School Authority Supports and Teacher’s Continuous Intention to Use Virtual Learning Platforms: A Multi-Group Analysis

Abstract

The transformation of schools toward educational excellence involves the intervention of school authorities. In line with the Pelan Pembangunan Pendidikan Malaysia (PPPM) 2013-2025, the Frog VLE platforms were implemented in Malaysia as a mega-investment to connect over 10,000 elementary and secondary schools, covering over 5 million students, 500 000 teachers, and 4.5 million parents nationwide.Despite this development, usage of this platform is still quite low. In this regard, a multi-group analysis was conducted to evaluate the school authority's support in determining teachers' continued intention to use VLE platforms in primary schools. A mix of methods was used for this study. In the northern area of peninsular Malaysia, 96,748 teachers are overseeing a total of 7,418 schools. Consequently, more than 384 teachers should be included in the sample size for this study (Krejcie& Morgan, 1970) and (Salkind, 2010). For data collection, simple random sampling was applied. Based on the determined sample size, 85 schools were carefully chosen using the random calculator. From every school, ten teachers were picked as respondents. This generated 850 of the sample (85*10 = 850). Seven hundred nineteen were returned or about 84.0% response rate out of 850 distributed questionnaires. Analysis was carriedout through PLS-SEM measurement and structural analyses as well as the Multi-Group Analysis (PLS-MGA). The results showed high school authority support at mean = 3.82 and standard deviation = 0.29. The findings also found a significant correlation between the support of school leaders and the willingness of Islamic education teachers at r = 0.37. Hence, it is recommended that school leaders increase the encouragement level through motivation, monitoring and activating the Islamic Education teachers to use Frog VLE frequently so that this application will be consistent and expanded.