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The great poet, philosopher, and Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore once wrote nothing illuminating without self-illumination (Tagoreweb, n.d.) which is also the crux of ancient Indian philosophy. He probably meant once this self-illumination takes place within humans there is no need for the sun, moon, electricity, or any sort of external spark. But is it possible to produce that illuminated self with viable intervention, or is it purely intrinsic? This was the basic question taken up for investigation in this study.
Bandura (1991) in his ‘socio-cognitive theory’ told that the self-system of an individual is a dictator of his thoughts, behaviour, attitudes, feelings, emotions, and readiness to learn or act. Carol S. Dweck (2012) in her book “Mindset: how you can fulfil your potential” discussed ‘growth mind-set’ that is peoples’ underlying belief in their immanent intelligence and self-illuminating potential, impelling them to put extra effort to grow smarter. This growth mind-set has an important role in people’s motivation and achievement (Dweck, 2015). Ajzen and Fishbein (1980) in ‘theory of reasoned action’ explained the relationship between attitudes and behaviours within human action. It predicts how individuals will behave based on their pre-existing attitudes and behavioural intentions. These propositions hint that the human self-system is instrumental for growth and action.
Extending this ‘theory of reasoned action’, Davis (1989) proposed Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to show how users come to accept and use technology. It is designed to measure the adoption of new technology based on customer attitudes. Here, users’ behavioural intention is a factor that leads people to use the technology which is again influenced by Perceived usefulness (PU) and Perceived ease of use (PEU). Since then TAM has been continuously studied resulting in three major upgrades - TAM 2 (Venkatesh & Davis 2000), the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology or UTAUT (Venkatesh et al. 2003), and TAM 3 (Venkatesh & Bala 2008).
Similar to any kind of technology, ICT use also depends on several factors along with users’ subjective traits as manifested in the TAM. Its use has become a common phenomenon in today’s education and the post-COVID-19 era its hegemony is indisputable. Considering the growing complexities of the modern world and worship of individualism, this study seeks to unfurl the role of teachers’ self-concept in their ICT use following the theoretical framework of TAM. It draws heavily on the seminal works of Venkatesh & Bala (2008) and Baker et al. (2011) for their interrelated nature in dealing with IT adoption as a common thematic issue.