Teachers' attitudes towards the use of educational technologies and their individual innovativeness categories

Abstract

In constantly developing and changing era, raising the future generations as knowledge society individuals through the integration of new technologies into educational environments is among the basic goals of instruction. Rapid and easy access to information, and sharing and developing it accompany situations where technology is frequently used in order to make the education process a more quality one. In this study that aims at investigating teachers' attitudes towards educational technologies with regards to their innovativeness levels, Individual Innovativeness Scale and Attitudes towards the Use of Educational Technologies Scale were used as data collecting instruments, and the survey method, one of the descriptive research designs, was utilized. Seven primary schools from different districts in Istanbul were selected through convenience sampling and the scales were applied to 68 teachers. When the results are analyzed, it can be seen that there is a significant and positive relationship between the teachers' innovativeness points and their points related to their attitudes towards the use of educational technologies. In terms of the teachers' individual innovativeness characteristics, it was observed that innovator and early adopter groups had higher points in relation to their attitudes towards the use of educational technologies. It was also found out that there was no significant relationship in relation to the teachers' attitudes towards the use of educational technologies in terms of age variable. It is also among the results that teachers under the age of 51 had lower attitude points compared to the others. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.