JOURNAL ARTICLE REVIEW TEMPLATE

North American University

Education Department
M.Ed. in Educational Leadership / M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction
EDUC 5324 Integrating Technology into Education
Name: Servet Oksuz

Date: 6/4/2016

Cite the reviewed article in APA format:

Waxman, H., Boriack, A., Yuan-Hsuan, L., & MacNeil, A. (2013). Principals' Perceptions
of the Importance of Technology in Schools. Contemporary Educational
Technology, 4(3), 187-196

INTRODUCTION
Research Questions (if research questions are not specifically mentioned, what is
the theoretical background or overarching theme):
There are two questions studied in this research: (i) What are the principals perceptions
about the use of technology and (ii) is the principals perceptions are dependent on their
gender and years of experience.

Purpose of the research:

To get an idea about how the principals perceptions about the technology affect the
schools use of technology. Also, there are open ended, cognitive interview approach to
understand how these perceptions depends on the type of school and the principals
experience.
METHODOLOGY
What is the methodology for the research or approach used to understand the
issue? Provide information regarding the following:

Participants: 310 school principals from a large metropolitan area in US

Southwest region.
Procedures: Convenience sampling is used to choose principals and they are
divided into categories according to their gender and years of expertise. The
gender categories are: male and female; and expertise categories are: 0-3 years,
4-7 years, 8-11 years and 15+ years of experience.
Data Collection Methods/Data Source: The questionnaire includes both
qualitative and quantitative tools. Some recent graduate students administered

the questionnaire as part of their principal certification.

Data Analysis: The data is coded into meaningful categories and another
researcher has chosen 10% of the categories for consistency. Inter-coder
reliability gave a high level of agreement as Cohens kappa 0.94
RESULTS
Findings or Results (or main points of the article):
Major function of technology is divided into six categories as: communication, instruction,
data sharing & management, resource, administrative tasks, and student learning. The
proportions of each category differ by gender and year of expertise.
DISCUSSIONS
Conclusions/Implications (for your profession):
As the year of expertise increases, the perception of technology is changing from a
supplemental tool for the work place to primary tool for instruction and learning. Also,
female principals are more inclined to consider the technology as a tool for student
learning and the male principals consider as a tool for instruction
REFLECTIONS
Students Reflections (changes to your understanding; implications for your
school/work):
The perception of technology is still changing by the vast improvement in technology. As
studied in the research, by the time passes, people consider the technology as a primary
tool. If the same research will applied 10 years later, we may expect a significant change
in the distributions of categories.