Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Date of Award

2010

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ed.D. in Education

Department

Modern Languages

First Advisor

Esim Erdim-Payne

Second Advisor

Felice A. Coles

Third Advisor

Kathryn F. Gates

Fourth Advisor

James S. Payne

Relational Format

Dissertation/thesis

Abstract

The major purpose of this study was to investigate the Spanish and Portuguese Instructors' attitudes toward technology at the University of Mississippi. In this mixed method study, with a very limited number of participants ( N = 20), attitudes were analyzed by combining the results of all three instruments that composed this research project: a survey, class observations and personal interviews. The results from the triangulation of these three instruments showed that the instructors have a positive attitude toward technology.

This particular investigation adapted and employed two dimensions to assess teachers' attitudes toward technology: (1) anxiety, fear and/or aversion; and (2) enjoyment, enthusiasm and/or confidence. Cronbach's alpha was computed for each dimension, and the results revealed a high level of reliability and internal consistency with all alphas exceeding .90 for both scales (.907 and .915, respectively).

After statistically analyzing both dimensions, a Pearson's product-moment correlation (the Pearson r) was also computed to measure the strength of the relationship between these two variables, which are labeled ANX (anxiety) and ENJ (enjoyment). The analysis suggested that there is a strong statistically significant negative linear relationship between enjoyment and anxiety (r = −.848, p < 0.001). Given that there is no relationship between enjoyment and anxiety, the probability of calculating a Pearson's r of −.848 is less than 0.001. In other words, as enjoyment scores increased by 1 unit, anxiety scores decreased by .848 units. Additionally, the mean of the Likert-type scale and the standard deviation of each dimension confirmed that the higher the enjoyment, enthusiasm and/or confidence (mean 3.96) toward technology, the lower the levels of anxiety, fear and/or aversion (mean 1.85) were.

Accessibility Status

Searchable text

Concentration/Emphasis

Ed.D.--Modern Languages with emphasis in TESOL

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