Does Teachers’ Intention Translate to Actual Usage? Investigating the Predictors of K-12 Teachers’ Usage of Open Educational Resources in China

Abstract

Education stakeholders around the world have been promoting the use of open educational resources (OER) by K-12 teachers to improve the quality of classroom instruction. Prior research identified individual and contextual factors that influenced teachers’ use of OER yet ignored the factor of quality. The aim of this survey study was to investigate how three categories of factors (quality of OER, teacher-related factors, and school-related factors) influence teachers’ use of OER based on the framework of the integrative model of behavior prediction. Multiple regression analysis and structural equation modeling of survey data from 1398 Chinese teachers yielded unexpected findings that contradict the understanding of the issue as reported in the prior literature. That is, compared with the distal school-related factors, the distal OER-related factor is a stronger predictor of teachers’ use of OER. Among the proximal teacher-related factors, the effects of the two types of distal factors on teachers’ use of OER were positively mediated by their self-efficacy in using OER and negatively mediated by their intention to use and attitude toward using OER. This reflects how the salient features of the Chinese educational landscape may have distorted previously known factors conducive to teachers’ use of OER among scholars and practitioners worldwide. Recommendations for future improvement of teachers’ OER adoption in Chinese K-12 education are discussed.