Hierarchical analysis of in-service teachers’ barriers to technology-integrated instruction: A review of 2000–2024 publications

Barriers to technology adoption in education have emerged as a critical issue in technology-integrated instruction, widely recognized as key factors shaping teachers’ willingness and readiness to adopt technology in classroom practice. This systematic literature review analyzed in-service teachers’ barriers to technology-integrated instruction, based on 116 empirical studies published from 2000 to 2024 in the Web of Science SSCI database. A four-order hierarchical framework was proposed in this review to analyze the barriers: (1) First-order barriers, which include limited systemic support such as lack of resources, technical support, and time; (2) Second-order barriers, involving inadequate beliefs and attitudes such as teachers’ concerns, emotion, and resistance to technology use; (3) Third-order barriers, addressing classroom management challenges; and (4) Fourth-order barriers, related to the lack of design thinking. Results drawn from the 116 studies revealed that first-order barriers were the most frequently mentioned challenges, followed by the second-, third-, and fourth-order barriers. Many studies identified overlapping barriers, with the combination of first- and second-order barriers being the most frequently mentioned, revealing more frequent co-occurrence of limited systemic support and inadequate beliefs and attitudes. Moreover, university teachers exhibited particularly higher occurrence rates across the second-, third-, and fourth-order barriers. This review also investigated the role of COVID-19 pandemic for the teachers’ barriers to technology integration. Compared to non-pandemic studies, teachers confronted significantly higher occurrence rates of the second- and third-order barriers to technology integration during the COVID-19 pandemic. This implied that the sudden shift to fully online instruction increased teachers’ internal resistance, and highlighted the challenges of classroom management in a fully online instructional environment. • This review analyzed teachers’ barriers to technology-integrated instruction • A four-order hierarchical framework of barriers was proposed • First-order barriers (limited systemic support) were the most frequent challenges • The pandemic plays a role in the occurrence rate of different barriers