A longitudinal case study of change process in technology integration

Overview of the Study

        This case study aims to discuss from the perspectives of change agents the enabling factors in the technology integration change process in a multi-section science pedagogy course.  Using a six-year longitudinal (1997-2003) study, Hsu and Sharma purposefully selected seven participants, who were considered to the change agents of technology integration in a required course, Teaching Sciences in the Elementary School (SCIED 408), of a teacher preparation program at a comprehensive, research university.  The participants included two faculty members, who ran the course and associate grant projects in the program, a course coordinator and liaison between the course and local elementary schools, two graduate students, and two other course instructors who entered the program during a later period.  Although the first author supervised the program, she was not involved in the change process and only played the role of sampling, data collection and analysis.  The role of the second author is not stated in the study.

      To answer the research question, the researchers conducted a two-round interview (2001 and 2003).  Participants’ publications, presentation papers, grant proposals, syllabi, and the class Internet resources were also collected as main documents.  The data was first transcribed and coded with a list of 24 codes for the time and the roles of people, then coded with themes, cause/explanations, people’s relationships, or other emerging constructs and generated a list of pattern codes.  The researchers continued to integrate their data into a framework and concluded that the formation of shared leadership, learning community and supported educational systems are three enabling change factors in the technology integration process. A traditional structure of academic studies is written and organized in this paper: introduction, theoretical framework for inquiry, methodology, findings and discussion, and implications and conclusions.

Critique

        As described in the preceding paragraph, the coding strategies and process are clearly stated in the study.  A supporting diagram of themes, tables of the time frames of technology integration process and the roles played by the participants in this process are also provided in either the findings section or the appendix. The themes and patterns generated through the coding process also connected closely to the theoretical framework, the systems theory, which is adopted by the authors in this research.  According to Patton (2002), the focus of systems theory is to understand “real-world complexities, viewing things as whole entities embedded in context and still larger wholes” (p.120).  The perspective of systems theory honors “holistic thinking,” and the different parts of a system not only interconnected but also interdependent. “Change in one part lead to change among all parts and the system itself” (p.120).  Therefore, the authors endeavor to understand the change process and identify enabling factors in this system (i.e, the teacher education program) by applying a qualitative paradigm should be adequate.  The authors further explained their rationale of utilizing systems theory in this research:  to explore and understand the complex changes of innovation of technology integration in a system, they decided to conduct a six-year longitudinal case study and believed it would be an appropriate design and perfectly connected to the systems theory.  Moreover, the authors indicated the short of empirical study related to technology integration in the literature that shaped their motivation for the research. 

        To illustrate their findings, three emerging themes (i.e., shared leadership, learning community, and educational system) were discussed in both the theoretical framework and findings and discussion sections.  The researchers presented both the results of interview and document analysis from their participants and interweaved them with associate supporting evidence from literature.  Under individual themes, the authors described how the participants talked about their perceptions and roleplaying in the change progress; they also helped the researchers understand their relationships with other participants in the system.  A significant amount of direct quotation from the participants was found throughout the three emerging themes.  Peshkin (1993) categorized outcomes from qualitative research into four main types: description, interpretation, verification and evaluation.  He argued that qualitative researchers should make their research move beyond descriptions, because “pure, straight description is a chimera; accounts that attempt such a standard are sterile and boring” (p.24).  Based on the analysis provided by Peshkin (1993), the authors here not only presented their research process in thick and thorough description, but also sought to interpret their results by developing new concepts, elaborating existing concepts, clarifying and understanding the complexity of the context, and providing insights that change participants’ behavior, refine existing knowledge (p.24).  As a reader, by following the authors’ description and interpretation in this article, I can easily understand participants’ perceptions and how they play roles in technology integration in this system; furthermore, the themes and the framework generated by the authors also allow me to apply them in the current context I am situated in.

        To ensure the trustworthiness of the study, the authors employed member check with the participants, source triangulation with acquiring multi-data sources, theory triangulation with revisiting systems theory in other literature, and analyst triangulation with a peer debriefing process.  A reflective journal kept by the first researcher was also mentioned in the research, which provided more evidence of credibility.  No discrepant or negative cases were reported in this research, which would be a possible validity threat for some readers. 

        Interestingly, as I mentioned in the first paragraph, the role of the second author became mysterious and was not explained throughout of the whole article, which may arouse concerns of authorship.

        Hsu and Sharma made their argument in the conclusion of the research. They stated the “continuing commitment of a transformational leadership team sustains the change,” and argued that “[t]hus educational reformers should adopt a similar leadership style” (p.224).  Generally, the interpretation and the purpose of naturalistic inquiry are not designed to generalize data in a specific context to general population.  Instead, the researchers sought to understand if their findings were transferrable to other similar contexts, or let generalization happened in mind of “the consumer of the research” who can “decide what aspect of the case apply in new context” (Cronbach, 1975).  To me, the statement that all educational reformers should have a certain style of leadership is over-generalized and arbitrary because their findings may be applied for similar contexts of technology integration in higher education, but may not extend to others. 

        Overall, the authors wrote this paper with impersonal, passive-voice language and a clear, organized structure. The researchers’ intervention when conducting research seems to be minimized.  Although the first author served as a supervisor in the program, no further description of the relationship between the researchers and the participants and how the researchers managed the potential risk and bias were identified.

Conclusion

       To sum up, the article presented a vivid picture of how change agents played their roles in the numerous technology initiatives of a teacher preparation program in higher education context through thick and detailed description.  Three emergent themes are also identified in the change process and closely connected to the theoretical framework (i.e., systems theory) adopted in this paper.  The paper could be more rigorous when considering the validity and generalizability issue stressed in this review.  Future researchers may consider adopting the framework generated from this research, and move forward to learners’ perspectives to understand how learning occurs in the change of technology integration.

References

Cronbach, L. J (1975). Beyond the two disciplines of scientific psychology. American Psychologist, 30, 116-127.

Hsu, P. –S., & Sharma, P. (2008). A case study of enabling factors in the technology integration change process. Educational Technology & Society, 11(4), 213-228.

Patton, M.Q. (2002). Qualitative research and evaluation methods (3^rd. ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Peshkin, A. (1993). The goodness of qualitative research. Educational Researcher. 22(2). 23-29.