Educational Technology in German Primary Schools

Abstract: The increasing importance of technology in everyday life demands to look at this matter in the context of education as well. Whereas Educational Technology (EdTech) has been re-searched mainly in higher education, there is only little research focusing on primary schools. The education of students should not suffer from an inadequate engagement with EdTech. Nevertheless, there are countries like Germany, where it seems that the already done invest-ments into EdTech have been too little and in an unsatisfactory way, respectively. Hence, the way EdTech is invested in and engaged with in primary schools must be adjusted. This research aims to identify essential factors that need to be addressed so that EdTech can transform into a state where it is engaged with as a regular means of tuition. We argue that this state must be reached because then, EdTech is not inferior to any traditional means of education. Based on the theories of the UTAUT, the Sunk Cost Fallacy and the HCT we develop a mod-el that argues about how this transformation can take place by going through the phases of attitude, adoption and adaption. Conducting an online survey in German primary schools leads to the identification of the essential factors.