One can say that computers and technology are the new types of innovation in recent decades. The adoption of CALL in the language classroom is closely concerned with the notion of “diffusion” proposed by Rogers (1995). This view corroborated with the White’s argument (1993) that the focus of diffusion in language teaching is with respect to technological change. The term “diffusion” is described as
“a process by which an innovation is communicated through certain channel over time among the members of a social system” (Roger, 1995, p.5). The author in his seminal work “Diffusion of Innovation” proposed a set of variables to explain the rate of adoption of innovations. Combining with other variables, such as types of innovation-decision, communication channels, nature of the social system, and extent of change agents’ promotion efforts, perceived attributes of innovations could possibly affect the rate of an innovation among potential users or consumers.
Rogers’ theories have been widely promoted and used in a number of fields, such as environmental degradation, economic development, public health, educational opportunity, and so forth. Take Surry’s study (1997) for example, it described how Rogers’ theories have been incorporated into the field of instructional technology.
Among Rogers’ theories of diffusion, four most extensively used theories are Innovation Decision Process, Individual Innovativeness, Rate of Adoption, and Perceived Attributes.
The Theory of the Perceived Attributes
Rogers (1995) pointed out the theory of the perceived attributes can be treated as an indicator to explain the rate of adoption of an innovation, which including five major attributes: Relative Advantage, Compatibility, Complexity, Trialability, and Observability. Based on Rogers’ definitions, the first attribute is Relative Advantage,
which refers to the degree to which an innovation is perceived as better than the idea it supersedes. The second one is Compatibility, which means the degree to which an innovation is perceived as being consistent with existing values, past experiences, and needs. The third element is Complexity, which indicates the degree to which an innovation is perceived as difficult to understand and use. The fourth category is Trialability, which relates to the degree to which an innovation may be experimented with on a limited basis. The last category is Observability, which suggests the degree to which results of an innovation are visible to others and to potential users. With reference to the applications of CALL in language teaching, CALL could be regarded as an innovation in that computer and technology are truly a type of innovation. This theory invites us to look from a different perspective at teachers’ perceptions of the factors that may affect their use of technology.
Research on Diffusion of Innovation Theory
Though Rogers’s theories have been applied as a theoretical model into various research areas; however, such a view has rarely been used in language education to examine to what extent teacher’s perceptions of CALL may influence the actual implementation in the teaching context. One of the rare examples can be seen is Bax’s review article about the history of CALL (2004). The author not only offered a critical examination of the development of CALL in the past decades, but also proposed an alternative model to shed new lights on the conceptualization and analysis of the history of CALL. As suggested by Bax (2004), the end goal of CALL is to attain a state of “normalization” in which the technology becomes an “invisible”
and natural part in everyday life, and then CALL is truly accepted and integrated into language teaching environments. He further suggested that the “normalization” may be attained through adopting and modifying the diffusion of innovations to suit the
particular research and teaching contexts.
Indeed, before the publication of Rogers’ book, Markee(1993) and some other pioneer researchers, have argued that a diffusion of innovations perspective could provide as a set of coherent guidelines for language teachers to examine the development of language teaching innovation. Furthermore, this perspective also allowed the researchers to evaluate the actual implementation retrospectively. Based on this framework, both researchers and practitioners could conceptualize either evaluation or development in language teaching. Therefore, some researchers in the field of language teaching called for attention on the adoption of Rogers’ theoretical model. The earlier focus on the role of diffusion of innovation and language learning is mainly concerned with syllabus design and teacher development, as affected by the wave of the communicative movement (Markee 1993; White, 1993; Widdowson, 1993). Then the attention was paid to the different types of teaching instruments and tools. For example, Pennington (2004) provided a more elaborated model based on that of Rogers (1995) involving three consecutive phases for examining the adoption of Information Technology in language teaching. In Pennington’s view, the attention of CALL within education has given away from mechanical elements to more interactive applications. However, his model and arguments were based solely on the example of online chatting, which seems to be weak and unconvincing.
Though the discussion on the Diffusion of Innovation Theory is highly pertinent to the study of language education, the direct adoption of Rogers’ theory in the field of language teaching and learning is only found in Martins et al’s study (2004). In Brazil, these researchers used Roger’s theory of the perceived attributes in Diffusion of Innovation Theory as the theoretical framework in order to investigate the underlying factors which influence the adoption of the Internet as a teaching tool at
foreign language schools. They found that the variables of “observability” and
“trialability” were the two most important factors for the administrators to determine to adopt the Internet as a teaching tool. Another interesting finding was that language teachers’ requests for adopting the Internet have greatly influenced the pedagogical decision. Moreover, administrators at Brazil schools played a key role in the Internet adoption rate. Besides, appropriate training and enough time for exploring in the language classroom were two important components in the innovative process.
Generalizing from the related literature, a gap between teachers’ beliefs and CALL could be bridged for more elaborated understanding of teachers’ beliefs about CALL. The perceived attributes theory, a subpart of Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovation Theory, could offer a theoretical framework for investigating teachers’ beliefs about CALL and potential factors for CALL adoption. Through the investigation of college teachers’ beliefs about CALL based on Diffusion of Innovation Theory, it is hoped that this research could shed some lights on teachers’ perceptions about CALL in Taiwan.
CHAPTER 3 METHOD
In this chapter of research method, both quantitative and qualitative approaches, applied in the present study will be presented and discussed. The first section describes the information on the participants and the sampling criteria. In the second part, instruments including the questionnaire and the interviews will be provided. The third section focuses on the data collection procedures involving the pilot study as well as the formal investigation, and the methods of data analysis will be explained in the last part.
PARTICIPANTS
According to the statistics released by the Ministry of Education in 2006, there are 162 college-level schools around Taiwan, including 70 universities/colleges and 92 universities of science and technology and institutes of technology. In order to search for more specific information on each college, the researcher browsed the websites of most schools via Yahoo search engine. The total of accessible numbers of the schools is displayed in Table 3.1. Moreover, the research also collected email addresses of the target participants provided by the foreign or applied language department of each school, which followed the simple random sampling strategy addressed by Nunan (1992). In this way, the participants were selected at random from the population so that the results could more accurately reflect the whole picture of English teaching situation all over the island. That is, most participants were selected from different geographic areas of Taiwan to ensure that the sample is representative of the population as a whole. A total of 186 college English teachers participated in the current study. Of the 186 questionnaires, 10 were invalid, so 176
valid questionnaires were used for this study.
Table 3.1 Numbers of the Colleges in Taiwan
School Types Total Available on
Yahoo website
National University 23 15
Private University 27 22
University of Science and Technology 25 24
Institute of Technology 37 28
Source: http://tw.dir.yahoo.com/Education/Education_Unit/Universities/
INSTRUMENTATION
Both quantitative and qualitative research methods were implemented in the present study based on the following stances. Firstly, quantitative method could gather the anonymous participants’ opinions from a relatively larger pool of samples.
Moreover, it could elicit more full-fledged viewpoints about certain questions once at a time (Nunan, 1992). However, the major weaknesses of quantitative research lie in the low return rate and limited written answers from the respondents (Brown, 2001).
In addition to the questionnaire survey, the oral interview could be used as a complementary tool to supplement the quantitative data. It allows more flexibility than the questionnaire in that more profound and rich information would be obtained throughout the interview. Therefore, these two different research methods were administered in the current study.
Format and Content of the Questionnaire
The questionnaire was composed of three major sections (see Appendix B).
The first part was the demographic information of the participants, including gender, age, educational background, location of school, years of teaching experience, weekly
of CALL. The second section was a survey on the frequency of using specific CALL-related resources in the teaching practices, including multimedia, E-learning delivery platform, online reference tools, and learning website. The last part was about using CALL in English teaching developed by the researcher based on Martins et al’s study (2004). In the third section, it consisted of 25 items and open-ended questions. The 25 items could be further divided into five major categories, and these items were assessed on the 5-point Likert scale. The five major constructs are classified as follows: (1) Relative Advantage (items 1, 8, 16, 19, 25); (2) Compatibility (items 2, 9, 12, 21, 22); (3) Complexity (items 6, 10, 13, 17, 24);
(4)Trialability (items 4, 5, 15, 20 23); and (5) Observability (items 3, 7, 11, 14, 18).
With regard to the content of the questionnaire, as already indicated above, it consisted of 5 major categories which were in accordance with the perceived attributes in Roger’s model. The first attribute is Relative Advantage, which refers to the degree to which an innovation is perceived as better than the idea it supersedes.
The second one is Compatibility, which means the degree to which an innovation is perceived as being consistent with existing values, past experiences, and needs. The third element is Complexity, which indicates the degree to which an innovation is perceived as difficult to understand and use. The fourth category is Trialability, which relates to the degree to which an innovation may be experimented with on a limited basis. The last category is Observability, which suggests the degree to which results of an innovation are visible to others and to potential users. The five constructs of the questionnaire are displayed in Figure 3.1.
Figure 3.1 The 5 Constructs Contained in the Questionnaire
Questionnaire
4. Trialability
2.Compatibility
5. Observability 3. Complexity
1.Relative Advantage
The second section was the open-ended questions concerning teachers’
opinions on CALL or anything unmentioned in the previous questionnaire items. The participants were invited to come up with any ideas or viewpoints worth taking into account regarding the issues of CALL. This part was later served as one of the sources of qualitative data to complement the quantitative data.
The Interview Guide
To achieve a more comprehensive and realistic view of the teachers’
perceptions, needs, and concerns for CALL adoption, it is necessary to collect data from both the questionnaires and the interviews. With the combinations of two approaches, we not only could enhance the validity and reliability of the questionnaire, but also obtain more in-depth teachers’ viewpoints that are not revealed in the questionnaire.
Nunan (1992) classified interviews into three levels in terms of “the degree of formality”, including unstructured interviews, semi-structured interviews, and structured interviews. The semi-structured interview was used as in the present study
in that it allows the interview to go in the topic-oriented or issue-based ways. In this type of interview, both the interviewer and the interviewees had more freedom and flexibility to probe into the relevant issues based on some general ideas, resulting in more productive responses.
Before the formal interviews began, the interview questions were piloted with a small sample of subjects to make sure the questions could elicit the information required and contribute more to the depth of the study. There were five general questions for the participants to answer during the interviews. The follow-up questions were carried out according to the responses from the participants. Each interview took about one hour depending on the time available to the participants, and all interviews were audiotaped and later transcribed by the researcher. The proposed interview guides are listed as follows:
1. What kind of attitude do you hold towards the use of CALL in your teaching practices?
2. Since the adoption of computer and technology is a current trend, do you think CALL will indeed enhance your teaching quality? Why or why not?
3. In your own opinion, what are the major advantages and disadvantages of using CALL?
4. In addition to the five major underlying factors in the questionnaire, are there any more factors or reasons for you to accept or refuse CALL?
5. Do you have any suggestions or opinions on using CALL for EFL teachers in Taiwan?