Exploring Teacher Attitude toward Information Technology with a Gender Perspective

Abstract

To acquire benefits from technology in education, due consideration must be given toattitude of teachers which plays an important role in guiding and predicting futuresuccessful use of technology in the classroom. With the feminization in the teachingfraternity and the studies reporting gender specific perception towards usefulness oftechnology and ease of use, the present study was, therefore, undertaken to examine theattitude of teachers towards use of technology in teaching with a gender perspective. Asurvey was conducted on 482 secondary school teachers from India, using Attitude towardsInformation Technology scale. The attitude of the respondents were assessed in terms offour dimensions; namely significance in life, usefulness for students, productivity forteaching, and teacher’s interest and acceptance. The quantitative data were analyzed usingappropriate statistical techniques like t-test and ANOVA. Findings suggest that with regardto different factors viz., training, location of schools, medium of instruction and maritalstatus, no gender specific differences in attitude towards information technology wasfound. Based on these results, it can be concluded that the effective use of technology inclassrooms should be expected from all teachers irrespective of their gender.