Teachers’ responses to Interactive Whiteboard (IWB) adoption in a secondary vocational School in Ningbo, China

Abstract

This thesis explores factors affecting teachers’ utilization of Interactive Whiteboards (IWBs) in their teaching in a secondary vocational school in Ningbo, where they had been introduced into all classrooms as part of a local government sponsored project. Previous empirical studies of factors affecting IWB and other ICTs integration into teaching, and theoretical models used to explain technology adoption related behaviors are reviewed. Based on this critical review, a revised “Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology” (UTAUT) model was adopted as the framework to explain teachers’ processes of decision-making on IWB adoption. Two major research questions are posed: (1) What is the situation of teachers ’IWB utilization in the focused school? (2) What factors influence IWB integration into teaching in this school and how do these influences operate? A mixed research method, combining a questionnaire survey and semi-structured interviews, was adopted in this research. Two IWB-experienced teachers were interviewed initially, then 138 other teachers, who had no experience in IWB utilization, were investigated using a questionnaire. Finally, post-questionnaire interviews were conducted with 12 IWB-inexperienced teachers, selected using teaching subject based quota sampling of volunteers. Only two teachers in the school had experience in using interactive functions of IWB; the majority of teachers in the school were inexperienced in their use. For the IWB-experienced teachers, interviews revealed Perform Expectancy (PE), Effort Expectancy (EE) and Facilitating Conditions (FC) to be factors influencing their decision to make use of IWBs. For the IWB-inexperienced teachers, questionnaire responses showed that PE and EE exerted a major influence on teachers’ Behavior Intention (BI). This was supported by post-questionnaire interview responses, which also supplied detail on how these influences occurred. Statistically significant relationships were found between influential factors and personal characteristics (age, teaching experience and subject of teaching). It is concluded that mismatches between the teaching content in secondary vocational schools and teachers’ perceptions of what IWBs can provide is a major factor preventing uptake of IWBs in the focused school. In addition, their poor skills in IWB utilization and experience with some technical problems, led to large effort costs which contributed further to the poor utilization. Four proposals for action are made: (1) Functions and performance of IWB should be improved if they are to be suitable for the teaching content in secondary vocational schools; (2) The quality of training programs in IWB use should be improved; (3) The school should set up a better support system to deal with serious technical problems; (4) The introduction of new ICTs in a school should always be preceded by an investigation of teachers needs and the relevance of the ICT affordances to those needs.

Date of Award	8 Nov 2020
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Univerisity of Nottingham
Supervisor	John Lowe (Supervisor) & Shaaron Ainsworth (Supervisor)