Exploring Teacher Attitude towards Information Technology with a Gender Perspective

Abstract

To acquire benefits from technology in education, due consideration must be given to attitude of teachers which plays an important role in guiding and predicting future successful use of technology in the classroom. With the feminization in the teaching fraternity and the studies reporting gender specific perception towards usefulness of technology and ease of use, the present study was, therefore, undertaken to examine the attitude of teachers towards use of technology in teaching with a gender perspective. A survey was conducted on 482 secondary school teachers from India, using Attitude towards Information Technology scale. The attitude of the respondents were assessed in terms of four dimensions; namely significance in life, usefulness for students, productivity for teaching, and teacher’s interest and acceptance. The quantitative data were analyzed using appropriate statistical techniques like t-test and ANOVA. Findings suggest that with regard to different factors viz., training, location of schools, medium of instruction and marital status, no gender specific differences in attitude towards information technology was found. Based on these results, it can be concluded that the effective use of technology in classrooms should be expected from all teachers irrespective of their gender.

Keywords

• Attitudes toward information technology,Gender differences,Teacher attitudes,ICT in the classroom

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