A New ICT Curriculum for Primary Education in Flanders: Defining and Predicting Teachers' Perceptions of Innovation Attributes

Teachers play a pivotal role in implementing educational innovations and realising curriculum change. Consequently, their perceptions of innovations and curricula content are of crucial importance. In this study, teachers’ perceptions of the new ICT curriculum in Flanders are examined. This curriculum reflects Flemish society’s underlying vision of the role of technology and ICT in teaching and learning. The curriculum is compulsory for all primary schools and focuses on the cross-curricular integrated use of ICT. Teachers’ perceptions of the curriculum are operationalised using Rogers’ innovation diffusion theory, and are specified as innovation attributes. These are defined as the perceived characteristics of the ICT-curriculum. Factors explaining these attributes are investigated. A questionnaire is administered to a representative sample of Flemish teachers (N = 471). Factor analysis and hierarchical regression analysis are conducted. The results indicate that teachers have moderate opinions about the new ICT curriculum and that both teacher and school level conditions explain teachers’ perceived characteristics of the new ICT curriculum. ‘ICT competences of teachers’ and the ‘schools’ ICT vision and policy’ were found to be the strongest predictors. These results are of particular importance to policy makers and school leaders and shed light on the complex process of ICT curriculum implementation.

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