What do we know about the extent and effectiveness of the classroom use of instructional software?
How frequently are K-12 students working with instructional software?
When we can locate suitable data, we provide information to describe the typicality of specific classroom uses of technology. Whether a future or practicing teacher, we assume there is some interest in how commonly what we describe here occurs in classrooms. These data seem surprisingly and perhaps increasingly difficult to locate. While descriptive data concerning the use of technology use in classrooms is no longer “news”, the lack of frequent updates on technology use cannot be explained by concluding that most students make heavy use of instructional software in their daily work. We summarize data from one of the more general descriptive studies we are aware of here recognizing that an advantage of differentiating content between the Primer and online is the opportunity to update the online content should more detailed or more current data become available.
The U.S. Department of Education does make an effort to periodically survey teachers concerning how they and their students use technology. The most recent survey of this type (Gray, Thomas & Lewis, 2010) indicates that drill and practice and tutorials are “sometimes” or “often” used in 56% of elementary classrooms and 40% of secondary classrooms. Simulations are used less frequently with 33% of elementary teachers and 34% of secondary teachers claiming that this category of experience was provided “sometimes” or “often”. The way in which these data were collected does not allow the translation of these percentages and categories into something that might be more meaningful such as the typical amount of time allocated to specific activities, but it does appear that instructional software is used in many classrooms and is used more frequently in elementary classrooms.
An interesting finding from this same source concerns the comparison of classroom use between schools with high and low percentages of students receiving reduced or free lunch which is a common way to estimate the prevalence of students from low income families who are enrolled. Pause a second here and make a prediction. Do you assume there will be more use of instructional applications in schools with more or fewer students from low income families? What argument would you offer for the prediction you have made?
Students in schools with a higher proportion of students receiving a lunch subsidy are more likely to work with instructional software. In schools with the highest proportion of students from low income families (more than 75% with reduced cost meals), 59% of teachers reported students “sometimes” or “often” used drill and practice or tutorial software. Forty-four percent of teachers working schools with less than 35% of students receiving reduced cost lunches made the same claim. The pattern in which schools with more low income students make somewhat greater of use of instructional software has been identified in other studies and will be discussed when we explore equity issues in greater depth in the final chapter.
One final observation related to this Department of Education study. It is interesting that the methodology grouped tutorials and drill and practice as one category and simulations as another. We are left to draw our own interpretations, but it seems the first category might be considered as direct instruction and the second as more learner controlled instruction.