Researches On The Effectiveness Of ICT In Classroom Instruction

As the theories and practices of ICT for teaching and learning being more and more comprehensive, the focus on technology has changed from the development of hardware, software and resources to the effectiveness of technology used in school and classroom which means the effect, efficiency and benefit of ICT for instruction. In addition, for educational technology itself, the theoretical and practical exploration for how to use the technologies effectively goes with the educational technology researches all along which is the necessary question in each phrase of technology application. Nowadays, e-Education charactered by widely used ICT has been the main practice tendency for the innovation of classroom instruction. Therefore this dissertation is aimed at discussing and analyzing the effectiveness of ICT for teaching and learning in junior high school classrooms.This dissertation consists of four parts: literature summarization, research definition, quantitative research and qualitative research.In the part of literature summarization, this dissertation elucidates the importance and necessity of research on the effectiveness of technology from the perspectives of instructional practice and educational technology itself. Afterwards it makes a meta-analysis of 108 articles focusing on "the effectiveness of technology used in K12 classroom" from Chinese core journals and 22 international refereed journals. The analysis finds that the proportion of effectiveness research focusing on K12 to the whole effectiveness research is large; the proportion of research adopting quantitative methods is large too. It also finds more researches concern the effect of technology on reading and math, while few researches on learning strategies or learning process.In the part of research definition, this dissertation uses the kernels of pragmatism and pragmatics for reference: effect and context. It explores the issue of effectiveness of educational technology from the perspective of pragmatism/pragmatics and discusses its impact on technology development and application. Then based on the ideology of pragmatism, this dissertation defines the concept of the effectiveness of technology and proposes that the key for judge technology's effectiveness is according to the Five Standards for Effective Pedagogy and meeting the needs of instructional goals and contents. Finally, it sets up a model for evaluating the effectiveness of technology, which is the framework for quantitative research and qualitative research.In the part of quantitative research, there are five researches. (1) It establishes a set of scientific tools for measuring the effectiveness of ICT used in instruction, which include student questionnaire and teacher questionnaire. Then it makes item analysis and factor analysis of those questionnaires. (2)It explores the level and characteristics of junior high school students' learning strategies in shanghai region using the international universal learning strategies scale (LASSI). (3) It studies the impact of Internet/Intranet used in instruction on students' achievement, learning strategies and...