Attitudes to technology, perceived computer self-efficacy and computer anxiety as predictors of computer supported education

There is a large body of research regarding computer supported education, perceptions of computer self-efficacy, computer anxiety and the technological attitudes of teachers and teacher candidates. However, no study has been conducted on the correlation between and effect of computer supported education, perceived computer self-efficacy, computer anxiety and attitude to technology and which additionally explains their relationship to each other. This research is conducted in order to test the effect levels among the latent variables of attitude to technology, perceived computer self-efficacy, computer anxiety and the attitude toward doing computer supported education and these latent variables' ratios to each other. For this, eight hypotheses were developed in light of theoretical information by reviewing the literature. This research is done by using Technology Attitude Scale, Perceived Computer Self-Efficacy Scale, Computer Anxiety Scale and The Attitude Scale toward Applying Computer Supported Education. The participant group of the research consists of 471 pre-service teachers. Exploratory factor analyses of scales were analyzed via SPSS 16.0 software. For the confirmatory factor analyses of scales and the structural equation modeling, AMOS 17.0 software was used. The most significant finding of this study is that attitude to technology, perceived computer self-efficacy and computer anxiety are important predictors of teacher candidates' attitude toward using computer supported education. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd.