Abstract: Although many teachers now have access to computers for teaching and learning and profess a belief in the value of computers for education the impact on the day to day work in classrooms is still limited. Even where teachers believe in the use of computers and have the necessary technical skills they may be reluctant to implement them in their classrooms. Increasing teachers' self-efficacy beliefs for teaching with computers has been proposed as a means of influencing their behaviour. This paper reports on a preliminary study of some factors that might be associated with self-efficacy for teaching with computers. The absence of significant relationships with factors such as Pupil Control Ideology and Innovativeness suggests that it may be possible to intervene to increase graduating teachers' self-efficacy for teaching with computers.

In Australia, as in the USA, computers are now widely available in schools of all types. The arrangements for access vary. Some schools place the computers in classrooms and others create computer laboratories. Whatever the arrangements in their school, there are now very few teachers who could seriously claim that they have no opportunity to use computers in support of teaching and learning.

There is also widespread support for the increased use of computers among policy makers, educational administrators and the community. In Queensland, the government has provided financial support for Schooling 2001, a policy framework which includes as a goal that "computers should be used in every subject area at every level of education" .

Despite the levels of opportunity and official encouragement implied by these developments, there continue to be concerns expressed about both the frequency and success with which teachers employ information technology in their classrooms . Recent online discussions among students returning from teaching practice have included comments about the limited use being made of computers in many classrooms. However, students observed that even teachers who did not use computers in their teaching expressed belief in the importance of computers in education. Surprisingly, on some accounts the rate of uptake of information technology in classrooms does not appear to be notably higher among beginning teachers than among their more experienced colleagues .

Various reasons have been postulated to explain the apparent reluctance of teachers to embrace IT. On the whole teachers appear to share the broader community enthusiasm for IT in education as a "good thing" but they report a lack of confidence in their capacity to use IT effectively for teaching and in many cases attribute this to inadequate preparation .

A previous paper discussed the importance of teacher beliefs in relation to their adoption of IT for teaching. Self-efficacy for teaching with computers (SETWC) was suggested as an area of belief which was related to teacher behaviour in the longer term, was measurable using existing scales and was capable of being influenced by teacher educators in the context of preservice and inservice courses. Problem-based learning (PBL) has been identified as an instructional design methodology that might offer particular advantages in relation to development of self-efficacy and a multimedia package using this methodology has been developed .

Factors Influencing Self-efficacy for Teaching with Computers

If self-efficacy for teaching with computers is a significant determinant of teachers' behaviour in respect of teaching with computers and if PBL is an effective instructional design for influencing self-efficacy, then multimedia using PBL as a basis for design warrants investigation as a means of increasing beginning teachers' SETWC. As part of the development of the multimedia package it was proposed to test this hypothesis by measuring students' SETWC before and after the use of the materials.

The Microcomputer Utilization in Teaching Efficacy Beliefs Instrument (MUTEBI) was selected as a measure of SETWC. MUTEBI was initially developed and used in the context of science teaching but it is not specific to that context. It comprises two sub-scales which correspond to the two components of the self-efficacy construct identified by Bandura , namely efficacy expectations, which was labeled by Enochs as self-efficacy (SE), and outcome expectations, labeled as outcome expectancy (OE).

Teachers' beliefs and behaviours in respect of computers do not stand in isolation from their other beliefs. Previous studies have demonstrated that teachers' use of computers may be influenced by, among other things, their beliefs about student centred pedagogy and their inclinations towards innovativeness . Moreover, students who reported more custodial orientations on the pupil control ideology (PCI) scale also reported lower self-efficacy for science teaching . It is often suggested that the use of computers in teaching leads to more student-centred approaches to teaching. Thus, the possibility of a relationship between PCI and SETWC should be considered.

The effectiveness of the multimedia package in increasing students' SETWC may depend, at least in part, on the existence and relative strength of these other influences on SETWC. Early knowledge of such factors might guide refinement of the materials design. Hence an investigation of the relationships between SETWC and other aspects of student teachers' belief systems is warranted.

Because the multimedia materials were to be developed using an untried design, plans were made to conduct trials of a very early prototype with a small group of students who were representative of those who would use the final product. This group provided a suitable opportunity to trial the instrument that would be used to measure SETWC and to undertake a preliminary investigation of potentially influential factors.

It seems reasonable to assume that positive attitudes towards computers and strong self-efficacy for computer use would be prior conditions for positive self-efficacy for teaching with computers. Scales for the measurement of attitudes towards computers and self-efficacy for computer use have been developed and used with teacher education students . The attitude scale has two sub-scales that relate to comfort/anxiety and usefulness of computers. The self-efficacy scale comprises several sub-scales that relate to categories of computer use including word processing, spreadsheets, databases and so on. Subsequent studies have confirmed the reliability of the attitude scales and of a slightly modified version of the self-efficacy scale comprising seven sub-scales . The scales described in the latter paper were used in this study.

Scales for the measurement of teacher self-efficacy have been developed and used in several published studies. For the purposes of this study the instrument described by Guskey and Passaro was selected because it was the most recently published validated scale for teacher self-efficacy. It comprises two sub-scales. The internal sub-scale appears to represent perceptions of personal influence in teaching and learning while the external sub-scale represents the influence of elements beyond the direct control of the teacher.

Two other factors were chosen for examination. Pupil control ideology is a unidimensional construct which has been found to be related to self-efficacy for science teaching . As noted above, PCI could influence SETWC through the relationship between custodial orientation and student-centred classes. It was measured using the instrument published by Graham . Innovativeness has been found to be related to computer use in teaching . It was measured using the unidimensional instrument published by Hurt et al. .

All instruments used in this study were derived from previously published studies. The body of the questionnaire comprised 134 items representing 15 scales and sub-scales as shown in Table 1. Each item was presented as a Likert scale item with the extremes of the range identified as Strongly Disagree on the left and Strongly Agree on the right. The number of points on the range for each scale varied from 4 to 7 according to the usage reported by the originators of the scales. Table 2 records the maximum value attainable on each scale.

Results

A total of 31 students (25 females and 6 males) who were completing the final year of their Bachelor of Education degree completed the questionnaire. Ages ranged from 20 to 28 years (mean = 21.7, standard deviation = 1.8) with strong clustering around 21 years implying that most respondents had entered the degree program directly from secondary school. As an indication of relative familiarity with computers, respondents were asked to select a category which represented the number of hours they spent working with a computer in a typical week. These data are summarized in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Distribution of computer use in a typical week

The small sample size precluded reliable factor analysis of the scales and they were assumed to exhibit the characteristics described in the published sources. Reliability values were computed and are shown in Table 1.

For each scale, student scores were computed as the mean of the item scores for each student in order to facilitate comparisons. Table 2 shows the means and standard deviations of the results obtained for each scale together with the maximum score possible on the scale as determined by the number of points on the Likert scale.

Scores obtained for the ACT and SCT instruments were compared with the posttest scores reported for a group of first year students in the same program . The only significant differences were for Usefulness (t = 3.11, df = 117, p = .002) and word processing (t = 2.45, df = 115, p = .016). In each case the final year students returned higher scores indicating stronger belief in the future usefulness of computers and greater confidence in their ability to use a word processor.

Pearson product moment correlation coefficients were computed for pairs of measures. As described previously , scores on the sub-scales of the SCT were combined to form a composite measure of self-efficacy for computer use. Results are shown in Table 3.

* p < .05 ** p < .01 *** p < .001 (2-tailed)

Discussion

The most significant correlation found was between the SE sub-scale of SETWC and SCT, implying that student teachers who report strong belief in their personal capacity to work with computers are more likely to report feelings of self-efficacy for teaching with computers. SE is also very significantly correlated with the comfort/anxiety sub-scale of the ACT, confirming that students who are comfortable with computers feel more positive about their ability to teach with them.

Outcome expectancy (OE) on the SETWC instrument corresponds to student teachers' beliefs that, through good teaching, they could increase the computer competence of pupils in their class. OE is significantly correlated with both sub-scales (comfort/anxiety and usefulness) of the ACT and with the composite SCT score. The implication is that graduates who have strongly positive attitudes towards computers and confidence in their ability to use them are more likely to believe that they can transmit those qualities to their pupils.

A significant correlation was found between age and innovativeness. The implication of this is not clear but it may result from older students (maximum age in this sample was 28) being more confident of their personal priorities and being prepared, at least in theory, to consider variations to common practice.

The remaining highly significant correlations are between the two sub-scales of the ACT and between the comfort/anxiety sub-scale of the ACT and the SCT. These relationships have been reported previously . It is hardly surprising that beliefs in the usefulness of computers, which would probably influence patterns of use, should be correlated with feelings of comfort with the technology. It is equally understandable that comfort with computers should be related to confidence in their use as measured by the SCT.

Contrary to expectations based on the results reported previously , neither innovativeness and pupil control ideology was significantly correlated with either sub-scale of the MUTEBI. A significant correlation was found between innovativeness and the comfort/anxiety sub-scale of the ACT. This might be explained in terms of comfort with new technologies being indicative of preparedness to adopt new approaches. The significant correlation between PCI and the external sub-scale of the Teacher Self-Efficacy instrument may indicate an association between a custodial orientation towards classroom management and a belief in the power of influences beyond the direct control of the teacher.

The implications of these findings for attempts to influence student teachers' self-efficacy for teaching with computers through their interaction with a multimedia package remain to be tested in practice.

The factors most strongly correlated with SETWC are comfort with computers and self-efficacy for computer use. These are among the factors that might be influenced by students' working with a multimedia package that presents examples of effective use of technology in teaching together with opportunities to rehearse relevant patterns of thought.

Factors such as innovativeness and pupil control ideology seem inherently more likely to reflect stable characteristics of students' personalities. If self-efficacy for teaching with computers were strongly related to these factors it might prove more difficult to obtain significant increases through the short term use of a teaching intervention such as a multimedia package. The implication appears to be that the use of the multimedia materials may produce the desired increases in self-efficacy for teaching with computers.

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