptop to enhance their teaching.

Using John M. Keller’s ARCS (Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction) Model, the other 30 staff members have been working diligently and patiently with these 15 who did not want any part of teaching with technology in the beginning of this endeavor. Each of these reluctant teachers exhibited the attitude, that what they have always done still works, so why change; and they said it was too much work to learn. They demonstrated behaviors like not showing up for the trainings, always making excuses of why they could not be there, and why it did not fit into their teaching style and schedule.

The first condition from Keller’s model is to gain and sustain “attention” (Driscoll, p.334). Our staff was able to achieve this by paying the teachers to attend the trainings. The grant allowed a portion of the professional development money to pay stipends for the teachers. This made a significant difference in the attention upheld at the trainings. The second condition is enhancing “relevance” (Driscoll, p.335). Once the teachers came to the trainings, they began to see how relevant the technology tools were to what and how they were currently teaching, and it made many of their teaching duties easier, gaining valuable student engagement time. The third condition is building “confidence” (Driscoll, p.336). Allowing a safe environment to acquire new skills, apply new skills, fail, and try again until success is achieved was the confidence builder these teachers needed. A little handholding goes a long way to gain self-assurance! The fourth condition of generating “satisfaction” (Driscoll, p.337), came from knowing that this group of reluctant teachers in the beginning, many has now become the biggest advocates for technology, wanting more teaching tools and actively seeking out new technology professional development opportunities for themselves.

Resource:
Driscoll, M. P. (2005). Psychology of learning for instruction (3rd ed.). Boston: Pearson Education, Inc.