How to promote Chinese primary and secondary school teachers to use ICT to develop high-quality teaching activities

Abstract

In China, teachers’ ability to adopt information and communication technology (ICT) when teaching is far from satisfying. Previous studies on teachers’ ability to integrate ICT and teaching in China ignored the factors in the process of teachers’ ICT application and lacked the systematic analysis of the factors. ICT application is affected by complex factors and thus needs to be systematically explored. This study surveyed 3730 Chinese primary and secondary school teachers, and adopted the environment-based design, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and structural equation modeling to analyze the factors influencing teachers’ usage of ICT to develop teaching activities and proposed a model of the influencing factors of ICT usage. This model indicated that application willingness, application frequency, ICT-based teaching competence, helpfulness degree and application context are the five major factors that influence teachers’ usage of ICT to develop high-quality teaching activities. According to the status of teachers’ ICT application in China, this study suggested strengthening teachers’ willingness and enriching application contexts of ICT. Implications of this study will be discussed.