| Historically, schools have invested a lot of money into classroom technologies, but its application to student learning is minimal. While research shows a relationship between teacher beliefs regarding instructional technology and the incorporation of that technology into lesson planning, little research has been conducted to determine factors related to and influencing their instructional technology beliefs. The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors related to teacher instructional technology beliefs. This quantitative study asked suburban, secondary school teachers (N = 259) to respond to a survey created to gather demographic information such as age, gender, number of years of teaching experience, content area, the level of classroom technology integration, and the amount of participation in technology professional development. The survey also included multiple questions designed to form an index of their pedagogical beliefs and another index of their instructional technology beliefs. The instructional technology beliefs index was separated to create indices of the participants' expectancy, value and cost beliefs regarding instructional technology.;Results from this study conclude that gender, content area, participation in professional development, stage of integration, and pedagogical beliefs are related to one or more of a teacher's expectancy, value, and cost instructional technology beliefs. Gender is a significant predictor of a teacher's full-scale instructional technology beliefs. Pedagogical beliefs and gender are significant predictors of a teacher's expectancy beliefs, while integration stage and pedagogical beliefs are significant predictors of a teacher's value beliefs and cost beliefs.;This study shows that teacher instructional technology beliefs are influenced by many factors, the largest of which are the teacher's pedagogical beliefs and participation in professional development. School leaders can influence teacher instructional technology beliefs by focusing on teacher pedagogical beliefs, designing professional development that seeks to reduce the perceived costs associated with the implementation of technology and increasing the perceived value of technology to the experience of learning. |
