Factors Affecting the Adoption of Educational Technology

Abstract

There are many in education who appear to think that it is sufficient to purchase and install technology for it to be successfully used (Boddy, 1997). Another common belief is that teachers will “automatically seek to learn about new technology and instructional methods” (Dooley, 1999, p. 38). However, while the investment in technology is there, surveys have consistently found that very few teachers integrate technology into either the K-12 (Newhouse, 1999) or the university classroom (Spotts, 1999). One research study found that even when the technology is readily available and staff accept the functionality of it, they “might not anticipate their personal use of it” (Mitra, Hazen, LaFrance, & Rogan, 1999).