20.9.2 How Some Teachers Have Responded to Change
These views are drawn from responses made by participant teachers in their focus
group (seven teachers in total) to questioning relating to how the implementation of
BYOD has changed them. All noted personal change, or the demand for change.
Some embrace this change, seeing in it the opportunities for developing their
imaginative abilities. This change may go so far as to influence (positively) the very
way some teachers think about their jobs and daily work. One of these changes is to
think about, and put into action, more individualised teaching and less teacher talk.
Ironically, it may be this kind of shift that has motivated some students and parents
to imagine teachers have relinquished their responsibility to‘teach’and just become
‘glorified baby-sitters’. On the other side of the ledger, teachers report the changes
leading to a loss of professional identity, feelings of superfluity and confusion about
their core purpose.
20.9.3 Why Are Teachers Willing to Change?
Data drawn from staff focus groups and interviews make it is clear that there are
teachers who are motivated by their desire to make a difference in the lives of their
students, no matter how difficult and challenging change may be. Some spoke of the
significantly increased workload entailed by implementing BYOD and associated
e-Learning strategies, with implications for personal health and well-being.
Nevertheless, these teachers recognise that they must shoulder the responsibilities
of writing, planning and creating new materials, and a view expressed by several is
of this being an experience akin to thefirst year of teaching. Such teachers
recognise themselves as“accountable to be change agents in their school”(Segedin
2011 , p. 54). Still, the sense of not trying at all produces feelings of guilt and
inadequacy, propelled by a view that working in a technology-rich digital envi-
ronment requires teachers to be‘experts’who are constantly maintaining a position
at the cutting-edge of new technologies and applications.
20.10 Concluding Discussion
Feedback from teacher participants indicated that not many of the criticalfindings
(of which a selection have been presented here) came as a surprise. It will, however,
be in the combination of some of thesefindings, or explanations, that new insights
can emerge. For example, the strong view of some students and parents that the
teachers were‘no longer teaching’(while potentially disparaging and hurtful to
some teachers) might grow from a misunderstanding by the community of the
differences in approach required by e-Learning. Particularly if teachers are
310 L. Benade et al.