This series of three studies aims at investigating the relationships among science teachers’ beliefs about TBAs, their usage of TBAs, and their students’ performances.
In the study 1, the main components and features of teachers’ beliefs about and practice on TBAs were investigated and analyzed based on the qualitative data of 40 technology-experienced science teachers. The results of the study 1 affirmed the substantial 10 components in behavioral beliefs, control beliefs, and the normative beliefs, and highlighted some important beliefs in the 10 components on the basis of their features and prevalence. Furthermore, three groups of teachers were identified
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and characterized based on their usage of TBAs. I also propose the possible
interaction between teachers’ beliefs and their usage on the basis of synthesizing the two kinds of data. The findings of the study 1 not only echoed with previous research that users’ usage could be explained by their beliefs, but also extended the DTPB model of technology users by adding important beliefs about teaching and learning.
In the study 2, I developed a specific questionnaire from the result of the study 1 to elicit another 494 high school science teachers’ beliefs about TBAs and conducted a CFA to ensure that unobserved beliefs could be identified by my questionnaire to take the study 1 a step further. Besides, the study 2 examined the possible
relationships among teachers’ beliefs about, attitudes toward, and intention to use TBAs by conducting an SEM analysis. Furthermore, the study 2 also compared
differences in these relationships among teachers with different degrees of TBA usage.
The findings of this study can contribute in various ways to future research on TBAs and the beliefs of teachers. Firstly, all of the items developed in the study 2 were validated as being adequate indicators for measuring teachers’ beliefs about TBAs.
Secondly, this study modified the decomposed theory of planned behavior and
confirmed the effects of attitude on teachers’ intention, and revealed that the PBC and SN have much weaker influences than those asserted in this model. Finally, the path analysis showed that if all of the participating teachers held more-positive attitudes towards and beliefs about the usefulness of and ease of using TBAs, this would significantly increase their intention to use TBAs.
In the last stage, a HLM analysis was conducted to estimate the effects of teachers’ practice and beliefs about TBAs on students’ performances in the study 3.
The same 494 science teachers in the study 2 and their 1,774 students from eighth and 11th grades across 32 secondary schools participated in this study 3. The results of the study 3 confirmed the hypotheses that the student-level variables such as their
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engagement and PCs experience will contribute to students’ performances on a TBA of inquiry abilities. Additionally, all of the hypotheses about school-level variables were rejected and showed that none of the variables at school level such as teachers’
TBA hours and teachers’ intentions to use TBA had significant effects on students’
learning performances. However, the results indicated that the relationship between students’ inquiry‐related laboratory engagement and their learning performances could be moderated by two different variables at the school level in different ways. In one way, Average PCs usage at the school level would moderate the relationship between students’ inquiry‐related laboratory engagement and their learning performances positively. In another way, the TBA hours at the school level would moderate the relationship between students’ inquiry‐related laboratory engagement and their learning performances negatively.
Overall, the results of the studies 1 and 2 showed that the participating teachers in these two studies made their decision about the adoption of TBAs and how to use them on the basis of their beliefs about TBAs. Furthermore, among all the beliefs about TBAs, only the beliefs related to the attitudes, including beliefs about the usefulness of TBAs, the compatibility, and the ease of using TBAs, had significant effects on their adoption of TBAs.
In other words, the teachers’ usage of TBAs could be explained by some of their beliefs, and these beliefs had influences on not only on their acceptance, but also on their implementation of TBAs. This result echoes the previous findings related to the impact of teachers’ beliefs on their acceptance and implementation of innovations in curricula, especially on their use of new technology tools (Churchill, 2006; Kim et al., 2013; Shin, 2015; Stylianidou et al., 2005; Zacharia, 2003). Besides, this series of studies also extend previous theories, especially the application of TAM and DTPB, by both adding important beliefs and examining all the possible interactions among
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beliefs.
When it came to the effects that teachers’ beliefs about TBAs and their usage of TBAs might have had on their students’ performances, the results of the study 3 first indicated that teachers’ usage of TBAs did not have a significant effect on students’
performances, but could negatively moderate the relationship between students’
inquiry‐related laboratory engagement and their learning performances in one way.
According to the interpretation in the last paragraph of the section 7.6, teachers’ usage of TBAs had an influence on their students’ performances and the key point was the different ways in which the teachers used TBAs rather than whether they used these TBAs or not.
This interpretation could be supported by the previous study that teachers’
technology-infused practice has a significant effect on their students’ learning performances in either positive or negative ways (Comi et al., 2017). It is also worth noting that researchers should focus more on the ways in which teachers use TBAs rather than on their adoption of TBAs.
Additionally, the results of the study 3 revealed that teachers’ beliefs about TBAs had neither a direct nor a moderating effect on students’ performance. This result may be due to the nature of teachers’ beliefs, as previous studies asserted that teachers can interpret the events they encounter and make decisions about teaching based on their beliefs. In other words, teachers’ practices may be guided by their own specific beliefs about teaching (Pajares, 1992; van der Schaaf et al., 2008). However, not all positive beliefs influence the implementation of innovative practices (Pintó, 2005; Viennot et al., 2005). Taken together, the beliefs looks like filters to help the teachers interpret and explain the situations and events that they faced, and only some beliefs had a dominant effect on their practice. This is also what I found in my study 2. Thus, it was hard for teachers’ beliefs about TBAs to have a direct effect on students’ performance
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because these beliefs needed to be converted into practice, and then the practice could moderate the relationship between students’ inquiry‐related laboratory engagement and their learning performances. If researchers in the future want to examine the effect that teachers’ beliefs about TBAs might have on their students’ performance,
establishing a model with teachers’ practice as an mediator between their beliefs and their students’ performance and then testing the medicating effect, could be a
workable data analysis technique.