Abstract:

With the advance of information and communication technology (ICT), people’s everyday life, including education as its integral part, has been in a process of dramatic change. Numerous studies have indicated that ICT can improve education outcomes (Barak & Watted & Haick ,2016; Wang & Teng & Chen, 2015; Barrs,2012; Blattner & Fiori, 2009;). The impact of ICT on education can be manifested by the changes of teaching form, teaching environment, teaching content and teacher-student interactivity which greatly facilitate teaching and learning. Consequently, government and educational authorities from all over the world have invested a large amount of money into educational settings in the form of ICT aiming to transform traditional teaching. However, we have found out that in many schools and universities, classroom teaching is still dominated by traditional education characterized by textbooks, blackboards, chalk, and talk, as most teachers still do not use computer technologies in classroom teaching. Therefore, there is a need to discuss the factors influencing this phenomenon so that the substantial funds allocated to educational field would be used efficiently.

Although there exists a general consensus on the existence of various kinds of factors leading to this phenomenon, the authors of this paper hold the view that teachers’ attitude towards ICT is the main factor affecting the infusion of ICT into instructional practice since, on the one hand, the teacher is the direct implementer of ICT who must play an important role in combining ICT and education. If teachers’ attitude towards ICT is negative, or put in other words, if teachers refuse to use ICT in classroom teaching, the integration of ICT in classroom teaching will come to naught, i.e. simply introducing of ICT does not guarantee its integration into the educational setting; on the other hand, teachers’ attitudes towards ICT will, to a considerable extent, influence students’ attitudes towards ICT. Therefore, this paper will discuss the integration of ICT in the educational setting from the perspective of teachers’ attitude.

Based on this, this paper will analyze the factors that can affect teachers’ attitudes towards ICT. In this paper, we divide the factors into two groups: extrinsic factors and intrinsic factors. The intrinsic factors are also called uncontrollable factors, including age, gender, teaching experience, school location, grade level of teaching, computer experience, etc; the extrinsic factors, also called the controllable factors, include computer competence, computer training, computer anxiety, school or administration support, teachers’ theory of teaching, etc. By doing so, this paper will provide some insights to educators and educational policy-makers to construct strategies for minimizing the ill effects.

Keywords:

teachers' attitude, ICT, education, teaching