M.A. Thesis:

Technophobia : casting challenges of tech lessons on language arts among Iranian EFL teachers within digital literacy era

Investigation about teachers’ problem with technology has become an evolving zone of investigations in EFL area (Cummings, 2005). This study wanted to investigate the reasons behind inconvenience in using technology among Iranian English language teachers by using mixed method design. Diverse factors on personal vs. pedagogical accounts including sampled teachers’ age, gender, Socio- Economic Status (SES),fields of study, and teaching experience were mapped on their attitudes toward working with computers with a focus on the reasons of technophobia. The study employed an explanatory design using a two-phase approach, where qualitative data was collected and analyzed to elaborate on the quantitative data results. In the first phase, a total of 338 teachers were pooled through cluster sampling from across Iran. Their responses to an online Likert-type questionnairewith five points, termed as ‘Computer Anxiety Rating Scale’ (CARS) by WeilandRosen(1995)were analyzed in line with the aims of the study. The results from the survey section were tabulated to uncover some intrinsic vs. extrinsic factors impacting technology integration by the teachers. The first major finding of the study was that teachers’ degree of technophobia as expected by the two independent variables (age and gender) was not significant. The other finding was that tendency toward using computers could not be necessarily related to the teachers' fields of study. The results also demonstrated no significant effect of SES conditions on teachers’ computer thoughts. Nonetheless, regarding the indirect collective effect of four independent variables including Iranian EFL teachers’ university degrees, teaching experience, SES and computer familiarity, the results from multivariate Discriminant Function Analysis (DFA) indicated that sampled English language teachers’ computer knowledge and their level of education were significantly the best predictors of technophobia respectively. In the second phase, to further enhance the quantitative findings, fifteen teachers were sampled from the same participants for follow-up interviews.Diverse reasons on positive, neutral and negative accounts were pointed out by the interviewed teachers over technology use in their educational contexts. The advantages of using technology, as pointed by teachers, were numerous. As far as the inhibiting reasons, teachers acknowledged their computer illiteracy as the most significant inhibiting factor behind their fears toward using technology in class. The findings of the present study could be utilized as a general driving force to the educational policy makers in the Iranian contexts esp. the Iranian Ministry of Education (MoE) to allocate more budgets on providing state-of-the-art in-service programs, online training courses and bringing high-tech devices in schools

Keywords: Technophobia; computer attitudes, technology integration, CALL; digital literacy, ICT.