Incidences and correlates of Internet anxiety among high school teachers in Taiwan

Abstract

Once high schools are connected to the Internet, teachers are the key to the successful use of the Internet for both teaching and learning. Teacher anxiety, however, can often reduce the success of such technological and pedagogical innovations. The purpose of this study was to explore the Internet anxiety experience by Taiwan high school and vocational high school teachers. This study reviewed related literature in computer anxiety and discussed the further development of the Internet Anxiety Scale (IAS), which was used to survey 136 teachers in Taiwan. The statistical data produced by this study identified four aspects of Internet anxiety: Internet use, hardware construction, management of students' Internet-use, and learning computer-related skills and knowledge. Among these, survey respondents ranked anxiety over managing students' Internet-use as the highest problem. Further, results indicated that female teachers had significantly higher Internet anxiety than did male teachers, and teachers' majors or subject areas appeared to contribute significantly to the level of Internet anxiety as well. Results also showed that both computer-use hours per week and Internet-use hours per week were significantly negative factors when correlated with anxiety over Internet uses, hardware construction, and management of students' Internet-use. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.