Principal Investigator
Emily A. Kohler – University of Virginia School of Education and Human Development; Lauren Molloy Elreda & Kate Tindle – EdTech Evidence Exchange
Project Description
This is a methodological paper that explores the reliability of various measures of the context in which educational technology is delivered (e.g., instruments measuring teachers’ beliefs about and knowledge of educational technologies). The goal of this effort is to create a validated set of measures to describe a school or district’s implementation context—or “EdTech Context”—to inform future studies of the efficacy of educational technology.
Research Questions
- What is the factor structure for each instrument in the EdTech Context Inventory, a set of 10 separate instruments that each measure a context feature likely to impact edtech implementation?
Key Findings
Context features, i.e., characteristics of an education technology (edtech) implementation environment, are consistently associated with measures of edtech implementation. However, these features are inconsistently measured, and educators do not have shared language to discuss or ways in which to quantify these context features. This study describes the development and factor analysis of ten instruments that comprise the EdTech Context Inventory; each instrument measures one context feature identified and defined in the EdTech Genome Project. The researchers first conducted exploratory factor analyses (EFA) for each instrument based on theoretically hypothesized factors with data collected from 412 United States educators in spring 2021. Next, they used a structural equation modeling approach to conduct confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) for each instrument based on EFA results with data collected from 1,125 United States educators between fall 2021 and spring 2022. Results from the CFAs confirm between three and six factors per instrument, with eight to 24 items per instrument. Each instrument also demonstrates a satisfactory level of reliability. The instruments in the EdTech Context Inventory are valuable tools for creating robust profiles of district edtech implementation contexts and have practical applications for supporting educators’ edtech implementation.
Study Citation: Kohler, Emily A., Elreda, Lauren Molloy, & Kate Tindle. EdTech Context
Study Citation
Kohler, Emily A., Elreda, Lauren Molloy, & Kate Tindle. EdTech Context Inventory: Factor analyses for ten instruments to measure edtech implementation context features. Computers & Education, Vol. 195 (April 2013). doi: 10.1016/j.compedu.2022.104709
The Key Findings above were reproduced from the published report and do not necessarily reflect interpretation of Overdeck Family Foundation staff.
