Literature Review

Introduction

Technology - particularly online technology - can have a huge positive impact on learners of all ages. The importance of technology in personal and professional life is increasing (Venkatesh, Thong, & Xu, 2016). As the world becomes more entrenched in technology, it seems obvious that students should know how to properly and effectively navigate these tech systems. Technology can have many benefits besides preparing our students for their lives outside of the classroom as well. It can help facilitate a multicultural classroom by giving students experiences that they would not be able to get otherwise and by creating new informal learning environments where learners from vastly different backgrounds can connect and discuss the learning. It can bridge gaps created by disability, circumstance, or language barriers. It can create multiple channels of communication between the student, their family, and the school system (Azmi, 2017). Teachers in the k-12 learning environment should be well prepared to facilitate this use of technology, however, this is not always the case. New teachers are exposed to formal learning experiences around teaching and the use of technology, but the use of technology in the classroom is still low. Informal learning environments like YouTube may be able to bridge this gap for educators in how they use technology. Due to the informal nature of these learning environments, evaluating their use as standalone learning experiences (as opposed to components of a more formal learning environment) is difficult (Galanis, Mayol, Alier, & García-Peñalvo, 2016).

Barriers to Using Technology for New Teachers in Low-Income Schools

Accessing Resources

It is well-known within the K-12 educational community that low-income schools suffer from lack of resources - including technology. The lack of physical, technological, community, and personal resources are often cited as the primary factors in an education gap between these low-income schools and their higher income counterparts (Gorski, 2009). The designation of Title I schools (schools that have a student population with at least 40% of students that meet the financial requirements to receive free lunch) is meant to bridge this gap and these monies are permitted to be used on technology to support student instruction; however, the allocation of the money is purposely flexible to allow schools and districts to focus on their unique needs, and the majority of the money is spent on hiring new teachers, schoolwide programs, and professional development (“Districts’ Use of Weighted Student Funding”, 2019). Teachers at low-income schools report having computer labs that are primarily used by computer classes, and are at least not perceived to be available to other classrooms. They also report a lack of laptops that are readily available and, when they can be, are often in disrepair. The school’s generally poor Wi-Fi and internet connection is also often cited as a sticking point for the use of technology in classrooms (Johnson, Jacovina, Russell, & Soto, 2016).

This disparity in technology is not limited to technology at school. This also extends to the students who grow up in a low-income family. These families do not always have the resources available to get the technology often used in schools. The number of households without the internet is shrinking and the average number of devices per household has increased (Herold, 2017). Furthermore, community resources exist to help bridge this gap either through extra resources that are accessible for the students at school, or through community resources like local libraries. This trend bodes well for accessing these resources, but this still leaves many families and households struggling to share these resources to accommodate day-to-day living, entertainment, and school activities. As of 2018, approximately one in five teenagers cannot complete online homework due to the digital divide (Rodriguez, 2018) and technology is still difficult to access among immigrant communities (Sánchez & Salazar, 2012).

The Use of Tech Resources

Teachers who work in a low income and highly diverse environment are aware of this lack of access to technology, and are reluctant to assign work to students that would require them to use technology outside of the classroom. Furthermore, the lack of access to technology at these schools is often cited by teachers as a reason to not engage with technology in their classrooms (Batane & Ngwako, 2017; Han, 2018; Ottenbreit-Leftwich et al., 2012; Tondeur et al., 2012; Voogt & McKenney, 2017). If students in these households are given online work to do at home, they may not have easy access, or their access to the internet is intermittent. Even though there are resources available for these students in the community (public libraries, school wifi, etc.), this does not fit into the busy schedule of a teenager in a low income and/or immigrant family that may have to work to help support the household, take care of younger siblings, participate in extracurricular activities, and complete homework for other classes (Rodriguez, 2018; Sánchez & Salazar, 2012). Because teachers are aware of these issues and they want to be equitable, students in these communities are not as readily exposed to the use of these tools in an academic context until later in their educational environment. By this time, their affluent counterparts have had more experience, creating a gap of knowledge in the use of technology (Gorski, 2009; Herold, 2017).

During the COVID-19 online instruction, anecdotal evidence highlights this gap even more clearly. Many students need to rely on their cell phones or district-supplied Chromebooks (that have limited capabilities) to access educational content. Many of the students have multiple siblings in the same household and need to navigate who uses the technology and when. Students frequently report poor internet connections that make accessing content difficult. However, also anecdotally, among the people whose children attend more affluent schools, accessing these resources is only a mild frustration due to learning new technology. While the data is still coming in from this experience, early research seems to support these experiences. Teachers and administrators at low-income schools report a large number of students without access, an inability to easily offer instruction and communication via the technology, and a significant increase in truancy (Herold, 2020).

To help bridge this gap, public school teachers need to be aware of the limitations as well as how best to leverage what resources they do have to help these students become more competent in the academic and professional use of technology.