Over the past two years, schools around the world have been closed for several weeks or months and many countries have experienced repeated school closures due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Under these challenging times, teachers were expected, perhaps more than ever, to rely on information and communication technology (ICT) to continue teaching. However, it has become evident that educational systems faced very different conditions not only in terms of ICT infrastructure and resources but also in students’ and teachers’ readiness for digital schooling and in the use of ICT for teaching. For example, the international teacher survey of the International Computer and Information Literacy Study (ICILS) 2018 revealed that half of the teachers did not use ICT for teaching every day (Fraillon et al., 2020).

The call for increased digital use in education systems around the world created an urgency to understand the determinants of ICT-use for teaching and learning and what can be done to support teachers. Two key questions in this regard are whether investment in ICT resources and teacher qualification through targeted ICT-related professional development trainings influence teachers’ use of computer and of digital learning tools. During the pandemic, many countries implemented various measures and programs to improve the availability of ICT resources and to provide additional ICT-related training to teachers (Meinck, Fraillon, & Strietholt, 2022; Vincent-Lancrin, Cobo Romaní, & Reimers, 2022). Interestingly, however, previous comparative research is inconclusive that ICT-resources and professional development trainings increase ICT-related attitudes and the use of ICT (e.g., Drossel, Eickelmann, & Gerick, 2017; Konstantinidou & Scherer, 2022; Scherer, Siddiq, & Tondeur, 2020).

Our work is based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM; Davis, 1989), one of the leading models in literature related to technology acceptance and use technology (Marangunić & Granić, 2015). The TAM has been frequently applied in the field of education (Granić & Marangunić, 2019; Teo, 2011), including research on teachers’ use of technology for teaching. According to the TAM, the acceptance and subsequent use of technology is determined by two core variables: perceived usefulness (PU) - the degree to which an individual believes using technology would enhance their job performance; and perceived ease of use (PEOU) - the degree to which an individual believes using technology would be free from effort (Davis, 1989). A central insight of research on the TAM is the close link between attitudes and behavior. Against this background, a holistic evaluation of investments in digital resources and teacher training should examine both their impact on ICT-related attitudes and on the use of ICT for teaching.

To be able to take valuable lessons from the changes brought by the pandemic and to understand how we can further support teachers in their use of ICT for teaching, it is important to study which teachers managed to use ICT more frequently, whether their previous attitudes were related to this, and whether policy amenable factors, such teacher training and school resources, can explain both teachers’ ICT use their attitudes towards ICT. The aim of this study is to analyze the effect of ICT resources and ICT-related professional development on teachers’ attitudes towards and use of ICT for teaching and learning in Denmark, Finland, and Uruguay, the three participating countries of the ICILS Teacher Panel conducted by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). Our analyses are guided by the following research questions: (1) How have school ICT resources and professional development influenced teachers’ attitudes and ICT use during the pandemic? and (2) to what extent does previous attitudes towards ICT explain the teachers’ ICT use in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic?

This study uses teacher data from the ICILS Teacher Panel (Strietholt, Fraillon, Liaw, Meinck, & Wild, 2021). The study re-administered the questionnaires to the same teacher sample that participated in ICILS 2018, providing a longitudinal perspective regarding ICT use for teaching and learning before and after the COVID-19 outbreak. Our sample consists of teachers in Denmark (N = 445), Finland (N = 1246), and Uruguay (N = 468) who participated both in ICILS 2018 and in the follow-up survey in 2020. Variables Following the TAM, the outcome variables of our study are: - ICT use (USE): How often teachers used a set of five different ICT tools during teaching. We focused on digital tools that are more likely to be used during remote learning, such as tools for organizing and providing content for students, storing of student work, collaboration, and communication (e.g., learning management system, collaborative software, social media). - Perceived Usefulness (PU): Seven items indicating the extent to which teachers (dis)agree about using ICT for teaching and learning leads to positive outcomes (e.g., using ICT at school helps students develop greater interest in learning, enables students to collaborate more effectively). - Perceived Ease of Use (PEOU): How well teachers could do nine different school-related tasks using ICT (e.g., find useful teaching resources online; use a learning management system). Our two main predictors are: - School ICT resources (ΔRES): Change in the availability of different ICT resources at school (e.g., my school has access to sufficient digital learning resources, there is sufficient technical support to maintain ICT resources), calculated with teachers’ responses in 2020 and 2018. - ICT-related professional development (PD): How often teachers attended five different professional learning activities during the last two years (e.g., a course on ICT applications, a course or webinar on integrating ICT into teaching and learning), using their answers from 2020 only. Analytical method We regressed the use of ICT in 2020 on the change in ICT-resources and on the ICT-related professional development while controlling for the previous use of ICT in 2018. In the same vein, we regressed the PU and PEOU in 2020 on the explanatory variables while controlling for the prior measures obtained in 2018. All models were replicated separately for the three countries. We used sampling weights to generalize the results to the population in the three countries and calculated standard errors using the Jackknife procedure.

Our results provide evidence of a positive effect of PD on teachers’ use of ICT across all countries (B_DNK = .10, p = .07; B_FIN = .08, p = .003; B_URY = .24, p < .001), and on PU (B_FIN = .10, p = .001; B_URY = .15, p = .024) and PEOU (B_FIN = .08, p < .001; B_URY = .14, p = .014) in Finland and Uruguay. Changes in school ICT resources (ΔRES) also had a statistically significant positive impact on teachers’ use of ICT in Denmark and Finland (B_DNK = .12, p = .054; B_FIN = .06, p = .019). For teachers’ attitudes, we found a positive effect on PU (B_DNK = .14, p = .002; B_FIN = .07, p = .01; B_URY = .16, p = .011), but no evidence of an effect on PEOU. Additionally, in line with the TAM, our results indicate a positive effect of PEOU on USE in all countries (B_DNK = .16, p = .008; B_FIN = .08, p = .015; B_URY = .22, p = .002) but a statistically significant effect of PU on USE only in Finland (B_FIN = .08, p = .01). However, due to the pandemic, teachers were “forced” to use ICT for instruction, regardless of their views about ICT usefulness. For this reason, this study may simply not be suitable to study the effect of PU. All in all, our study highlights two findings. First, ICT resources and professional development had a positive impact on teachers’ ICT use and ICT-related attitudes. Second, teachers’ attitudes towards ICT – especially PEOU – also had a positive effect on ICT use. These findings suggest that education policies targeting the availability of sufficient school ICT resources as well as the provision of proper training and learning opportunities for teachers can be crucial for digital learning.

Davis, F. D. (1989). Perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and user acceptance of information technology. MIS Quarterly, 13(3), 319–340. https://doi.org/10.2307/249008 Drossel, K., Eickelmann, B., & Gerick, J. (2017). Predictors of teachers’ use of ICT in school – the relevance of school characteristics, teachers’ attitudes and teacher collaboration. Education and Information Technologies, 22(2), 551–573. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-016-9476-y Fraillon, J., Ainley, J., Schulz, W., Friedman, T., & Duckworth, D. (2020). Preparing for life in a digital world. IEA International Computer and Information Literacy Study 2018 international report. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978‐3‐030‐38781‐5 Granić, A., & Marangunić, N. (2019). Technology acceptance model in educational context: A systematic literature review. British Journal of Educational Technology, 50(5), 2572-2593. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.12864 Konstantinidou, E., & Scherer, R. (2021). Teaching with technology: A large-scale, international, and multilevel study of the roles of teacher and school characteristics. Computers & Education, 104424. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2021.104424 Marangunić, N., & Granić, A. (2015). Technology acceptance model: a literature review from 1986 to 2013. Universal access in the information society, 14(1), 81-95. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-014-0348-1 Meinck, S., Fraillon, J. & Strietholt, R. (2022). The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on education. International evidence from the Responses to Educational Disruption Survey (REDS). Paris/Amsterdam: UNESCO/IEA. Scherer, R., Siddiq, F., & Tondeur, J. (2020). All the same or different? Revisiting measures of teachers' technology acceptance. Computers & Education, 143, 103656. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2019.103656 Strietholt, R., Fraillon, J., Liaw, Y.-L., Meinck, S, & Wild, J. (2021). Changes in Digital Learning During a Pandemic: Findings from the ICILS Teacher Panel. Amsterdam: IEA. Teo, T. (2011). Technology acceptance research in education. In Technology acceptance in education (pp. 1-5). SensePublishers. Vincent-Lancrin, S., Cobo Romaní, C., & Reimers, F. (Eds.) (2022). How Learning Continued during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Global Lessons from Initiatives to Support Learners and Teachers, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/bbeca162-en