Investigating Relationships Among Institutional Support, Perceived Technology Usefulness, Attitude Toward Using Technology and Teacher Professional Development Motivation: A Moderated Mediation Model

Teachers consistently face the challenge of realizing the self-professional development. The penetration of technology into education provides a new environment for teachers’ professional development, which will inevitably affect teachers’ professional development motivation. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between the motivation of teachers’ professional development, institutional support, perceived technology usefulness and attitude toward using technology. A total of vailed 1997 questionnaires were collected and using the moderated mediation model analysis method. The results show that institutional support has a positive predictive effect on teachers’ online professional development motivation. In addition, perceived technology usefulness and attitude toward using technology play a chain mediating role. The teachers’ urban-rural workplaces play an important regulatory role in the model. We find that rural teachers’ attitudes toward technology use are more likely to be influenced by perceived institutional support than urban teachers. The implications of this study are also discussed and directions for future research are suggested.