New Delhi, August 3, 2015: Central Square Foundation, today, launched a study titled Teaching with Technology: Early Adoption of EdTech by Indian School Teachers, that analyses the availability and usage, perceptions, and challenges with technology adoption among 1500 teachers across India. The survey analyses these trends among teachers across rural and urban areas, and in schools with varying fee ranges.
Among the 1500 teachers surveyed, computers and mobile phones were the most widely used digital devices at 94% and 86% respectively. However, while 94% teachers reported access to computers, only 25% said they have access to functional (not having electricity or hardware challenges) computers. 70% of the teachers surveyed also reported use of internet.
The survey also noted that access to technology varies among school types. Technology solutions such as tablets and smartboards are dominant in high fee schools- while 74% of teachers in high fee schools reported access to smartboards, only 2% teachers from no fee schools and 7% teachers from low fee schools reported access. Moreover only 14% of teachers surveyed reported access to tablets, with the proportion of government schools being negligible.
Irrespective of the school type, teachers’ willingness to use technology is high, however, ICT training of teachers remains a critical gap. Of the teachers surveyed, 68% has not received any ICT training, 16% had received training and 16% were self trained. The survey highlights that willingness to use technology is much higher among trained teachers (88%) than untrained teachers (53%).
Additionally, while an average of 93% teachers agree that technology is important and aids them in classroom delivery, trained teachers are more likely to use technology for purposes beyond audio-visual presentations and student practice to lesson planning, participating in online forums, grading assessments and tracking student data.
|Purpose of Usage||Trained Teachers||Untrained Teachers|
|Planning and Assessment||Lesson Planning||51%||33%|
|Tracking Student Data||36%||31%|
|Communication and Professional Development||Communication||56%||28%|
Although teachers are using technology, infrastructural challenges such as poor electricity and hardware problems deter usage. Of those teachers who had access to computers in schools, close to half reported facing electricity and hardware challenges (51% and 45% respectively). These challenges were particularly compounded for schools in rural areas as well as for no-fee and affordable private schools. 54% of teachers in no-fee schools reported electricity challenges as compared to 6% of those in high-fee schools.
Nearly 90% of teachers who reported electricity and hardware problems, also indicated that better access to internet would help them use technology more effectively.
Talking about teachers’ willingness to use technology and challenges faced by them, Ashish Dhawan, Founder and CEO, Central Square Foundation, said, “Our survey shows that across school types, teachers are increasingly using technology and view it as an important tool that helps them in effective classroom delivery. However, infrastructural challenges, lack of digital content, insufficient time beyond teaching responsibilities and lack of contextualised resources are restricting teachers from fully leveraging the potential of technology. To address these challenges, we need to ensure better electricity access and internet connectivity, train teachers to use technology at both pre-service and in-service levels, and develop curriculum aligned resources not just in English but also local Indian languages.”
While the study highlights technology trends among teachers, The EdTech Promise: Catalysing Quality School Education at Scale, a landscape report on education technology by CSF shows how technology can play a critical role in teacher training and instruction. According to this report, technology can be used to provide high quality resources and competency linked training programmes for teachers through:
- Blended professional development courses that combine online programme and working offline with a coach.
- Resources for lesson planning and assessment for effective classroom delivery and to track student learning data
- Online peer learning communities to share best practices and ideas
In addition to this, the report outlines the role that technology can play in improving student learning through high quality instructional tools such as videos and practice exercises, and in enhancing school governance through tools and systems that enable administrators to efficiently record, maintain and use data for decision. The report also analyses EdTech innovations from India and abroad to demonstrate how technology-based models are evolving in different contexts to produce higher learning outcomes and raise administrative efficiency. Finally, the report makes recommendations to different stakeholders- government, EdTech entrepreneurs, funders and, school principals and administrators to effectively integrate technology in Indian school education system.
To read The EdTech Promise, please view here and for an infographic on the EdTech landscape in India, view here. The complete findings of Teaching with Technology can be found here. [Links to be inserted]
About Central Square Foundation
Central Square Foundation (CSF) is a venture philanthropy fund and policy think tank focused on improving quality of school education and learning outcomes of children from low-income communities in India. Our work involves supporting social entrepreneurs, building networks towards common education goals and developing insights for informing public policy.
In specific, we support initiatives in four areas-
- School Systems
For further details, visit our website- www.centralsquarefoundation.org