A Study Of University English Teachers’ Attitude Toward The Use Of Information And Communication Technology

With the widespread of information and communication technology (ICT) in theworld, it has become a new tool in the field of education. Thus, many developingcountries launched many programs to promote ICT implementation in the classroom,so that ICT can serve better for education. However, ICT implementation had notreached its expectancy for failing to consider teachers’ attitudes. Therefore, this studyaims to investigate university English teachers’ attitudes toward ICT and to explorethe relationship of teachers’ attitudes with a selected set of factors. These factorsincluded teachers’ perceptions of computer attributes, cultural perceptions, teachers’computer competence level and teachers’ characteristics. Then what are the attitudesof university English teachers toward ICT in education? What factors have an effecton university English teachers toward ICT in education? What is the relationshipbetween university English teachers’ attitudes toward ICT in education and theirperceptions of each of the factors? These issues are worth thinking about andinvestigating. The awareness of teachers’ attitudes and analysis of factors thatinfluence teachers’ attitudes will contribute to fostering teachers’ positive attitudes.That shows the utility and necessity.Based on the above questions, first, the thesis introduced Rogers’(1995)diffusion of innovations theory and used it as the theoretical framework, followed byliterature review on teachers’ attitudes toward ICT at home and abroad. Then,questionnaire and interview were used in this study. Questionnaires were distributedto136sample teachers selected randomly from the290university English teachersfrom four universities in Changsha area, and the data was analyzed using bothdescriptive and inferential statistics.Results from this study showed that the participants had positive attitudes towardICT in education. University English teachers were relatively neutral about culturalperceptions of ICT, while the participants had somewhat positive perceptions of theattributes of computers. The study also reported that the teachers have moderate levelsof computer competence. It is examined that significant positive correlations existedbetween teachers’ attitudes toward ICT and three main factors, including teachers’perceptions of computer attributes, cultural perceptions, and teachers’ computercompetence level. In addition, as for teacher characteristics, it was also found that ageand teaching experience had a negative correlation with attitudes, while qualification had a positive correlation with attitudes. Gender, teaching methods were found notsignificantly correlated with attitudes towards ICT.Based on these findings of the study, it was recommended that policy-makershave the responsibility to provide more strategies for incorporating ICT in teachingpractices and offer more training opportunities to teachers to sustain teachers’positiveattitudes toward ICT, and policy makers need to take measures to mitigate theteachers’ concern on corrupt materials on the web. It is presented that the research inthis field should be enriched by other studies with different settings, differentpopulation, sampling procedure, or data collection method.