Assessment of physical education teachers' use of distance teaching behavior under the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Background: For many physical education teachers, being suddenly forced to switch from traditional face-to-face teaching to online teaching without adequate mental preparation posed numerous challenges and difficulties. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to validate the use of distance teaching behavior models for physical education teachers under the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Method: The unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) model was employed to explore the use intention and use behavior of distance teaching. The model contains four independent variables: performance expectancy (PE), effort expectancy (EE), social influence (SI), and facilitating conditions (FC), two dependent variables: behavioral intention (BI) and use behavior (UB) and three moderating variables: gender, age, and experience. A total of 400 questionnaires were distributed to elementary and junior high school physical education teachers with 364 valid responses. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to test the relationships among variables. Results: The results found PE, EE and SI had significant influences on BI and FC and BI had significant influences on UB. Experience had moderating effects among SI and BI. Conclusions: Based on the results, recommendations for physical education teachers and schools are proposed. Furthermore, research limitations and future directions are discussed.