Abstract

Technological competence as a prelude to integration of technology has been long established. There is no denial that computer proficiency has pervaded all aspects of our lives to help in accomplishing personal and professional tasks, especially in academia. However, student teachers rarely get a first-hand experience to use computers while teaching in their classrooms, as computer usage is dominated by the classroom teacher. Yet, they have to take charge of the classroom and computers as soon as they enter the workforce. In today’s competitive world of advanced technology, computer usage has become the norm for classroom teachers and technology enhanced education needs to be promoted in classrooms. The focus of this study will be to investigate the efficacy beliefs that student teachers at each institution hold about technology integration, and how these beliefs might be influenced by computer self-efficacy. The target population will be college students from one university located in the Northeastern United States and one university located in the urban metropolis of Mumbai, India. Earlier studies have shown that computer self-efficacy (Compeau & Higgins, 1995) and concerns (Ertmer 2001) are important predictors of technology adoption, implementation and integration. Based on these assumptions, the purpose of the study was to determine the influence of factors such as teachers’ professional uses of computers, computer self-efficacy, and concerns regarding technology integration on the beliefs and practices of teachers with respect to the benefits of integrating student use of computers into their classroom instruction. The following three scales will be used. The Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire is a comprehensive scale which investigates motivation and learning strategies that student use to learn. The Computer User Self-efficacy (CUSE) Scale is a composite of participant’s responses to 30 Likert-type items.