JOURNAL ARTICLE REVIEW

North American University

Education Department
M.Ed. in Educational Leadership
EDUC 5324
Name: Halil Celik

Date:07.05.2015

Waxman H.C., Boriack A.W., Lee Y.H., MacNeil A. (2013). Principals Perceptions of
the Importance of Technology in Schools. Contemporary Educational Technology,
2013, 4(3), 187-196.
INTRODUCTION
Research Question:
What are principals perceptions of the importance of technology? Do principals
perceptions of technology differ by years of experience and gender?
Purpose of the research:
The purpose of this study was to extend the prior studies point of view on
perceptions of school principals on technology. The difference of this study was
expanding both the responses and the type of the questions. Also this study
examined the influence of the gender and experience on principals use of
technology.
METHODOLOGY
Participants:
One hundred twenty six male, one hundred eighty two female principals from
southwest region of the U.S. This principals were in different ranges of
experience; one hundred four participants 0-3 years, eighty two participants 4-7
years, fifty five participants 8-11 years, thirty two participants 12-15 years, thirty
one participants more than 15 years.
Procedures:
For this study, only the data from the interviews was used. The interview
questions were Has technology had an impact in your school?" and "If so, in
what specific ways has it made a difference?
Data Collection Methods/ Data Sources:
Questionnaire and interviews.
Data Analysis:
After the collection of the interview data responses were read several times to
become familiar with the data. The data was then coded into meaningful
categories. Once the categories were established, another researcher
independently coded a 10% sample of responses to determine the consistency of
the coding. The inter-coder reliability results revealed a high level of agreement
(Cohens kappa = .94).

RESULTS
Findings:
A high rate of the principals reported that they see the major functions of use of
technology in communication (34.5%) and instruction (27.7%). Other functions,
data sharing and management, resource, administrative tasks, student learning,
only took a place about one third of the all responses (37.8%).
Female participants majorly believe technologys communication function more
than male participants, however it is vice versa in technology use as instructional
tool with a noticeable difference of 8%.
Another remarkable data in the research is the participants perception increase of
using technology in instruction by the increase of the year of experience. The
difference between the least and the most experienced participants is 14.6%. The
research has similar results for the understanding of technology in school
management as an administrative tool.
DISCUSSIONS
Conclusions/Implications:
A principal is a person who makes the rules in case of priorities in the school
society. His/her effects and implications would give a perception to teachers and
other admins. This is the same for how to understand the use of technology tools
in education. Principals prior use of the function of the technology would direct
the others to the same direction which will shape the students and teachers point
of view to technology in the future.
MacNeil and Delafield (1998) found that when administrators act as technology
leaders, the teachers and students integrate and use technology more
successfully. Yet many school administrators are novice technology users and
have little experience or training in the knowledge and skills required to be
effective technology leaders (Ertmer, Bai, Dong, Khalil, Park, & Wang, 2002).
REFLECTIONS
Students Reflections:
The results of the research are a little different than my expectations. Especially
differences of the results in terms of the gender and year of experience I
expected male participants and least experienced principals would use the
technology mostly for instruction but the results say the opposite. Also the most
experienced principals perception of use of technology in instruction impressed
me because I thought it would be true for young principals. So the thing I changed
in my understanding with this research is experience doesnt always mean
conventional methods and tools.
Reference:
Ertmer, P. A. , Bai, H., Dong, C., Khalil, M., Park, S. H., & Wang, L. (2002). Online
professional development: Building administrators capacity for technology
leadership. Journal of Computing in Teacher Education, 19(1), 5-11.