Understanding quality characteristics of EdTech interventions and implementation for disadvantaged pupils

Key details

introduction

In 2019, the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) commissioned an evidence review on the impact of education technology on student attainment. The review highlighted the challenge of keeping abreast of research developments in the field of digital technology, which continues to evolve rapidly (⇡Lewin et al., 2019). Since the publication of this review, teachers across the world have turned to technology to ensure learning continuity for over 1.6 billion learners in lockdown (⇡Karboul, 2020). In England, over two-thirds of schools have introduced, upgraded, or increased their use of technology in this period (⇡CooperGibson Research, 2022).

In the wake of pandemic-induced school closures, teachers have been expected to select and implement new EdTech models without guidance on what works for what students. At present, the evidence base on education technology presents mixed messages about when and how to use technology in the classroom. For example, existing research indicates that disadvantaged students can benefit more from technology than advantaged students (⇡McNally et al., 2016; ⇡Takacs et al., 2015). At the same time, evidence indicates that the use of education technology can exacerbate learning inequality as disadvantaged students have less access to hardware and software (⇡Vicentini et al., 2022).

project overview

In this context, we are working with the EEF to analyse how the use of education technology can raise student attainment across subject domains, with a focus on disadvantaged pupils. The scope of the project goes beyond testing whether EdTech interventions and approaches work, to instead examine how they work. To do this, this research will identify the ‘active ingredients’ of interventions and approaches involving EdTech, from the design of the intervention to implementation.

We are using a sequential mixed-methods approach to identify the mechanisms of EdTech interventions that improve attainment for pupils. The three key project phases are:

1. Initial stakeholder engagement: engage with practitioners through interviews and surveys to ensure that the work and research strategy is closely aligned with insights from teachers and school leaders.
2. Systematic literature review: conduct a systematic literature review with meta-analysis to provide a quantitative synthesis of the impact of different uses of education technology on student attainment. In doing so, this will identify effective examples of using education technology as a requisite for pinpointing the ‘building blocks’ and the ‘mechanisms’ of interventions that improve attainment outcomes.
3. Structured community review of outcomes: draw on the structured community review approach, which addresses the methodological weaknesses of systematic literature reviews. This will further ground our analysis of systems and sequences of mechanisms in the lived experience of education practitioners.

The production of a final report will aim to underpin EEF work on digital technology and could potentially serve a variety of purposes, including school facing outputs, future EEF research agendas and an update to the EEF Teaching and Learning Toolkit.

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