As the world is becoming digital, every industry is changing, and the employment landscape is changing. You know the people that are in school today are going to enter a workforce that is very different than the one today. And so we know that we have this skills gap in the area of digital. And really we wanted to try and understand how that was impacting teachers. So we initiated some research to try to connect with teachers and really find out how it is showing up in education and maybe start to try and look at what what what might we do about it.
What came across to me from the research is that the teachers are amazing and you know they’re absolutely passionate and dedicated about helping young people be successful in setting them up or for hopefully a rich and rewarding life as best they can. But that that’s hard. There are many many more competing priorities for a teacher to deal with today than at any other point and so that role of a teacher to help young people be successful and teach them what they need in order to be successful in school and in life is harder than ever before.
Making it Possible for Teachers
I think one of the things that also resonates with me is that the teachers are actually being positive about the role that technology can play. I think nearly three quarters of them are saying that they absolutely see that technology helps and they see it can help to create more inclusive classrooms, which is great. But you know not everything is plain sailing. I see some areas of absolutely incredible practice, but I also see lots of schools and teachers who find it hard and haven’t really made a huge amount of progress. Some of this research is giving hints as to why some of this might be.
Teachers are under the pressure of lots of competing priorities. None of them have enough time to do everything that they would like to do. And so they do find it’s a very tough place to be in. More than three-quarters of teachers say they don’t have the time to do everything that they would like.
Creating Access
Definitely access to technology comes up as well. And you know some of the experiences I’ve seen is that schools that have easy access to devices (it doesn’t need to be one-to-one, but it has to be accessible enough that they could incorporate it into lessons) are finding it much easier to be successful versus those have to book IT suites and make an effort to use the technology. When the devices are accessible, the teacher gets to incorporate it alongside other curriculum commands. When they have to book to use the technology, it becomes that extra curricular thing they have to fit into their week.
And so one side is absolutely about enriching the learning environment, and helping technology work for a teacher. The other one is that technology is just one more thing you’ve got to try and fit into a finite number of hours during week. One side thinks it is helping, and this is probably creating more pressure.