Primary Oriental Language Teachers' Attitudes towards the Computer and its Perceived Usefulness in their Teaching Profession A Case Study (original) (raw)
The School IT Project was born in late 1990s as a result of educational reform in Mauritius. In 2003, the project engendered the teaching of ICT as a subject at primary school level. The Ministry of Education and Human Resources now intends to integrate ICT across the primary school curriculum rather than having it as a subject in its own right. Pre-service primary school teachers are being trained at the Mauritius Institute of Education (MIE) in the use of ICT as a teaching and learning tool. They have been trained using activities that are personally relevant to them so that whatever they learn at the MIE can be directly applied to schools. This paper reports a study that investigates the attitudes of pre-service Oriental Language primary school teachers towards their ICT course and towards computers. It also investigates the teachers' perception of the usefulness of computers in their teaching profession. A mixed method approach, which combines quantitative and qualitative methods, has been used. The Attitude towards Computing and Computer Courses Questionnaire (ACCC) was administered to all the trainee teachers. This was then followed by unstructured interviews of a purposive sample of trainee teachers. They were asked about their attitudes towards ICT, their perceptions of the ICT course they have followed at the MIE and the usefulness of computers in their profession. The findings tend to indicate that the trainees have a positive attitude towards ICT and that they perceive the ICT course as helpful in developing their skills and confidence in the use of ICT as a teaching and learning tool. Findings also suggest that the teachers find the activities they were exposed to as being directly relevant to the school context. Moreover, teachers express their intention to use computers to teach their subjects if appropriate resources are made available.
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