Examining Factors That Influence Secondary School English Teachers’ Intentions To Use Technology In Teaching:A Study Of Ethnic Minority Teachers In China

Technology-enhanced English teaching is one of the manifestations of the educational modernization in the information era.However,teachers do not deeply integrate technology in English teaching,which does not benefit teachers’ teaching effectiveness and their professional development.Researchers explored English teachers’ attitudes towards technology use and their actual behavior,but with very few studies being contextualized in ethnic minority regions.Therefore,one of purposes of this study is precisely explore the real case and condition of ethnic minority English teachers’ technology use,and factors influenced their technology use.Through observations,semi-structured interviews,and surveys,this study explores the following research questions: 1)What is the status quo of ethnic minority English teachers’ technology use in secondary schools? 2)What factors influence ethnic minority English teachers’ intentions to use technology in secondary school English teaching? 3)To what extent do these factors explain ethnic minority English teachers’ intention to use technology in secondary schools?The results show that: 1)Ethnic minority secondary school English teachers use technology to provide authentic language learning materials and examine students’ learning;they use Power Point,laser pointer and digital blackboard in teaching and their usage is generally at the communicative CALL level.2)The factors influencing ethnic minority secondary school English teachers’ use of technology include technology-related policies,performance expectancy,effort expectancy,facilitating condition(technical support and school support),and social influence(students’ needs and leaders’ requirements).3)Ethnic minority secondary school English teachers generally intend to use technology.Perceived importance of technology-related policy(PITP),performance expectancy(PE),and social influence(SI)significantly affect their intention to use technology,while influences of effort expectancy(EE)and facilitating condition(FC)on technology using intention do not achieve statistical significance.The advanced implications were put up in line with preceding findings.1)Policymakers should refine technology-related policies,strengthen the importance of policies,and encourage English teachers to integrate technology in teaching.2)Professional trainings should be provided to English teachers based on their needs to improve English teachers’ performance expectancy on the use of technology.3)Ethnic minority English teachers should improve their technological,pedagogical,and content knowledge.All in all,this study enriched technology acceptance literature and provided a deep understanding of factors that influence ethnic minority English teachers’ technology use,which further enlightened English teaching in minority areas of China.