Quality of technology integration matters: Positive associations with students’ behavioral engagement and digital competencies for learning

Abstract

Despite extensive research on technology's potential to enhance teaching, large-scale studies often report mixed or negative impacts of technology use at school on student learning achievements. This ambiguity is often attributed to previous large-scale studies focusing more on the frequency rather than the quality of technology integration in the classroom. To further investigate this issue, our study developed the Technology Integration Quality Scale (TIQS) to measure students' perceptions of technology integration across different dimensions of teaching quality: support for learning, classroom management, individualized teaching, and cognitive activation. Using a sample of 2,281 students from 29 upper secondary schools in Switzerland, we validated the TIQS through exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. We also employed cluster-robust structural equation modelling to examine how both the frequency and perceived quality of technology integration predict students' self-assessed digital competencies and behavioral engagement for learning. The results show that quality explains considerably more variance than the frequency of technology integration in promoting both students' behavioral engagement and digital competencies for learning. However, for digital competencies, quantity also explains a substantial amount of variance. By simultaneously considering multiple dimensions of teaching quality, the frequency of technology use and two output variables, this study contributes to the existing research by offering a more nuanced perspective on the impact of technology integration. Furthermore, interaction effects between the independent variables highlight the need to further explore the relationships between different dimensions of teaching quality, which could also contribute to the development of the theory of generic teaching quality

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