Teachers’ End-User Attitudes Toward the Implementation of School-Based Social Networking Sites in K-8 Schools
Authors: Stanley Barak D. 
Published: June 2020

Advancement in technologies, such as smartphones and social networking sites (SNSs), are
transforming traditional school-based communication in education. School-based SNSs are a
web-based system that enables administrators and teachers to (1) create or join a semi-public
online school community within a bounded system, (2) construct a virtual classroom with
individual student profiles, or avatars, (3) invite parents and guardians to create a profile
and link with their child's profile, (4) and communicate with students, parents, and
guardians about students' school experiences using the classroom management and communication
platform. ClassDojo, a school-based SNS, has over three million teachers and 35 million students
using the platform (Williamson, 2017a). Teachers create and manage the virtual community; therefore,
it is crucial to understand teachers' end-user attitudes towards adopting school-based SNSs.
An extension of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) examined K-8 teachers' end-user attitudes
to integrate school-based SNSs in United States' primary and middle schools. The TAM's
foundation, extensions, and correlation to teachers' attitudes towards technology presented as
an ideal model to ground the study. Thus, using theoretical and empirical studies related to teachers'
adoption of technology and SNSs, this research study extended TAM using the following factors: (1)
perceived usefulness (PU), (2) perceived ease of use (PEOU), (3) security awareness (SA), (4) subjective
norm (SN), (5) attitude toward using SNSs (ATT), and (6) intention to use SNSs (ITU). TAM research
traditionally relies on obtaining self-reported data from participants through survey.

This survey-research collected data from 264 kindergarten to eighth-grade teachers throughout the United
States. The survey data was used to analyze descriptive statistics between TAM variables, as well as
perform path analyses on the relationships between the TAM variables. In this study, the TAM was extended
to include subjective norm (SN) and security awareness (SA). In summary, a majority of K-8 teachers had a
generally favorable attitude about ClassDojo's: (1) perceived usefulness, (2) perceived ease of use,
(3) security awareness, (4) subjective norm, (5) attitude towards use, and (6) intention to use. Path
analysis with latent factors utilized multiple regressions to assess the direct and indirect influences
of variables within a model (Hatcher, 2013). The extended TAM model was reliable and illustrated that seven
out of the eight path analyses were statistically significant. Teachers' attitudes towards ClassDojo
use had the most statistically significant influence on teachers' intentions to use ClassDojo. Similar
to findings from traditional TAM studies, perceived usefulness had the largest statistically significant
influence on teachers' attitudes toward ClassDojo use. A thematic analysis of teachers' comments
about ClassDojo provided support for the extended TAM path analysis. In conclusion, this study synthesized
other TAM variables to establish, the Teacher Technology Acceptance Model of Social Networking Sites (T-TAMS),
to identify and explore factors that positively influenced K-8 teachers' end-user attitudes towards
school-based SNSs use. Lastly, limitations and future research were presented. This study advanced research
on teachers' TAM of SNSs, teachers' end-user attitudes toward ClassDojo, and school-based
communication. Thus, these findings can be used to boost ClassDojo's adoption rates among K-8 schools
in the United States.