Evaluating Innovation Injection into Educational Contexts

Abstract

One of the big challenges faced by research in the Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) field has to do with the injection of innovation into real educational contexts. Very often, innovative technologies fail to be taken up by practitioners because of difficulties in absorbing both methodological and technological innovation of the target contexts. This may be caused by resistance of the target users associated with conservatism of the contexts, but also by inadequate approaches to innovation promotion or even lack of evidence of the return of investment of the innovation itself. Thus, a crucial need of the TEL field consists in the ability to evaluate both the efficacy of a new technology in the specific context to permeate, and the effectiveness and adequacy of the intervention designed to inject this innovation into the intended situation. This paper contributes to fill in this gap by proposing an approach that joins aspects of Guskey’s model to evaluate the effectiveness of teacher training events together with indicators of the well-known Technology Acceptance Model, generally used to predict acceptance of a new technology. The approach proposed, called T&EAM (Technology & Event Acceptance Model), is illustrated. The discussion concerns its strengths and weaknesses and provides inputs for future applications and research.