Executive summary The effects of investments in digital equipment in southern Italian schools.

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1 1 Executive summary The effects of investments in digital equipment in southern Italian schools. Research Question In the starting phase of programming of EU cohesion policy, Italian authorities needed information on the results of past expenditure on digital technology in the public school system, in order to inform the new investment strategy. In the period different ERDF programs, central and regional, as well as domestic regional development funds, had invested significant amounts to provide public schools with digital equipment such as Interactive Whiteboards (IWBs), Computers, Tablets and Wifi networks. The choice to invest at the intersection of ICT and public schools in Italy is supported by a wide public consensus. However, the same rhetoric, which favors this relatively new field of investment, hides risks of inefficient, or even wasteful, use of the funds. First of all, while solid theory and empirical evidence asserts that education has a positive effect on economic and social development, the relationship between the use of digital devices and the effectiveness of teaching is not as clear. Moreover, for what concerns Italy, questions could also be raised about the capacity of a large share of teachers to effectively use the new digital equipment. Finally, the technological upgrade of schools is by no means the only need of the Italian school system: physical upgrading of school buildings and teachers' training are some of the alternative uses for the scarce investment resources available. A study aimed at drawing policy suggestions from past investment experience was thus commissioned by the Evaluation Unit of the Department of Development Policies to a team of four experts with the main following evaluation questions. A) How do schools use the technologies made available? How often are they actually used? In what way do they change teaching methods? Do they entail a higher participation of students, or the use of online resources? B) What effects do technologies have on students' learning? Does a positive relationship exist between ICT equipment and performance? Does this effect differ among individuals? Is there an effect on non academic competences such as the students' motivation or their digital skills? C) Under which conditions do the positive outcomes occur? Do education grade, student and teacher populations affect the results? Which educational practices appear more fruitful? This set of questions was designed with the help of a Steering Committee, including the Ministry of Education and the National institute for research and innovation in teaching, whose function was also helping the research group to access and interpret the available data. Description of the Subject of Evaluation In the period, the Italian National Strategic Framework for the use of EU funds devoted one specific objective to the technological upgrade of schools. The objective increasing dissemination, access and use of information society within the schools' and training systems assumed that digital assisted teaching could have positive effects on the students' learning performance, digital skills, and on the schools in remote areas.

2 2 The main policy tool devoted to this strategy was the national ERDF program Environments for learning managed by the Italian Ministry of Education, which pursued the structural upgrade of public schools in the four lagging regions of the Italian South (Campania, Puglia, Calabria, and Sicily). This 1.5 Billion Euro program invested approximately 440 Million Euro in digital technology (corresponding to an average cost of approximately 200 Euro per student) and reached almost all schools of the four regions at all education grades. Additional domestic and EU funds have been employed in the same time period in most other Italian regions. Their total amount is not easy to assess as they have been allocated and spent following a less structured approach, although under the auspices of the same national strategy. The evaluation study included the other four southern Italian regions, which in the same period tried to compensate for their not being eligible to the national program, by investing regional and national domestic funds in similar digital technology. The eight regions of the Italian south considered in the evaluation constitute the Mezzogiorno, the macro region historically targeted by Italian regional development policy. Methodology The study has addressed the same set of evaluation questions through different lines of inquiry, qualitative and quantitative, using both secondary data and information directly collected. This approach sometimes defined methodological triangulation allows for a high level of confidence with the results obtained, if the different methods employed lead to converging result. The main lines of inquiry are the following. A two tiered survey targeted teachers and school principals from a stratified random sample of more than 300 schools located in the eight regions. The sample of schools was designed to be representative of all grades and, for the secondary level, of the three main types of high school: Lyceum, Technical, and Vocational institutes. Two questionnaires were designed to collect information about the use of technology, and the opinions of the school personnel. The principals of 323 schools responded to the first questionnaire administered through computer assisted telephone interviews (CATI). Out of a sample of approximately teachers from the same schools, responded to the second questionnaire through a CAWI interface. The ensuing sample of teachers is in itself representative of several socio demographic characteristics of the teacher population. The surveys were conducted between May and July One day visits to approximately 50 schools were carried out, so as to compose a sample that, although not statistically representative, would include schools of different regions, grades, and (for the high schools) sector focus. Covering all the Mezzogiorno regions allowed for including schools where technology was provided by the national program, schools funded by different sources, and schools where technology was virtually absent or outdated. The visits were conducted by groups of at least two researchers and followed a standard format including a morning meeting with principals and staff, visits to classrooms, focus groups with students, and a final meeting with teachers of different subjects. Meetings covered organizational issues posed by the introduction of technology, as well as practices and challenges related to teaching the different subjects. Only one visit was refused and another one was excluded from the sample considered for being a positive outlier, thus bringing the final sample size to 48. The school visits took place between March and October Finally, a statistical analysis based on secondary data was conducted specifically to address the evaluation question on direct effects on learning. A fixed effect regression model was specified and used to test the relationship at the school level between the change in stock of technology and the change in student performance at national standardized student tests. National data on the

3 3 technology endowment of schools were used to construct the main explanatory variable as a rate of change in the stock of digital equipment available at the level of school site (as usually school institutions comprise more than one site). The outcomes were measured by a variable constructed as the deviation of average school site level learning results (at standardized national tests) from the national average. The student performance results taken into account were those of eightgraders completing middle school for which a sufficiently long time series was available. This analysis was performed between January and March Generally speaking, the study did not employ a best practice approach or intended to draw lessons from cases of excellence, but, consistently with the universal nature of public education, strived to identify effective solutions devised in normal school environments, which could be applicable in the largest number of schools. The school visits were intentionally conducted during a long period which started before and ended after the surveys, in order both to gain useful elements for better investigating causal relationships through the questionnaires and to help interpreting results emerging from the surveys. The evaluation costed approximately euro, and lasted one year. Data The study produced information on the use of the digital technology purchased by schools with the financial support of cohesion policy in the period, as well as on the obstacles to the effectiveness of this investment. For reasons of space, in this section we summarize only one subset of the evaluation results, that we consider more relevant for policy. A first set of results relates to the use of the digital technologies available at the school premises. Generally speaking, while the cases in which technologies have been found to be completely idle are rare, use below their potential is quite common. The results of the teacher survey indicate that a large share of teachers use ICTs in the «backstage» of their work: to prepare lessons (61,8%) or to prepare tests administered on paper (45,8%). A minority of teachers uses ICTs in classroom: 19% reported to use it frequently, 45.7% sometimes, 35.3% declared never to use them. This distribution is affected by school grade and high school type. The percentage of frequent users is higher than average at the high school level (21.2%) and, within high schools, among teachers of technical schools (25.8%). Language teachers are also more likely (27.4%) than others to be frequent users. If you never use digital technologies in school you are more likely to be a primary school teacher (40.2%). Teachers who hold positions of responsibility inside the school organization (the principal's staff) are more likely to be frequent users, and less likely to have never used technology for teaching. In classroom use is often quite basic. This does not depend on an utter lack of computer skills by teachers. In line with the general well educated segment of Italian population, a large majority (86%) of responding teachers use the internet at least daily. However, the introduction of digital equipment in most cases has not changed their traditional way of teaching, which remains centered around frontal lessons. In particular: IWBs are commonly used as projectors (34.6%), or for searching online (31.6%) tasks which could be carried out by connecting a laptop or tablet with a simple projector. The equipment now in use in most schools seems to display only part of its potential also from the point of view of the creation of virtuous schoolwide networks for content production and collaboration. Content exchange among teachers is rare. Most teachers report using digital materials which are self produced or downloaded from the internet. Approximately 10% of teachers, depending on school grade, report using regularly content produced by their colleagues

4 4 from the same school or other schools. Teaching software is used more significantly in Math and foreign language, for supporting special students needs, and in primary school. The survey and school visits also collected rich information on the teachers opinions about ICTrelated benefits, and on their attitude towards the new digital media in schools. When asked to identify the main benefits gained by using digital technology, the academic learning of students does not rank in the top place of their assessment. Only 59% of teachers thinks that ICTs directly increase learning outcomes of students. In particular the school visits have confirmed the doubts raised by recent literature, about the effects on above average students. On the other hand, other significant advantages are perceived. 75.6% of teachers thinks that ICTs help to include special needs' students, and 74.2% thinks ICTs increase the students motivation. A joint reading of the survey data and of the face to face conversations with teachers and students, indicates that the use of digital equipment is considered both necessary and effective in attracting the students' attention. However, it is not devoid of risks in terms of possibly reducing the students' focus on reading, writing, and in depth reasoning. For 70.2% of teachers, one positive effect of introducing ICT in school activity is the growth in students digital skills. Developing these skills is one possible and partial antidote to the risk that the digitalization of teaching ends up deteriorating the quality of education, critical reasoning, and other fundamental goals of schooling. National guidelines set by the Ministry of Education for all public schools already include digital skills and digital citizenship among the learning achievements to be attained at the end of the school cycle. However, it is not currently clear how they should be taught (and by whom) within the school curriculum, or how they should be measured. The differences in attitude towards the advent of technology among subgroups of school personnel appear also interesting and evocative of a disconnection between the public discourse and the reality in use of digital equipment. School principals are more enthusiastic than their staff, which in turn are more enthusiastic than normal teachers, about the effects of technologies on learning, and on other positive outcomes of schooling. The statistical analysis of the relationship between the stock of technology and average learning performance of school complexes, showed a marginally positive and statistically significant effect both for reading and mathematics in the more general model. However, a more detailed geographical analysis shows that the positive effect is mainly concentrated in Northern Italy. The coefficients, in fact, become non significant in Central Italy and even negative in the South, particularly in the four Convergence regions, which have been funded by ERDF. The most reasonable explanation for this is that in different areas of the country the school system has a different ability to capitalize on the arrival of new technology. These results do not support the (often implicit) assumption of a direct and important effect of ICT on learning levels. The school visits have been particularly useful in uncovering some very practical obstacles to the regular and effective use of digital equipment in daily teaching. In some of the schools visited, the broadband capacity, or the internal w lan and wi fi networks, were not sufficient to exploit the online functions of digital devices. The IWBs and other equipment in some cases needed maintenance (like the replacement of spare parts) that was not easy to provide for lack of competences internal to schools, or because the services had not been procured together with the hardware. Having the equipment ready for use in the classroom often made a difference allowing a regular, rather than occasional, use. Material aspects that may appear trivial in some cases hindered the effective employment of technologies like the absence of a safe case inside the classroom to store laptop computers to be connected to projectors, or the lack of appropriate

5 5 window curtains to reduce the lighting when projecting or using IWBs. Taking into consideration such practical details would have proven very simple at the time of procuring the equipment, and ultimately very useful. The use of smartphones in classroom and for teaching purposes deserves some discussion. While the use of these devices is in general prohibited in public schools, 20.5% of teachers reported that they allow smartphone use in classroom for teaching purposes. One vocational high school teacher justified this practice as follows: They use it anyway: I just try to make them look for something they don t know. Policy Significance Public schools in the Italian south vary, in cultural and organizational terms, in terms of their readiness to absorb digital technology. Therefore, the procedure through which digital equipment has been allocated to schools, the competitive call, can be considered effective and should be maintained for the future, for it is more likely to deliver technology appropriate to the context. Even in the case of the national ERDF program, which has reached virtually all the eligible schools, it still makes sense to ask schools to reflect on their needs and skills while preparing their application. In fact, school visits showed that in preparing applications the set up of internal groups including the principal and teachers provided benefits for the management and integration of technology. Funding the upgrade of ICT equipment at the school level based on application projects, of course, is not sufficient to ensure that it will be employed fruitfully. The cases examined suggest that the digitalization of Italian schools should follow a progressive, gradual sequence, avoiding shortcuts or great leaps forward. The conditions that, at the school level, have been found to be conducive to a more intense and effective use of digital technology are in part outside of the domain of intervention of regional cohesion policy. Nevertheless, the evaluation has chosen to highlight them as possible elements of a wider strategy for the Italian public school system. The first is to promote and support mutual training projects whereby teachers who are more competent or have completed valid digital teaching experiences, can share their knowledge with others. The second is to support thematic creative and/or collaborative educational projects which entail the use of digital media, without having the ITCs as their direct objective. The third practical suggestion, clearly linked to the other two, is to provide training to teachers on the smart use of devices for slide presentations, the most common activity carried out in the classroom, to prevent the risk that the digitalization of teaching corresponds to a loss of depth in knowledge. IWBs in many cases have proven not to be easy to maintain and operate. Less complex and cheaper technological solutions have been identified in the course of the evaluation research. Most results, qualitative and quantitative, support one quite general policy implication. The case for introducing ICTs in schools has not been correctly specified in the past investment strategy, creating expectations that the availability of digital teaching tools would have increased learning outcomes by itself. The goals for introducing digital technology should be reconsidered: less emphasis should be placed on ICT for learning and more on learning how to critically use ICTs. Given that digital skills are increasingly considered in their own right as a basic competence that modern schools should provide, there is no need to claim a positive effect on learning as a rationale for upgrading the technological endowment of public schools. Rather, the school system should include such skills more clearly in national curriculum, clarifying how the already specified educational outcomes are to be attained, and who should be responsible for them. Digital skills should be assessed through both teachers evaluation and standardized tests, in the same way as the other basic skills are.

6 6 ANNEX 1 TABLES Table 1 Frequency of use of ITC in teaching by southern Italian teachers in different school grades, percentage values Question: How often do you use any digital communication technology (ICT) during your lessons? Primary Lower Upper secondary secondary Total Often 14,9 20,9 21,2 19,0 Sometimes 45,2 46,4 45,7 45,7 Never 39,9 32,6 33,1 35,3 Total Source: Teacher Survey Table 2 Frequency of several classroom teaching practices involving ICT, percentage values Question: In detail, how often do you practice the following in the classroom? Source:: Teacher survey Daily Weekly Seldom Never Using a IWB or projector to show presentations, videos, 11,8 24,1 20,2 44,0 websites, etc. Using the IWB like a blackboard 15,9 13,1 18,3 52,8 Using the interactive functions of the IWB 6,9 10,1 22,8 60,2 Saving and sharing lessons made with the IWB 6,1 9,5 22,4 62,0 Having students produce documents or other content 4,8 18,0 29,8 47,4 Administer student assessment or self evaluation tests 2,3 11,3 29, Ask students to perform online research 6,2 26,5 24,9 42,3 Using online content management platforms 3,2 8,9 25,3 62,6 Using teaching software during the lesson 7,6 19,1 26,4 46,8 Table 3 To what extent teachers and school principals believe in different positive effects of digital technology on teaching, percentage of answers 4 and 5 added together Question: To what extent do you agree (on a 1 5 scale) with the following statements? ICTs... All Non School Staff Teachers staff principals Increase the attractiveness of the school 67,5 66,1 69,7 87,2 Increase the students' learning 59,9 58,1 62,4 84,0 Increase the digital skills of students 70,2 69,0 71,9 87,0 Increase the quality of teaching 58,8 56,5 62,1 82,1 Enhance the creativity of students 55,6 53,6 58,6 69,3 Facilitate group work 60,2 58,9 62,3 71,2 Increase the motivation and involvement of students 74,2 72,9 76,2 91,3 Help the inclusion of special needs' students 73,4 73,5 75,3 86,7 Help the inclusion of students with disabilities 75,6 74,6 77,2 86,7 Increase the efficiency of school organization 68,6 66,3 72,0 79,2 Are not avoidable in order to update the school 68,6 66,6 71,7 84,8 Source: Teacher survey, and school principals' survey

7 7 Table 4 Coefficients measuring the effects of the technological endowment index of school complexes on the average scores in language and math: shown separately for Italy, and each of the three macro regions Italia North Center South Convergence South nonconvergence obj regions ITALIAN LANGUAGE 0,11*** 0,23*** 0,07 0,06 0,14** 0,07 Total observations Total groups corr(u_i, Xb) 0,1617 0,072 0,0195 0,4259 0,4104 0,1563 Prob > F rho 0,518 0,574 0,387 0,484 0,5 0,389 F test all u_i=0 2,05*** 2,29*** 1,41*** 1,56*** 1,66*** 1,23*** R sq overall 0,0745 0,135 0,0603 0,0053 0,0012 0,0231 R sq within 0,0500 0,0853 0,0212 0,0510 0,0523 0,0619 R sq between 0,0803 0,1339 0,0915 0,0014 0,0005 0,0035 R squared 0,6200 0,6394 0,5180 0,5494 0,5674 0,4971 Adj R squared 0,3752 0,4247 0,2095 0,2308 0,2605 0,1396 MATHEMATICS 0,17*** 0,40*** 0,09 0,16** 0,26*** 0,03 Total observations Total groups corr(u_i, Xb) 0,3275 0,011 0,1085 0,4815 0,4343 0,0935 Prob > F 0 0 0, ,0009 rho 0,513 0,488 0,422 0,51 0,508 0,421 F test all u_i=0 2,01*** 2,28*** 1,68*** 1,69*** 1,76*** 1,47*** R sq overall 0,0169 0,1039 0,0624 0,0004 0,0001 0,0094 R sq within 0,0403 0,1026 0,0156 0,0389 0,0469 0,0245 R sq between 0,0158 0,1181 0,0996 0,0047 0,0021 0,0036 R squared 0,5967 0,6369 0,5580 0,5660 0,5745 0,5363 Adj R squared 0,3351 0,4206 0,2722 0,2550 0,2682 0,2030 ***= p<0,001; **=p<0,05; *=p<0,1 Table 5 Rules and actual use of smartphones in class by grade and school type; percentage values Question: When it comes to the use of smartphones in class, during your hours the students. Don't have access to it (left in custody or at home).are not allowed to use it and keep it turned off Are not allowed to use it but someone (secretly) keeps it on Are sometimes allowed to use it for teaching purposes, with my permission Primary 83,0 10,8 1,5 4,1 0,6 Middle 24,0 37,6 19,5 18,1 0,9 Liceo 7,8 19,3 39,0 32,0 1,8 Technical 6,5 12,0 35,4 43,0 3,1 Vocational 8,1 16,8 32, ,6 Total 38,1 20,3 19,7 20,5 1,4 Source: Teacher Survey Use it on a regular basis for teaching purposes

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