What do upper secondary school teachers want to know from research on the use of ICT and how does this inform a research design?

This study investigates what teachers taking part in a longitudinal research project on the use of ICT for teaching and learning in three upper secondary schools in Sweden want to learn more about. At the beginning of the project eighty-four teachers were invited to respond to a questionnaire relating to what teachers wanted to learn more about during their participation in a research project, both for themselves, their colleagues and their students. The questionnaire consisted of Likert-scale and open-ended questions. Sixty teachers responded, thereby yielding a response rate of 71%. In focus in this paper is a qualitative content analysis of the open-ended questions. The analysis revealed six desired areas of learning: (a) technological aspects, (b) how to use ICT for teaching and learning, (c) the Learning Management System (LMS), (d) safety and plagiarism, (e) best practice and (f) collaboration and professional development. The aspects of knowledge addressed in these themes were analysed and discussed in relation to the TPACK model. A conclusion that can be drawn from the analysis is that the teachers inquired different forms of knowledge and that interpretation of ‘technological pedagogical content knowledge’ only emerged in one of the themes. This study then informed the research design in multiple ways, the two most apparent being a survey of students acknowledging teachers’ expressed research interests and the design and implementation of a formative intervention group interview.