Are Future Teachers Ready to Be the ICT Change Agents?

Abstract

The declaration of the Malaysia’s Vision 2020 to become a fully developed country has demanded a major transformation of its education system through the advancement of information and communications technology (ICT). Initiatives to promote the integration of ICT in the Malaysian education system have been started since the early 1990s. However, the implementation of those initiatives was not reflected in the successful uptake of ICT among Malaysian teachers. Given the importance and consideration of research that has been undertaken, this study was set to examine the readiness of Malaysian future teachers in becoming the ICT change agents. The technology acceptance model (TAM) was used as a theoretical grounding of the study. Based on TAM, an individual’s perceived usefulness (PU), perceived ease of use (PEoU), and attitude (ATT) were three specific beliefs that determine their readiness to integrate ICT. Data were gathered from 200 final semester future teachers in a Malaysian public university. The partial least squares (PLS) of variance-based structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the research hypotheses of the study. The findings of the study suggest that future teachers’ PU, PEoU, and ATT were able to explain 65 % of the variance toward their readiness to integrate ICT. It is expected that findings derived from this study will contribute toward assisting the teachers’ training institution and the Ministry of Education in ensuring all teachers would pose instilled degree of innovative practice using ICT by the year 2020.