Exploring the Structural Relationship of Bahraini Pre-Service Teachers’ Attitudes towards the Use of Technology in Education: A Test of the Technology Acceptance Model

Abstract

For several years, researchers and educators have focused on establishing and testing models that could help in predicting the use of technology in education. The technology acceptance model )TAM( developed by Davis )1989( is one of the commonly applied models. This study was conducted in Bahrain to examine the structural relationship of pre-service teachers’ attitudes to using technology. The hypothesized model included perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, attitude towards technology use, behavioural intention to use technology, facilitating conditions, and subjective norm. Structural equation modelling analysis was conducted to test the hypothesized relations between the variables in the model based on the data collected from 203 Bahraini pre-service teachers. The results indicated that attitude towards technology use was significantly predicted by perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. Furthermore, perceived usefulness highly and significantly predicted behavioural intention to use technology. Besides, perceived ease of use significantly predicted perceived usefulness. This research has validated TAM on a sample of pre-service teachers in the Kingdom of Bahrain.