Abstract
This study investigates Danish university teachers’ agency in using digital technologies in teaching. Furthermore, it explores how teachers’ conduct and experienced constraints are connected to different dimensions of teachers’ agency.
The paper is based on survey responses from 344 teachers about their agentic will and power to influence aspects of technology usage in teaching. Using an exploratory factor analysis, we identify three distinct factors and their relations: 1) wanting to control digital data and having the power to do so is distinct from 2) teachers’ power and will to control the technologies adopted and 3) how technologies are applied in teaching. Furthermore, all factors correlate with the teachers’ conduct (extent to which technology facilitates education interactions), while there are factor-specific patterns to the constraints (e.g., time, experience).
The results provide a basis for revisiting teachers’ role in university decision-making. We include a discussion on the entangledness of agency across institutional levels.
Subject
Computer Science Applications,Education
Reference33 articles.
1. Analyse & tal. (2023). En hverdag af data. https://www.ogtal.dk/cases/en-hverdag-af-data
2. Ashwin, P. (2012). Analysing Teaching-Learning Interactions in Higher Education: Accounting for Structure and Agency. Bloomsbury Publishing.
3. Bandura, A. (2001). Social Cognitive Theory: An Agentic Perspective. Annual Review of Psychology, 52(1), 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.52.1.1
4. Biesta, G., & Tedder, M. (2007). Agency and learning in the lifecourse: Towards an ecological perspective. Studies in the Education of Adults, 39(2), 132–149. https://doi.org/10.1080/02660830.2007.11661545
5. Biskjaer, M. M., Dalsgaard, P., & Halskov, K. (2014). A constraint-based understanding of design spaces. Proceedings of the 2014 Conference on Designing Interactive Systems, 453–462. https://doi.org/10.1145/2598510.2598533