Understanding What Shapes Primary Teachers’ Intentions to Teach Informatics
Across Europe and beyond, Informatics (often called Computer Science or Computing) is moving into primary school curricula. While this shift promises to equip children with vital computational thinking skills from an early age, it also raises a pressing question: are teachers ready and willing to integrate Informatics into their daily practice?
Why this research matters?
When schools introduce new subjects, success depends not only on curricula and resources, but also on teachers’ beliefs, self-efficacy, and the social expectations surrounding them. Lithuania, like many other countries, recently introduced Informatics at primary level. This gave us a valuable opportunity to study how teachers navigate this change — and what supports their intentions to embrace it.
How we approached the study?
We adapted the Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 1991) to focus on four key factors likely to influence teachers’ decisions:
- Perceived ease of use – do teachers feel Informatics subject is manageable to teach?
- Subjective norms – do colleagues, leaders and communities expect and encourage them?
- Self-efficacy for Informatics integration – does they feel confident in their ability?
- Behavioral intention – how strongly do they intend to integrate Informatics?
202 primary teachers from across Lithuania completed our survey, and we analyzed the relationships using structural equation modelling (SEM).
What we found?
Three factors stood out as the strongest influences on teachers’ intentions:
- Subjective norms matter most: teachers were most strongly influenced by the expectations and encouragement of school leaders, peers and communities. For less experienced teachers, these social pressures played an especially important role.
- Self-efficacy shapes practice: teachers who believed in their own ability to integrate Informatics were more likely to intend to do this.
- Ease of use is key: the simpler teachers perceive Informatics integration to be, the stronger their intention to try.
Interestingly, age did not play a role. Also, more experienced teachers relied less on external encouragement and more on their own confidence and skills. Our study shows that success depends not just on curriculum design, but on the human side of change.
Dr. Gabrielė Stupurienė (Vilnius university, Lithuania)
Dr. Gabrielė Stupurienė gained a doctoral degree in informatics engineering. She has been researching problems in informatics education (interdisciplinary studies of informatics, informatics engineering, and education) for more than ten years and has published more than 30 scientific articles. Her main research topics are informatics education, computational thinking skills, STEAM education, applications of artificial intelligence in teaching and learning, and pedagogical approaches to emerging technologies. Since 2023, she has been involved in teacher training (pre-service and in-service) focusing on artificial intelligence in education. She is an ambassador in Lithuania for the European Commission's digital competence self-reflection tool SELFIEforTEACHER. She has participated in several national and EU-funded projects as a project leader and researcher.
Read the full paper here: Investigating primary school teachers’ intentions to integrate Informatics
Citation : Stupurienė, G., Jevsikova, T., & Kalelioglu, F. (2025). Investigating primary school teachers’ intentions to integrate Informatics: a study of an adapted Theory of Planned Behaviour. Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/1475939X.2025.2469891