DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ARABIC AND ENGLISH MEDIUM SCHOOL LEARNERS IN TERMS OF E-LEARNING TECHNOLOGY ACCEPTANCE AND USE FROM THE ASPECT OF THE CONSTRUCTIVIST LEARNING APPROACH

Schools in Iraq use Arabic, and English, as the language of instruction. This study aims to examine the impact of language of instruction on students’ attitudes towards technology, teaching practices, and learning outcomes in secondary and upper primary schools in Iraq. This research study employed a quantitative approach to explore the differences in influencing factors such as, constructivist learning approach, student investigation, respect for difference, attitude towards technology use, perceived usefulness, perceived ease to use, learning facility that affect the acceptance of e-learning technology and perceived e-learning outcomes by incorporating a constructivist learning approach between schools that use either Arabic or English as the language of instruction. The data were obtained from 936 secondary and upper primary school students based in Erbil through a self-report questionnaire. A structural equation modeling approach was implemented to analyze the data and test the hypotheses in this study. This study revealed that students studying in English medium schools showed stronger positive effects from the Constructivist learning approach on their perceived e-learning outcomes. Conversely, students studying in Arabic medium schools demonstrated a more potent positive effect from perceived usefulness on their attitudes towards technology. Moreover, the positive impact of an attitude towards technology use on perceived e-learning outcomes was more pronounced among the Arabic medium school students compared to English medium school students. Additionally, the influence of the learning facility on the perceived ease of use, as well as the perceived usefulness of technology, differed between the two groups. The English medium school students experienced a more substantial positive impact. However, there was no significant positive difference observed in the effect of perceived ease of use on attitudes towards technology use between the English medium and Arabic medium school students. Furthermore, no significant positive difference was observed in the effect of perceived usefulness on the Constructivist learning approach for either Arabic medium school students or English medium school students.