IN-SERVICE TEACHERS’ VIEWS TOWARD TECHNOLOGY AND TEACHING AND THEIR PERCEIVED COMPETENCE TOWARD INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (IT)

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to measure in-service teachers’ views toward technology and teaching and their perceived competence toward Information Technology (IT). A survey was carried out through a set of questionnaires among 160 teachers in three selected schools, each representing he three districts in Malacca, which are Melaka Tengah, Alor Gajah and Jasin.. A pilot test was conducted to obtain the reliability of the instruments. The Cronbach alphas for the IT Competence Scale and Teachers’ Views of Technology and Teaching Scale were reported at 0.98 and 0.83 respectively. The respondents believed that they have positive attitudes toward computers although most of them had moderate level of IT competence. These competencies include basic computer operation skills (43.1%), word processing (48.1%), spreadsheet (51.9%) and telecommunication (48.1%) while in media communication, participants had low level of IT competence (57.5%). They also believed that they still lack skills in IT integrate technologies into the teaching and learning. Apart from that, the result confirmed that there was a small, positive correlation between in-service teachers’ views toward technology and teaching and their perceived competence toward using computers. In conclusion, to face the fast development in the field of education, teachers ought to equip themselves with IT skills, through training courses.