Skill or Will? Effects of Teacher Knowledge and Motivation on the Quality of Technology-Enhanced Lesson Plans

In an expertise study with 94 mathematics teachers varying in their teaching experience (i.e., pre-service, induction, in-service teachers), we examined effects of teachers’ professional knowledge and motivational beliefs on their ability to effectively integrate educational technology into their lesson plans. We assessed teachers’ professional knowledge (i.e., content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, technological knowledge), and their motivational beliefs (i.e., self-efficacy, utility-value). Additionally, teachers developed a worked-out lesson plan for introducing the Pythagorean theorem to secondary students. They were explicitly instructed to refer to the integration of technology in their lesson plans. Experienced teachers considered more cognitively activating tasks in their lesson plans and exploited the potential of technology more than inexperienced teachers. Mediation analyses revealed that this effect was explained by teachers’ perceived utility-value of educational technology but not by their professional knowledge. These findings suggest that teachers’ motivational beliefs play a decisive role for effectively integrating technology in mathematics instruction.