Theses and Dissertations
Date of Award
2025
Document Type
Dissertation - NSU Access Only
Degree Name
Doctor of Education (EdD)
Department
Abraham S. Fischler College of Education and School of Criminal Justice
Advisor
Shery Bennett
Committee Member
Matthew Delaney
Committee Member
Kimberly Durham
Keywords
technology, technology integration, teachers' perception of technology integration, barriers to technology integration, and teachers' beliefs
Abstract
This applied dissertation investigated the impact of professional development on instructional technology implementation in a rural school district in Georgia for K–8 students in a COVID-19 remotely learning context. This study filled a crucial void in the existing literature about how to enhance the quality of teaching and student learning by introducing technology into instruction. The data were gathered through interviews, classroom observations and documentation analyses under the qualitative case study with grounded theory design. It concluded that professional development made teachers more aware of this because technology contained teaching potential. But, even after the concept was created, some of the problems faced when applying it were lack of adequate resources, teacher preparedness, and students’ unwillingness. Practitioner trained teachers achieved greater fidelity in the use of technology in proportion to their degree of confidence and imagination in how they approached the students’ needs. Thus, the finding, that contextual domain specific professional training must be required for content expertise and training capabilities.
The research also revealed that the administration should offer technology support for learning. This result suggested that a slow professional development process might yield a sustainable pattern of using technologies to empower students’ learning through synchronous blended lessons as well as the traditional delivery methods and to increase student performance. This study advances the understanding of how technology enabled professional development can mitigate technology and instructional challenges in education and offers practical tips for educators and school leaders to enhance learning across the lifespan.
NSUWorks Citation
Tapuwanashe Makaya. 2025. Providing Professional Development for Kindergarten Through Eighth Grade Teachers to Ensure Rigorous Instruction in a Remote Learning Setting. Doctoral dissertation. Nova Southeastern University. Retrieved from NSUWorks, Abraham S. Fischler College of Education and School of Criminal Justice. (769)
https://nsuworks.nova.edu/fse_etd/769.