This study compared education students’ attitudes toward working in urban schools as they entered teacher preparation and later after student teaching. Given descriptions of four schools differing in demographic makeup, students rated interest and comfort levels for teaching in each situation. Respondents also ranked 14 school characteristics according to importance when considering a teaching position. Attitudes shifted more favorably toward urban school teaching among students whose field placements provided positive urban teaching experiences. School security and parental support ranked as highly important both initially and later. Socioeconomic and ethnic diversity became more important later. Written comments illuminated students’ ratings and helped inform a professional development school project.

This study investigated relationships among students' technology-related abilities, beliefs, and intentions. Participants were 217 preservice teachers who responded to post-course surveys. Value beliefs were the best predictor of their intentions to use a variety of software and their intentions regarding frequency of technology use with students in their future classrooms. Selfefficacy for technology integration also contributed to the prediction of intentions to use a variety of software, and technological abilities contributed to the prediction of intentions regarding frequency of future technology use. Constructivist beliefs were moderately correlated with self-efficacy and value beliefs, as well as with both types of intentions. The results highlight the importance of relationships between preservice teachers' beliefs and their potential integration of technology in their future classrooms.In a national survey of educators and future educators, the majority of school district administrators (60%) and principals (55%) reported that effective integration of instructional technology was extremely important to their core mission, 321 Ó 2011, Baywood Publishing Co., Inc.

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The current study sets out to identify determinants affecting tertiary students' behavioural intentions to use mobile technology in lectures. The study emphasises that the reason for using mobile technology in classrooms with large numbers of students is to facilitate interactions among students and lecturers. The proposed conceptual framework has four main antecedents of behavioural intention: system perception, intrinsic motivation, system and information quality, and uncertainty avoidance. Sample data was collected from 396 tertiary students in Malaysia. Results from structural equation modelling on the sample indicated that behavioural intention was significantly influenced by system and information quality, followed by intrinsic motivation, and uncertainty avoidance. System perception was not significantly predictive of behavioural intention. The proposed framework explained 54% of the variance in behavioural intention of mobile technology use in lecture classes. The study findings are indicative of the importance of system development efforts to ensure overall quality system design. The findings further suggest that mobile technology may serve as a tool to facilitate interaction among students and lecturers in large lecture classes.