How Self-Directed Learning Relates to Technology Integration and Pedagogical Beliefs in Middle School Classrooms

Abstract

SDL is an important life-long learning skill. Current research on SDL has approached it both as a set of skills students develop and as an instructional method. The study presented here approached SDL as an instructional method and explored educators’ instructional use of SDL in relation with pedagogical beliefs, a relationship that has not been sufficiently explored in past research. This relationship was also placed in a Critical Race Theoretical Framework to explore whether the implementation of SDL differed by the racial composition of schools. A multi-method approach was taken which included surveying and interviewing middle school teachers in Massachusetts public schools. Descriptive analyses, factor analyses, correlation analyses, regression analyses, and t-tests were conducted in order to explore the relationship between teachers’ implementation of SDL and their extent of technology integration and pedagogical beliefs, as well as whether the implementation of SDL differs based on the racial composition of the schools in which teachers work. Interviews were employed to explore the results further. Teachers with more student-centered beliefs had higher levels of implementation of SDL than those with more teacher-centered beliefs, and pedagogical beliefs were also a stronger predictor of the level of implementation of SDL than were teachers’ amount of technology use or beliefs about student technology use. No significant relationship was observed between SDL and the racial composition of schools.