Workplace Predictors of Parenting Educators’ Technology Acceptance Attitudes

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine technology use by licensed parenting educators and to explore workplace conditions as influences on the educators’ technology acceptance attitudes. The study adapted the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) as a theoretical framework and proposed 10 hypotheses to be examined. Responses to an online survey (N = 279) indicated that information search and email were used most frequently. In contrast, social media and online learning platforms were infrequently used. Structural equation modeling revealed that technology attitudes were directly related to Perceived Ease of Use and Perceived Usefulness of technology. Also, Workplace Encouragement and Workplace Infrastructure indirectly influenced acceptance attitudes as mediated by Perceived Usefulness and Perceived Ease of Use, respectively. The results suggest that parenting educators’ adoption of technology needs to be supported by a workplace culture that promotes and provides resources for technology use.

‘It Depends’: Technology Use by Parent and Family Educators in the United States

“…Sometimes they use social media, and they are least often (if at all) using more novel applications like Second Life (virtual reality). These results mimic those from the author's research with a smaller national sample of family educators in 2010 [42] and with state specific parenting educators in 2013 [31,40]. Yet it also reflects observations about other educator groups who, depending on the availability of resources, will default to technologies that are familiar and likely used in their personal lives [37,48].…”

“…For the current study, the hypotheses are driven by anticipated differences in the contexts of family educators by type. Previous study of parenting educators (e.g., [40,41]) and of family life educators [22] reveal that those who work predominantly as family educators work with adult audiences, and in community-based programs. Those who work more occasionally in family education represent a wider range of work settings and audiences and their occasional educator status would seem to motivate their use of technologies for education differently.…”

“…Data was gathered through an online survey. In part, the survey included instruments used in research on technology integration practice in family educational contexts previously adapted and tested for validity and reliability by the author [31,32,40]. Items added for this study related to learner populations identified for family life educators [22], motivations for use, proficiency [36,37] barriers to use [19,33] and technology-related training [42].…”

“…Demographics of the sample are provided in Table 1. Based on previous study of these sampling populations [22,31,40], the sample was nationally or state-specifically representative of family education professionals.…”

Enterprise Social Networks as Digital Infrastructures - Understanding the Utilitarian Value of Social Media at the Workplace

“…daily communication-routines leads to the effect, that the visible artefact ESN becomes an 'invisible' but constantly available infrastructure, if it does not require high cognitive efforts to use it in daily work routines (front-end, interface) and if it runs smoothly without interruptions (back-end, server). Walker and Hong (2017) demonstrated that the presence of workplace infrastructure is related to users' perceived usefulness. Similar effects have already been shown in the context of e-learning technology, in which Wedel and Rothlauf (2014) demonstrated the mediated influence of infrastructure availability on perceived usefulness.…”