TDNet Discover

The purpose of this quantitative, comparative study was to examine the relationship between school-level technology infrastructure indicators and administrator-reported perceptions that technology supports student engagement in active learning in U.S. primary schools, and to determine whether perceived engagement outcomes differed between schools with and without take-home device policies. Grounded in the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework, the study investigated whether access-oriented infrastructure conditions were associated with school-reported engagement outcomes. A nonexperimental, correlational and comparative design was used to analyze secondary data from the 2019-2020 National Center for Education Statistics Fast Response Survey System. The sample consisted of nationally representative public primary schools in the United States. Technology infrastructure was operationalized using indicators of computer quality and internet reliability, and engagement was measured using administrator-reported Likert-scale items reflecting perceived academic improvement associated with technology use. Descriptive statistics were calculated, and because assumptions of normality were violated, Spearman’s rank-order correlation and Mann-Whitney U tests were conducted. Results indicated no statistically significant relationship between infrastructure indicators and reported engagement perceptions and no statistically significant difference in engagement outcomes between schools with and without take-home device policies. Findings suggest that access conditions alone may function as enabling factors rather than direct drivers of perceived engagement. Future research should examine instructional implementation variables and multilevel factors influencing technology integration.