DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ARABIC AND ENGLISH MEDIUM SCHOOL LEARNERS IN TERMS OF E-LEARNING TECHNOLOGY ACCEPTANCE AND USE FROM THE ASPECT OF THE CONSTRUCTIVIST LEARNING APPROACH
Abstract
Schools in Iraq use Arabic, and English, as the language of instruction. This study aims to examine the impact of language of instruction on students’ attitudes towards technology, teaching practices, and learning outcomes in secondary and upper primary schools in Iraq. This research study employed a quantitative approach to explore the differences in influencing factors such as, constructivist learning approach, student investigation, respect for difference, attitude towards technology use, perceived usefulness, perceived ease to use, learning facility that affect the acceptance of e-learning technology and perceived e-learning outcomes by incorporating a constructivist learning approach between schools that use either Arabic or English as the language of instruction. The data were obtained from 936 secondary and upper primary school students based in Erbil through a self-report questionnaire. A structural equation modeling approach was implemented to analyze the data and test the hypotheses in this study. This study revealed that students studying in English medium schools showed stronger positive effects from the Constructivist learning approach on their perceived e-learning outcomes. Conversely, students studying in Arabic medium schools demonstrated a more potent positive effect from perceived usefulness on their attitudes towards technology. Moreover, the positive impact of an attitude towards technology use on perceived e-learning outcomes was more pronounced among the Arabic medium school students compared to English medium school students. Additionally, the influence of the learning facility on the perceived ease of use, as well as the perceived usefulness of technology, differed between the two groups. The English medium school students experienced a more substantial positive impact. However, there was no significant positive difference observed in the effect of perceived ease of use on attitudes towards technology use between the English medium and Arabic medium school students. Furthermore, no significant positive difference was observed in the effect of perceived usefulness on the Constructivist learning approach for either Arabic medium school students or English medium school students.
Keywords
English-Medium Instruction, Arabic-Medium Instruction, constructivist learning approach, e-learning technology acceptance model, perceived e-learning outcomes, Multi-group Analysis, partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).
Supporting Institution
Acknowledgments Saif Mohammed appreciates the financial support of Tempus Public Foundation from the Hungarian Government through the Stipendium Hungaricum Scholarship, which had funded international students to pursue study in Hungary, and The Doctoral Schools of Educational Sciences Program, which always supports research program and gives the new idea in research view.
Ethical Statement
Declaration of Absence of Conflicts of Interest
This paper also describes our original work and is not under consideration by other journals. All authors approved the manuscript and this submission and did not have a conflict of interest regarding this manuscript. This manuscript was reported as the result of the research project conducted as one of the requirements and responsibilities as researchers in University.
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