Frontiers in Education 01 frontiersin.org The impact of an empowerment evaluation professional development program on physical sciences teachers’ attitudes, beliefs and behavioral intentions to integrate ICT into their science lessons Sumayya Moosa and Umesh Ramnarain * Department of Science and Technology Education, Faculty of Education,University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa The purpose of this research study was to investigate and determine the impact of teacher’s attitudes and beliefs on their behavioral intentions to integrate ICT into their science lessons and to establish the impact of a professional development program underpinned by the principles of empowerment evaluation (EE) on their attitudes and beliefs. The participants were selected from fve high schools in Johannesburg, South Africa. A validated questionnaire was used to identify teachers’ attitudes and beliefs and to measure the impact of their attitudes and beliefs on their behavioral intentions to integrate ICTs into their science lessons. The fndings from this research study indicated that the empowerment evaluation approach positively impacted the teacher’s attitudes and beliefs as well as improved their behavioral intentions to integrate ICT into their science lessons. Furthermore, this study revealed that the more confdent and competent a teacher felt to integrate ICT into his/her lessons, the more likely he/she would be to integrate ICT into their lessons. Therefore, teachers’ behavioral intentions are important in predicting whether they will integrate ICT into their lessons. KEYWORDS empowerment evaluation, professional development, teachers’ beliefs, attitudes, ICT integration, science education, theory of planned behavior, technology acceptance model 1. Introduction In South Africa, the White Paper on e-Education (Department of Education, 2004) advocates the pedagogical integration of ICT to promote the development of higher-order thinking skills. Te Department of Basic Education through the Provincial Departments of Education has implemented programs to integrate ICT into the classroom of South African schools (Department of Education, 2004). Te Gauteng Department of Education (GDE) has rolled out an ICT integration program to most of its township schools and conducted professional development sessions to train teachers on the use of technology in the classroom. Smartboards and other technological tools have been procured and delivered to school. However, research conducted on ICT integration in South African schools has indicated that OPEN ACCESS EDITED BY Fika Megawati, Universitas Muhammadiyah Sidoarjo, Indonesia REVIEWED BY Ana Manzano-León, University of Almeria, Spain Hariharan N. Krishnasamy, Universiti Utara Malaysia, Malaysia *CORRESPONDENCE Umesh Ramnarain uramnarain@uj.ac.za RECEIVED 05 February 2023 ACCEPTED 27 June 2023 PUBLISHED 18 July 2023 CITATION Moosa S and Ramnarain U (2023) The impact of an empowerment evaluation professional development program on physical sciences teachers’ attitudes, beliefs and behavioral intentions to integrate ICT into their science lessons. Front. Educ. 8:1159373. doi: 10.3389/feduc.2023.1159373 COPYRIGHT © 2023 Moosa and Ramnarain. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. TYPE Curriculum, Instruction, and Pedagogy PUBLISHED 18 July 2023 DOI 10.3389/feduc.2023.1159373