Promotion focus, but not prevention focus of teachers and students matters when shifting towards technology-based instruction in schools

Implementing technology-enhanced learning and teaching in schools causes major changes for both teachers and students. Research in other fields shows that individuals’ regulatory orientation (i.e., promotion and prevention focus) predicts how people deal with such fundamental changes. Our research ties in with a school trial where classes were equipped with tablets, yielding a shift from predominantly analog to technology-enhanced learning and teaching. In this context, we investigated whether the regulatory orientation of teachers ( N = 109) and students ( N = 1,127) related to how they dealt with this change. As expected, teachers with a stronger promotion focus were more likely to perceive the changing teaching situation as a (positively connotated) challenge and to intend to use the tablets in class. Further, students with a strong promotion focus when tablet-based teaching was introduced showed higher technology-related self-efficacy and higher motivation to use digital devices after a few months of using tablets in class. Prevention focus was unrelated to teachers’ and students’ attitudes, behavioral intentions, or motivation. Thus, the concept of regulatory orientation helps explain how teachers and students respond to changes in school, whereby particularly promotion focus appears to be relevant for change processes due to digital transformation in education.