Measuring teachers’ readiness to use technology

Accepted as an integral part of education, technology in teaching and learning can enhance practice not only in the traditional class but also beyond it. Schooling can now be extended to learning beyond the four enclosed walls of the classroom into the almost limitless possibility of education across time and space accessible via the domain of cyber technology. The significant contribution of technology to education has prompted educational bodies like the Malaysian Ministry of Education to prominently point out that online learning becomes the main pedagogical approach in higher learning institutions in the nation’s educational blueprint. The powerful potential of technology however, can only be realised through informed and purposeful use of it by teachers. Integrating technology in the language classroom requires that teachers not only have knowledge about the Technology but interplay between three components of knowledge – Technology, Pedagogy, and Content Knowledge (TPACK) which determines the essential qualities of teacher knowledge that are required when teachers employ technology in their teaching. The main study is therefore designed to measure teachers’ readiness to use technology in teaching English language in tertiary level classrooms to enhance student learning. To serve this purpose, a pilot study was carried out on 20 English language instructors to evaluate the reliability and the validity of a questionnaire that was adapted to gauge instructors’ readiness in carrying out technology-mediated classrooms at a public university in Malaysia. Correlations among items in the current study reveals lower coefficients compared to a previous study on the same instrument probably due to the smaller sample size in the current study but the correlationships are mostly positive which still suggests convergence validity. The internal consistency of the items was mostly better than two previous similar studies. Five items that seemed to be misbehaving in their respective measures were chosen based on their inter-item correlation and the item-total statistics and scrutinized via cognitive interviews with selected respondents to gain insights into the items but the results of the interviews revealed that the items are functioning as intended.