Exploring Taiwanese pre-service fitness trainers’ attitudes toward ICT and their teaching self-confidence

Abstract

Learning by using Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is an important trend in the 21st century. In the field of physical education, ICT can extend teachers’ instructional practice and enhance the effectiveness of their teaching. The main purpose of this study is to explore pre-service fitness trainers’ attitudes toward ICT and the relationships with their teaching self-confidence in terms of fitness training. The participants of this study were 219 pre-service fitness trainers who had attended a ‘‘training program for fitness trainers.” All participants responded to two questionnaires: the Attitudes toward ICT (AICT) questionnaire and the Fitness Teaching Efficacy Beliefs Instrument (FTEBI). These two questionnaires are deemed to be sufficiently reliable to assess the two subjects by factor analysis. This study provides empirical evidence to verify the positive relationship between AICT and FTEBI in the domain of fitness training. This study also found a gender difference in teaching efficacy (TE) for fitness training, which seems to indicate that the male pre-service fitness trainers may teach better than the females. Overall, this study suggests that if we can add significantly more ICT materials and provide more experience of ICT use for pre-service fitness trainers in the training process, they would have more self-confidence in their professional career.