5th Teaching & Education Conference, Amsterdam

INTEGRATING ICT INNOVATION IN SCHOOLS: A MIDDLE LEADER’S PERSPECTIVE AND CONSIDERATIONS

CONNIE NG

Abstract:

To integrate ICT into the curriculum to bring about such student learning outcomes require deliberation about the focus of the ICT integration into the curriculum and careful planning of the appropriate pedagogical approaches required for integrating ICT into the curriculum (Yuen, Law, & Wong, 2003). Schools need to have ownership of this new focus (Ertmer & Ottenbreit-Leftwich, 2010) in order to translate national-level ICT-related initiatives successfully into practice. Studies investigating the integration of ICT innovation in schools often find that leadership is key to successful implementation of ICT integration (Anderson & Dexter, 2005; Hauge & Norenes, 2015; Ng & Ho, 2012). This leadership can be provided by various school key personnel such as the school leaders or middle leaders who are either heads of departments or subject heads. There are relatively fewer studies on the leadership performed by middle leaders (Heng &Marsh, 2009; Sepúlveda et al., 2013) particularly in the area of ICT integration into the curriculum (Dexter, 201; Ng & Ho, 2012b). Given the lack of literature in middle leadership in ICT integration into the curriculum, there is a need for more research on the considerations and planning that middle leaders go through to integrate ICT innovation successfully. This study aims to address this gap in the field by investigating the deliberations and considerations of a middle leader in the design of a learning package incorporating the use of an ICT innovation for conceptual visualization for a Mathematics topic at high school level. Findings of this study revealed that she considered various aspects such as student-centred learning approaches, technological affordances of the ICT innovation and the signature pedagogy of the subject.

Keywords: ICT innovation, ICT integration, middle leaders, ICT leadership

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