IDEAL Future Work Package 2 Report

27 Lack of motivation was considered a problem although averaged last of the problems this aligning to Van Dijk’s phase 1 in the level of access. Without motivation to seek and engage with technology, the higher phases of access are difficult to obtain 27 28 . Although not discussed in the context of access and inclusion. Mindset was discussed within the interviews (see section 4.3.5), in particular the fear and resistance around using technology as well as collective lack of interest and reluctance to change which could explain the prevalence of this issue. Access was an area that was referred to throughout the interviews. In his seminal work on the digital divide Van Dijk spoke about first level access barriers, the physical barriers such as access to technology devices. This is the basic level of access and without these a digital divide persists. The provision of a baseline level of access to technology within an educational organisation is critical. Technology access varies significantly between schools with little or no consistency or baseline level of infrastructure for all schools So some of them are going to schools where there's literally, you know, digital infrastructure and then some are going to very high density schools where they might even have like 1 to 1 scheme. So you know, there's this huge variability across contexts. (IE P30) Not all pupils in a country can be provided with the same level of technology at school - for example, urban schools will have more opportunities than rural schools. (LV 24, Future teacher ) not enough technology for everyone (e.g. 30 tablets for every pupil in a school), need to share/schedule technology use. (LV, In service teacher with 7 years of experience ) Some participants of how they had to use their own mobile phones or resources sue to a lack of a basic technology infrastructure. We would use our phones if they wanted to translate something we would use like say Hi app on our phones (IE P13) Insufficient technological equipment due to financial reasons, which cannot be purchased even if teachers are interested. There are some teachers who buy the tools or platforms themselves, but they are few. (LV 9) In many cases technology in schools was obsolete and hindered the learning process The technological support - a stable internet network - is also a challenge in many places. If there are one or two occasions when the internet fails to deliver a lesson as planned, most often teachers are no longer willing to try and use traditional methods. (LV In service teacher with 7 years of experience ) Our tablets are all pretty old and they're a bit slower in loading and everything, so that takes time….we don’t want to loose time during the day….the day is so short (IE P19) In addition baseline access of an infrastructure to support child safety was deemed essential, this relates to the area of pupil wellbeing which will be discussed later in this section. So I think to have that, that infrastructure and apps need to be available to us to help us in relation to minimize the amount of issues and to be able to control a safe and kind conductive learning environment (IE P3) Discussion also centred around student access, although in the earlier themes there was recognition of the potential of digital learning technologies to facilitate inclusion and student centred learning, 27 Van Dijk, J.A.G.M., 2017. Digital divide: Impact of access. The international encyclopedia of media effects, 1, pp.1-11.