Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

5-1998

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Education

Major Professor

Lonnie McIntyre

Committee Members

Donald Dessart, Michael Sims, Dianne Whitaker

Abstract

There has been a recent push to connect public schools to the Internet, lead by state and federal government agencies and supplemented by funds from private enterprise. However, little research has yet been gathered with respect to usage measures, attitudes, demographics, personality types, and other significant variables contributing to teachers' adoption of Internet technologies. Without this knowledge, it is doubtful that effective decisions about use of the Internet for teaching and learning can be made. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between innovativeness, Internet use, demographic variables, and the attitude of teachers toward the use of the Internet.

The population for this study was the full-time teaching faculty of a school system in Tennessee where dedicated Internet access existed in each school build ing. The instrument was a self-report questionnaire comprised of measures for innovativeness, attitude toward the use of the Internet, Internet use, and demo graphic data. Underpinning this study is the diffusion research tradition, which relates to the transfer of new ideas within a social system. The diffusion process is the spread of a new idea from its source of invention or creation to the ultimate users or adopters. Diffusion entails the communication or dissemination of an idea and the culmination of its adoption by members of a social system.

In previous research, innovative adopter types have been found to possess higher overall positive attitudes towards new experiences and novel stimuli. Results of this study corroborate these findings, as it was determined that the mean Intemet attitude scores of innovators were significantly higher than other adopter groups. In addition, scores for Internet use were significantly higher for innovators than for laggards. The relationship between adopter type and Internet use in this population is that innovators and majority members are the ones who have used the Internet, while laggards have little experience. Further tests show that the younger age groups, females, and general subject teachers possessed higher mean scores for innovativeness than other groups.

Previous studies have investigated the relationship between computer use, anxiety, attitude, experience, and training. This study examined Internet specific variables with respect to computer attitudes and usage in the general K-12 teacher population. Results show that there exists a significant positive relationship be tween increased attitudes toward using the Internet and an increase in teachers' Internet use. Male teachers had significantly lower Internet attitude scores than female teaches, this was found to be related to a small group of male math teachers who also exhibited low scores for Internet use. It is believed that low Intemet attitude scores for this group are related to their low levels of Internet use.

Based upon the findings of this study, it is suggested that Intemet training be used as a way to provide late majority and laggard adopters with Internet experi ence; thereby increasing attitude toward the innovation, and increasing subsequent use. Further research in this area could involve employing alternative methods for identifying innovators, administering an experimental treatment group design to uncover differences in training specific to adopter types, and investigating specific educational uses of the Internet.

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