Conference Program

Over the past two decades, digitalization has been regarded across OECD countries as the primary vehicle for school modernization (Selwyn, 2021). This has translated into growing public investment in digital innovation in schools, alongside increasing pressure on teachers to become active participants in the digital re-infrastructuring of learning environments and to embrace a radical vision of pedagogical innovation through digital technologies (OECD, 2025). Against this policy backdrop, research efforts have multiplied to understand how the integration of digital technologies into teaching practices is evolving, and how teachers' opinions and attitudes toward both established and emerging digital tools are changing (Sarra et al., 2025; Wijnen et al., 2023).

This paper examines the evolution of digital technology use and related attitudes among Italian teachers, drawing on data from the IV Italian national teachers’ survey conducted on a national sample of teachers during 2025. The analysis takes place against the backdrop of a profound transformation in the technological landscape since the previous wave of data collection (dated 2008).

This survey provides a rich set of questions devoted to investigate the use of ed-tech in classroom activities, the agency of students in managing digital devices during school hours, and attitudes towards the impact of the technological trasformation undergone by the school system in the last 20 years.

Findings reveal that certain teaching practices — particularly those involving the use of interactive whiteboards (IWBs) under direct teacher control — have become fully mainstream, no longer showing significant differences related to teacher age and only marginal disciplinary variation. By contrast, practices that require continuous, active technology use by students, such as collaborative tasks or content creation activities, remain less widespread, albeit growing.

The paper also highlights a shift in teachers' attitudes toward the defining technological innovation of the current moment — artificial intelligence — which, compared to the reception once given to the Internet in the previous survey (Gui, 2010), appears markedly more cautious and reflective. This measured stance suggests a greater awareness of both the potential and the risks associated with the rapid integration of new tools into educational settings.

To explore whether technology users can be grouped into meaningful profiles, the paper employs cluster analysis, aiming to identify distinct types of teachers based on their patterns of use and their underlying attitudes.

Overall, teachers express a broadly positive view of the role that digital technologies have come to play in their professional lives. At the same time, they voice considerable concern about students' use of social media and its potential effects on their wellbeing.