Acceptance and Use of Video Games for Education by Secondary School Teachers

This study presents the qualitative phase of a PhD project examining the factors that shape secondary school teachers' attitudes toward, and intentions to use, video games in Australian classrooms. Although video games are widely promoted as a transformative educational tool, the authors note that most prior research has concentrated on student outcomes rather than teacher perspectives, and that existing quantitative findings on what drives teacher acceptance remain inconsistent. The project seeks to address this gap by applying established models of technology acceptance, including Teo's (2011) framework and additional constructs such as personal innovativeness, prior game use, and perceived pedagogical usefulness, to the specific case of video games.

The qualitative component involved semi-structured online interviews with a planned sample of 20 Australian secondary teachers, purposively selected to capture a wide range of video game experience, from those who had never used games and did not wish to, to those who used them regularly. Interviews were transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis in NVivo, combining deductive coding for teacher attributes such as subject, year level, and school socioeconomic status with inductive coding for emergent themes. The paper reports that data collection was ongoing at the time of writing, so it presents the research design, rationale, and preliminary progress rather than final findings.

The authors argue that distinguishing teacher attitudes toward video games from attitudes toward technology more broadly is important for school leaders, policy makers, and developers seeking to support meaningful classroom use. The findings, once complete, are expected to inform a model of the factors shaping teacher adoption and to offer a more grounded, practice-based view of the claimed benefits of video games in secondary education.