A Continuum of Teachers' e-Learning Practices

Educational practitioners go through developmental changes in their approach and execution of their vocation. Teachers are generally comfortable with what they do and stick to known and familiar methods. However teachers who are characteristically early adopters and innovators break the bounds of traditional habits. The focus of the study was that e-Learning practices at school level were not fully understood by e-Learning policy makers and implementers. The problem was foregrounded by the varying levels of uptake of e-Learning from non-adoption and non-use to under-utilisation of available tools and technologies. This study was about creating an understanding of teachers' e-Learning practice through an exploration of: what are they doing, why do they do this and what enables them to do this. This paper reports on one aspect of a larger doctoral study into teachers' e-Learning practices. The analysis of the data yielded 32 interrelated findings. For this paper, only the continuums for use, adoption and practice are presented. My findings revealed that teacher' development and progress in using technology for educational purposes can be located on continuums of adoption, use and practice. The data has suggested that there is variety in the ways teachers use technology: personal; administration, teaching and learning with different intensities and at varying levels of intensity. Teachers were found to use technology for e-Teaching and e-Learning progressively and in ways that was aligned to their comfort zones. The way teachers' used technology was found to be progressive from simple to innovative. Adoption decisions were found to be influenced by personal attributes of motivation, self-efficacy and expectancy. The continuums from this study could be used to explore and evaluate current e-Learning practices.