Affect and acceptability: exploring teachers’ technology-related risk perceptions

Educational change, such as technology integration, involves risk. Teachers are encouraged to “take risks”, but what risks they are asked to take and how do they perceive these risks? Developing an understanding of teachers’ technology-related risk perceptions can help explain their choices and behaviours. This paper presents a way to understand the complex weighing of teaching and technology values when teachers’ choose, or choose not to, integrate technology in their teaching, through an investigation of technology-related risk perceptions. Findings suggest that teachers, regardless of personal and professional technology use, perceive the same risks when considering technology integration in the classroom; but there was considerable variance in the acceptability of these risks. Acceptability was strongly related to teachers’ affect for technology and value of technology in teaching. The study employs the semantic image of “cost–benefit” as framework to identify and discuss teachers’ rationales supporting their choice to integrate technology in their teaching.