Findings of the present study yielded some implications for researchers, practicing teachers, and school administrators. Both theoretical and pedagogical implications are presented in the first section. Furthermore, suggestions for language teachers, school administration and researchers are offered for improving the quality of CALL adoption.
Theoretical Implications
Rogers’ theory of perceived attributes (1995) claimed that the five attributes affected adoption rate of an innovation, the findings in the current study corroborates with the model of diffusion theory. Combined with the high level of Cronbach's Alpha in the questionnaire, as shown in previous chapter, the high means of and the
significant correlations among the five attributes strongly support the theory of perceived attributes, which in turn provides further empirical evidence to explain factors that influence college English teachers’ adoption of CALL in their instruction as innovative practices.
Moreover, since the questionnaire was developed based on Martins et al’s study (2004), the findings in the present study were in substantial agreement with their study. In this sense, they could further provide the value of theory of perceived attributes in that it could be applied into different cultural backgrounds with the similar significance.
Pedagogical Implications
Concerning the pedagogical implications, both quantitative and qualitative findings lead us to believe that the investigations of the underlying factors in terms of the perceived attributes theory may shed some light on the reasons why English teachers use or not use CALL in Taiwan. In addition, the role of CALL in language teaching should not be exaggerated without considering other relevant factors, such as learners’ involvement, administrative support.
Moreover, college teachers in Taiwan seemed to hold a positive attitude toward the adoption of CALL; however, they also pointed out the fact that they need further assistance and guidance in their practices and applications. As a result, how to assist teachers to make the best use of CALL has become an urgent issue in teachers’
development. Lastly, their responses to the questionnaire demonstrated that “trying is believing” in which school administrators should give enough access for teachers to try out CALL rather than push them to use CALL blindly.
Suggestions for EFL Teachers
As suggested by some teachers in the study, teaching and learning are the two
sides of the same coin. English teachers should bear in mind that constant learning both teaching skills and knowledge is a lifelong goal of their teaching career. With an open-minded attitude, they will be more willing to renew and enrich their profession.
Realizing that technology is a current trend that is closely related to everyone’s life, teachers should expect themselves to teach English with a promising technology so that their students could benefit from their attitudes.
Nevertheless, keeping progress in teaching does not imply that everyone has to adopt CALL into the classroom. Without explicit teaching goals and appropriate design, the blind use of CALL may have negative impact on teaching quality. No matter how effective CALL would be, teachers have to recognize that it is teachers themselves that could contribute most to their students. In addition, discussion and cooperation with colleagues are also helpful for them to make teaching more successful; therefore, the support from teaching community needs to be highly valued.
Suggestions for School Administrators
The results from the present study indicated that school administration played a significant role in CALL adoption rate. Especially, the results from the logistic regression models in Chapter 4 suggest that Trialability is a most important predictor for the adoption rate of CALL. It should be responsible for providing necessary assistance to teachers in their implantation of CALL. For example, the teachers called for more training on technological knowledge and how to incorporate CALL efficiently and successfully into their own teaching. The school administrators could survey teachers’ needs and organize some workshops periodically for the teachers.
Furthermore, if the teachers receive efficient training and have the opportunity to try out most CALL-related resources at the beginning of implementing CALL, they would more possibly adopt CALL.
Besides, the school administrators could collaborate with other colleges in the neighborhood to integrate more resources such as technicians, facilities, information exchange channels, serving as possible solutions to the inadequate resources encountered by the schools. If institutions have abundant resources available, how to coordinate and promote more utilization of resources is another suggestion for school administrators. They could hold some panel discussion sections and orientation classes to guide their teachers how to integrate those resources into their teaching. At the same time, the problems and concerns of teachers could be presented or solved. In this way, the better communication and interaction between teachers and administrators could be mutually achieved.
Furthermore, the budget for maintaining and updating the technological facilities is another issue worth being taken into consideration for school administration. In addition to purchasing new equipments, the maintenance and the supportive system of the facilities seemed to be more imperative for teachers’ needs; otherwise, some teachers tend to give up because of the frustration and upset from the technical problems (Curtin & Shinall, 1987; Colpaert & Decoo, 1999).
Suggestions for Researchers
The return rate of the present study seemed to be much higher than that in mail survey research due to the benefits from the on-line questionnaire. On-line survey can be administered in a relatively short time and give the respondents more time to consider their responses. In addition, responses can be precoded to eliminate transcript errors and the data analysis could be done more easily and accurately. In this sense, computer technology indeed has the promising and favorable effect on foreign language research. This method of data collection may help some researchers solve the problem to obtain sufficient number of responses, especially from postal
questionnaires. The higher return rate would contribute to more significance and generalization of research.