Educational Administration: Theory, Research, and Practice

The purpose of the study is to build a model that predicts the level of technology acceptance by pre-service teachers at a teacher training institute in Singapore. It examines relationships among variables associated with factors that influence technology acceptance. Data was collected from 475 participants using a survey questionnaire. Employing structural equation modelling, a hypothesized model was tested for model fit in the study. The resulting model is found to have a good fit. Perceived usefulness, attitude towards computer use, and computer self-efficacy have direct effect on pre-service teachers' technology acceptance, whereas perceived ease of use, technological complexity, and facilitating conditions affect technology acceptance indirectly. These six variables account for approximately 27.1% of the variance of behavioural intention. Perceived usefulness appeared to the strongest determinant of behavioural intention.

Modelling technology acceptance in education: A study of pre-service teachers

Preparing preservice teachers for ICT integration in the classrooms is a key focus for many teacher education institutes. This paper examines the perceived development of preservice teachers in terms of their technological knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, content knowledge and the synthesis of such knowledge, i.e., the technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge (TPACK). A questionnaire adapted from Schmidt, Baran, Thompson, Mishra, Koehler, and Shin (2009) was validated using factor analyses and the preservice teachers' TPACK perceptions before and after their ICT course were examined. The results reveal statistical significant gains with good effect sizes. Regression analysis further reveals that technological knowledge, pedagogical knowledge and content knowledge are all significant predictors of preservice teachers' TPACK, with pedagogical knowledge having the largest impact. Implications for designing the ICT instruction of preservice teachers are discussed.

Facilitating preservice teachers' development of technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge (TPACK)

Among the key players in any effective integration of technology in teaching and learning is the teacher. Despite the research that has been conducted to examine the factors that explain teachers' intention to use technology, few have developed a model to statistically explain the interactions among these factors and how they influence teachers' intention to use technology. Five variables (perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, subjective norm, facilitating conditions, and attitude towards use) and behavioural intention to use technology were used to build a research model in this study and structural equation modelling was used for parameter estimation and model testing. Self-reported data were gathered from 592 teachers from schools in Singapore. Results revealed a good model fit and of the nine hypotheses formulated in this study, eight were supported. Subjective norm was not found to be a significant influence on teachers' intention to use technology while the other four variables were.

Factors influencing teachers' intention to use technology: Model development and test

Within the field of educational technology, Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) has been theorized as a seven-factor construct to describe teacher's integration of information and communication technology (ICT) in their teaching. However, this framework has yet to be successfully validated through survey instruments. This paper examines the construct validity of a TPACK survey that was contextualized for the pedagogical approaches employed in a 12-week ICT course designed with reference to the TPACK framework for Singaporean primary school pre-service teachers. Using this framework, the researchers were able to uncover five of the seven TPACK constructs which were a better model fit as compared with several extant studies of TPACK surveys. Using these results, pre and post-course structural equation models were constructed to explain the relationships amongst the different constructs of teachers' TPACK perceptions. It was found that pedagogical knowledge had a direct impact on TPACK at the beginning of the course. As teachers made connections between their technological knowledge and pedagogical knowledge to form technological pedagogical knowledge during the course, the direct relation between pedagogical knowledge and TPACK became insignificant where as the relations between pedagogical knowledge and technological pedagogical knowledge, and technological pedagogical knowledge and TPACK were strengthened. The comparison between the pre and post-course models also revealed that the pre-service teachers' perceived relations between content knowledge and TPACK changes from insignificant to significant. The implications of these findings and suggestions to improve the construct validation of the TPACK framework are discussed in this paper.

Modeling primary school pre-service teachers' Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) for meaningful learning with information and communication technology (ICT)

The development of modern technologies and their extension to every domain of our daily life nowadays is an indisputable fact. The widespread use of computers renders training in these technologies necessary. Consequently, computers were soon introduced into the Greek educational system. Factors related to the nature of the teacher's personality, such as computer self-efficacy, self-concept, attitudes, motivation and needs are considered crucial to the integration and development of modern technologies in education. This study examines the relationship between individual characteristics of secondary school teachers and computer self-efficacy as well as teacher prospects with regard to modern technologies.

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Aik. Papagianni

Papers

Individual characteristics and computer self-efficacy in secondary education teachers to integrate technology in educational practice