A Study of Teachers' Experiences of the Integration of Educational Technology into the New English Language National Curriculum of Kuwait

In recent years, digital technologies have been adopted by teachers and become a fundamental part of classroom teaching in many international contexts (Fullan, 2012). This international adoption of digital technology has generated educational reforms in Kuwait. Grade One teachers in Kuwait are now expected to use digital technology to teach their classes as part of the new curriculum implementation in the country’s state schools.

This study focuses on examining the barriers and enablers to adopting digital technologies faced by English language teachers of Grade One, as well as examining the rate at which these technologies were adopted by the teachers. In order to explore these issues, qualitative data from 32 English language teachers were collected with additional qualitative data obtained from 3 English language Teaching Supervisors. In addition 225 English language teachers recruited in Kuwait completed an anonymous online survey. The qualitative data were coded using thematic analysis, and descriptive statistics produced from the survey. The first theories employed to analyse the data were Ertmer’s (1999) Barriers and Enablers to Change theory, and Koehler and Mishra’s (2009) Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge (TPACK) theory. Roger’s (1983) Diffusion of Innovation Theory was also used to investigate the rate at which English language teachers adopted technology into their teaching.

The research identified a range of limitations and obstacles which were experienced by the teachers during their first year of integrating digital technologies into their lessons. Teachers consistently outlined a lack of preparation by the Ministry as a key factor in determining the extent to which they adopted and integrated digital technology in their teaching. Other barriers included a lack of subject knowledge, and confidence. Teachers varied in terms of the rate at which they adopted the curriculum innovations, with few teachers demonstrating that they were leaders in this area, due to the barriers outlined previously. The implications of the analysis for future policy development in Kuwait are outlined.