How Teachers in India Reconfigure their Work Practices around a Teacher-Oriented Technology Intervention
Abstract: The proliferation of mobile devices around the world, combined with falling costs of hardware and Internet connectivity, have resulted in an increasing number of organizations that work to introduce educational technology interventions into low-income schools in the Global South. However, to date, most prior HCI research examining such interventions has focused on interventions that target students. In this paper, we expand prior literature by examining an intervention, called Meghshala, that targets teachers in low-income schools as its primary users. Through interviews and observations with 39 participants from 12 government schools in India, we show how the introduction of a teacher-focused technology intervention causes teachers to reconfigure their work practices, including lesson preparation, in-classroom teaching practices, bureaucratic work processes, and post-teaching feedback mechanisms. We use the concept of material agency to analyze our findings with respect to teacher agency and reconfiguration, and use theories of teacher knowledge to highlight the kinds of knowledge production that teachers in our research context tend to focus on (e.g., content knowledge). Finally, we offer design opportunities for future teacher-focused technology interventions.
Limitations and conclusion: This paper described a qualitative analysis of how teachers in government schools in India reconfigure their work practices to accommodate a technology intervention that specifically focuses on teachers as the primary users. We discussed how these reconfigurations demonstrate teachers’ strong sense of agency and desire to be active contributors to such interventions, rather than passive consumers of technologies that have been designed for them. We also related our findings to current theories of teacher knowledge, highlighting the kinds of knowledge production that teachers in our research tend to focus on, in addition to revealing important gaps in teachers’ knowledge base that are yet to be filled. Finally, we offered design opportunities for researchers and practitioners interested in developing teacher-focused interventions. We acknowledge that our findings are based on a specific case study of one teacher-focused technology intervention: Meghshala. Thus, there is a possibility that some of our findings are specific to Meghshala, although we believe that many aspects of our work will be applicable to other, similar, such interventions. Also, since we partnered with Meghshala in our study, it is possible that we obtained a more positive view of the intervention than we might have if we were not associated with the organization. Our study was also conducted in a specific country (India) and context (government schools), and the schools we worked in may not be representative of all Indian government schools. Future work will be necessary to understand how our findings may generalize to other countries and contexts.