Jun 09
3
Stage Theories
Rogers (1995) is one of many researchers who represent the adoption process as a series of linear stages. His five-stage model is outlined below. Note the heavy role of information acquisition in the stages:
Stage 1: Knowledge
Stage 2: Persuasion
Stage 3: Decision
Stage 4: Implementation
Stage 5: Confirmation
The person (or group) comes to know about the innovation and begins to learn about it, resulting in increased knowledge and skill.The person forms an attitude or image (positive or negative) about the innovation through discussion and interaction with others.The person resolves to seek additional information, leading to a decision to accept or reject the innovation.The person gains additional information needed to put the innovation into regular use.The person looks for benefits of the innovation to justify its continued use. Use of the innovation is routinised and promoted to other people. Or conversely, the decision to use is reversed based on negative evidence.
Generalising across ACOT projects, Apple researchers (Dwyer, Ringstaff, & Sandholtz, 1991) observed five general phases of implementation, summarised below. These phases occurred in different schools dating back to 1986.
1. Entry phase. In this initial phase, teachers “struggled valiantly to establish order in radically transformed physical environments” (Dwyer, et al., 1991, p. 47). With the expected problems of beginning a school year, facing the added problems and benefits of computers was definitely a challenge for some teachers.
2. Adoption phase. Once teachers had recovered from the initial shock, the technology began to be integrated into the traditional classroom. Even though the arrangement was very different physically, traditional lecture and textbook teaching methods predominated. Student attitudes were high, and teachers reported individual student effects, but overall student achievement was basically unchanged.
3. Adaptation phase. At this phase, traditional teaching methods were still in place, but they were consistently supported with computer activities, particularly the use of word processing, database, some graphics programs, and computer-based instruction. Productivity and efficiency were the salient changes reported by teachers; for example, a computer-based math curriculum allowed 6th graders to finish in 60% of the time normally required.
4. Appropriation phase. This phase began in the second year of a project. “The change hinged on each teacher’s personal mastery—or appropriation—of the technology” (p. 48). The teacher’s increasing confidence in the technology, and time with the technology, resulted in more innovative instructional strategies. This phase was marked by “team teaching, interdisciplinary project-based instruction, and individually paced instruction” becoming more common at the sites.
5. Invention phase. This phase is less an actual phase than a mindset, implying a willingness to experiment and change. “Today, the staff of ACOT’s classrooms are more disposed to view learning as an active, creative, and socially interactive process…Knowledge is now held more as something children must construct and less like something that can be transferred intact” (p. 50).
