DIGITAL GAMES-BASED LEARNING MATERIAL FOR MILD INTELLECTUAL DISABILITY STUDENTS: FACTORS INFLUENCING TEACHERS TO USE IT IN THEIR TEACHING

Recently, the Greek Ministry of Education is following a new policy towards Information Communication Technology (ICT) in education. The aim of this policy is to ensure the use and integration of ICT in all Greek primary and secondary schools. For implementing the above aim, the Greek Ministry of Education in cooperation with Greek universities began a series of activities and projects.
One of these projects was the “EPINOISI” project. This was implemented by the University of Athens during November 2007 – November 2008 with the objective to realize a specialized formation program for primary, secondary and special education teachers supporting students with mild intellectual disability (MID) and at the same time developed digital games-based learning (DGBL) material for MID students to be deployed and tested within the special classroom, as part of practical seminars and hands-on activities.
However, the successful introduction and implementation of an innovation in education depends on the teachers who implement the innovation in practice. The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors that influence Greek teachers’ intention to continue to use the digital game-based material of “EPINOISI” project in their teaching during the next three months (December 2008-February 2009).
This study considered that the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) and Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) provide very useful theoretical frameworks for understanding and explaining Greek teachers’ intention. According to the TPB, human behaviour is influenced by intention. In turn, intention is influenced by three factors: attitude toward behaviour, subjective norm, and perceived behavioural control. Finally, attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control are underpinned by behavioural, normative, and control beliefs.
65 teachers of the “EPINOISI” project completed self administered questionnaires designed to measure the components of the TPB in November 2008. Descriptive analysis, Pearson correlation as well as regression analysis was conducted in order to determine the extent to which TPB variables predict teachers’ intention to continue to use the digital game-based material of “EPINOISI” project.
The results showed that teachers’ intention was significantly influenced by attitude toward the behaviour and perceived behavioural control. In addition, the results of this study showed that the TRA and TPB in general did provide a framework for the prediction of intention. The paper present the results in detail and discuss the implications for using these theories to analyse and identify the reasons which might influence teachers to continue to use digital game-based material in the teaching.
This paper is structured as follows. Section 1 is the introductory section. In Section 2 the factors that have been found to influence the uptake of ICT and digital games in schools through previous empirical research are discussed. Section 3 presents the Theory of Reasoned Action and Theory of Planned Behaviour, which were considered relevant to this research. The methodology of this study, is discussed in Section 4. Section 5 and 6 summarises the main findings and conclusions of the research and discusses the implications, and the limitations of the study.