Analysis of the current situation and influencing factors of information technology education in middle school

The United States has been at the forefront of computing in the world, also its information education started early. IT in elementary schools is mainly to stimulate and cultivate students’ interest in IT. Secondary school IT classes are generally divided into two types of courses: mathematics and physics courses that introduce some IT; and special mandatory or elective IT courses, such as computer applications and programming languages. In high school, there is an elective course in programming, which is designed to develop students’ logic and abstract thinking skills. The development of IT education in the United States has been incorporated into national policies and social security systems. In his 1996 public speech, President Clinton placed the development of modern computer-based educational technology at the centre of future educational development. In 1998, the United Kingdom adopted the Education Reform Programme and a national curriculum has been developed. IT was included in the national curriculum. In 2000, the UK made detailed regulations on the content and assessment standards of IT education for students at different stages from 5 years to 16 years old, taking into full consideration the acceptance level of students and the consistency of their learning contents.

In China, the starting point of Internet development [7] is much lower than in other countries, and the curriculum continuity from elementary school to secondary school is weak, so there is a lot of room for development in the IT environment. IT teaching [8, 9] materials and faculties are the important basis for the development of IT. At present, there are fewer types of IT teaching material in China, and the content of the teaching material is less compatible with students’ ability to accept it. Hence there may be problems such as in learning and acquiring related knowledge or the lack of students’ interest to learn IT. In some ways, the classroom implementation of the materials may enhance theoretical knowledge, reducing the cultivation of skills and hands-on abilities. Teachers who are more experienced may be less innovative in the classroom and have the status quo of being stuck in their own ways, teaching students based on the syllabus each semester according to the teaching plan, but there are problems in cultivating students’ interest in IT and improving their IT literacy. While the younger teachers are enthusiastic and innovative, they need to improve their grasp of the important and difficult points of the subject, which can be discussed inthe classroom and within a reasonable time limit. For IT education, we should grasp the present, look at things in the long term, and focus on the future.

TRA is a theoretical model proposed by American scholars Ajzen and Fishbein to explain the authenticity of individuals (as shown in Figure 1). The two variables are attitude and subjective arguments. Attitude: an individual's positive or negative evaluation of a behaviour; subjective argument: a positive or negative evaluation of a behaviour by others.

Fig. 1

TPB is the product of Ajzen's ongoing reflection and revision based on the Theory of Rational Behaviour. Its purpose is to help understand how people change their behaviour patterns. It assumes that people's behaviour is the result of deliberate planning (as shown in Figure 2).

Fig. 2

TAM was proposed by Davis based on the Theory of Rational Behaviour. It is the most influential model used to explain the acceptance and use of IT by individuals in the current model (as shown in Figure 3). This model is used to explain the low usage of information systems. The usage of the system is considered to be determined by behavioural intentions (BI) and consists of external variables, perceived usefulness (PU), perceived ease of use, attitude towards use, BIs, and system use.

Fig. 3

UTAUT is an integrated model consisting of eight theoretical models [9] by Venkatesh et al. (as shown in Figure 4): The theory of Rational Behaviour, TAM, Motivation Model, TPB, Model of Combined Technology Acceptance and TPB, Computer Availability Model, Diffusion of Innovations Theory, and Social Cognitive Theory to form an integrated model. The variables include performance expectations, effort expectations, facilitation, behavioural expectations, social influence (SI), behaviour, gender, experience, age, and voluntary use.

Fig. 4

In the process of curriculum reform, there are obvious differences among disciplines, and the reform has a guideline for the basic reform of the discipline, and the IT curriculum reform is based on the ‘Information Technology Curriculum Guideline’ [10]. The reform is reflected in the establishment of a comprehensive teaching model system [11], the use of appropriate teaching methods, the organisation of classroom activities based on traditional lectures, the use of group leaders as the centre of classroom management, and the emphasis on students’ practical work.

In IT courses, teachers generally group classes into groups of six students, with group members seated next to each other to facilitate discussion, communication, and cooperative learning. Though the group members come from different levels, to ensure that the overall level of each group is less different and basically equal, the groups are constructed in such a way that they form a positive competition between them, learn cooperatively and help each other, and finally achieve the target of the collective IT literacy ability in the class.

IT education at the secondary school level is to cultivate students’ information literacy, although the learning pressure is relatively low. Students’ interest in learning is a direct motivation for them to learn. The state of ‘enjoyment’ helps students to develop their motivation to learn, which leads and facilitates their learning and results in continuous learning activities. Therefore, interest plays an important role in promoting the IT learning of secondary school students.

During the teaching practice, we observed that students’ interest and initiative in learning in the IT classroom were poor; most of the students did not listen to the lesson carefully, and their interaction with the teacher was poor; they chose to surf the Internet freely for entertainment during free practice, and occasionally they completed the classroom exercises assigned by the teacher carefully. After communicating with students during the internship period, these situations existed in most secondary school IT classrooms, which resulted in the poor development of IT education.

The sources of the model were: first, the TAM was selected as the base model for this study, based on the literature review of TAMs in Chapter 2; second, the process and results of secondary school students’ IT classroom acceptance.

Based on the above theoretical models, this study introduced ‘technology literacy’ and ‘self-efficacy’ based on PU, perceived ease of use, and BI, and based on the attributes of the secondary school students. Since ‘Social influence’ has an impact on the implementation of IT, it was introduced.

‘Social Influence’ was introduced to study the factors that influence the acceptance of IT courses by secondary school students, to understand their attitudes, and to take measures to enable them to master IT. The aim is to develop the ability of secondary school students to learn IT and to learn it more efficiently, and then to internalise it for teaching purposes. The TAM is highly scalable and can be modified depending on the target population. After finding a large amount of literature on the model, PU, perceived ease of use, and SI were identified as direct variables, and BI was identified as the outcome variable. After analysing a large amount of literature on the factors influencing TAMs in the field of IT, it was concluded that students’ technology literacy and sense of self-efficacy (SE) influence secondary school students’ acceptance of IT courses, taking into account the characteristics of IT subjects. The specific model is shown in Figure 5.

Fig. 5

The following variables were designed in the context of the classical model and the construction of this study model: PU, perceived ease of use, SI, SE, technological literacy and BI. The definitions, hypotheses and measurement questions of each variable are as follows.

This study used a questionnaire and literature research method, based on related literature to obtain its own questionnaire items, then counted and analysed the collected data, to verify the truthfulness and validity of the proposed model and each research hypothesis. To ensure the scientific and reasonable design of the questionnaire, the study was conducted in strict accordance with Figure 6.

Fig. 6

After reading a large number of domestic and foreign references, and taking into account the special characteristics of secondary school students, the basic model of this study was determined. After reviewing the references and revising the measurement items scientifically and appropriately about the study, we designed the measurement items on the factors affecting students’ acceptance of IT classroom and formed a preliminary questionnaire. Students in the tutor group were asked to fill out the questionnaire for comments and suggestions, including the rationality of the questionnaire variables and whether there were ambiguities in the statements.

Before the questionnaire was administered, a small-scale pre-test analysis was conducted to help students understand the purpose of the survey, to increase the rationality of the questionnaire, and to make corrections and improvements. In this study, students were selected from Duqiao senior School in the Linwei District of Weinan City, and 80 questionnaires were released. After the selection, 64 valid questionnaires were obtained, with an efficiency of 80%.

Parameter significance estimation refers to whether the unstandardised values of the model exist or are significant, as can be seen from the table below. The ratio of unstandardised loadings/standard error (Unstd/S.E.) is between (7 and 8) and is >1.96, while the P-values of the model are <0.001.

From Table 12, we can see that the standardised factor loadings ranged from 0.558 to 0.868, which is basically within the range of 0.6–1, indicating that the topics selected for the dimensions in this study have some explanatory power for the dimensions.

AVE is the sum of the squares of the factor loadings, which indicates the combined explanatory power of the potential variables for all variables. Table 12 shows that the potential variables are good, and the explanatory power of the corresponding items is good.

Discriminant validity refers to any two latent variables with correlation coefficients <1, indicating that there is a significant difference between them. Table 13 shows the Pearson correlation.

Secondary school students’ perceived social impact of IT positively influences (path coefficient of 0.57) secondary school students’ BIs to learn IT, which is consistent with the hypothesis proposed in this study. In other words, when society emphasises the role of IT for students, the more widespread it is, the higher the intention of secondary school students towards IT, and vice versa, the weaker it is. Therefore, it can be concluded that SI is one of the key factors influencing secondary school students’ acceptance of IT courses.

The influence of technological literacy on secondary school students’ learning ability in IT classes was not significant. One explanation is that secondary school students’ technological literacy has a strong influence on their previous educational environment, which may lead to a very high level of IT competency among students and affect their interest in learning IT courses. Another explanation is that in primary and secondary education in China, compared to high school and higher education, there are fewer courses related to ‘technology’ alone, and the existing curriculum overemphasises the importance of theoretical knowledge and exercises while ignoring the importance of acquiring skills, thus not cultivating students’ sensitivity to ‘technology’.

In this study, SE had a positive effect on secondary school students’ ability to learn IT classes (path coefficient 0.72), which is consistent with the hypothesis proposed in this study. This indicates that students’ SE has a strong influence on their willingness to learn IT behaviours. The best way to improve the acceptance of secondary school students in the IT classroom is to let students do hands-on work and take the initiative to discover the simplicity and speed of IT subjects. Students have a positive attitude towards learning, learn by doing, and feel good about themselves, which will have a great impact on their future skill acquisition and use.