The Digital Divide in Classrooms: Teacher Technology Comfort and Evaluations

Abstract

A disconnect exists between students’ comfort with using technology for learning and teachers’ comfort in using technology for teaching. Students report the desire for more engaging technology-based assignments. Teachers cite multiple reasons for their hesitancy to use technology in their teaching. The current study investigates whether this disconnect has implications for students’ evaluations of their teachers. Using data from 101 high school students, researchers found that students’ perceptions of their teachers’ comfort with technology impacts their evaluations only when student affect for technology is high. Implications for how this might impact teacher evaluations and directions for future research are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• digital divide
• teacher evaluations
• digital natives
• technology integration