Break the walls! Second-Order barriers and the acceptance of mLearning by first-year pre-service teachers

Despite their many advantages, teachers' adoption of mobile technologies as didactic tools is still limited. Their adoption is conditioned by first-order and second-order barriers. The former are associated with the availability of resources, and the latter refer to internal barriers as a consequence of the reflection of instructors about their own teaching practice, which are harder to overcome. Teacher training plays an important role on the formation of these barriers, but prior research mainly focuses on pre-service teachers in their last years of training, where some of those barriers have already been formed, and it mostly investigates computer-based learning. This research aims to fill that gap by analyzing the influence of second-order barriers on first-year pre-service teachers' intention to use mobile devices in their future teaching practice. The study identifies the most relevant second-order barriers and tests the proposed model using a sample of 160 first-year primary education pre-service teachers. The results of the partial least squares structural equation modeling analysis offer relevant practical, theoretical and methodological implications for mobile learning adoption: first, they provide evidence of the key role of second-order barriers, accounting for 70.8% of the variance of the intention to use these technologies; second, the importance of compatibility and enjoyment, higher than that of traditional key variables as perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness, points out tothe need to reconsider pre-service teacher training programs; third, the study compares traditional reflective modeling of subjective norm and formative modeling, suggesting the adequacy of formative formulations in technology adoption studies. •A TAM based model for the analysis of the second-order barriers is designed.•Second-order barriers predict the 70% of the behavioral intention of using.•The hedonic component plays a key role in the intention of using mLearning.•The pre-conceptions about teaching influences the intention of the students.•Subjective norm is better modelled as a formative composite with separated sources.