Pupils' Digital Literacy Reflected in Teachers' Attitudes Towards ICT: Case Study of the Czech Republic.

Abstract

The article deals with the development of digital literacy in primary school learners. Particularly, it focuses on reflection of teacher’s type in reaching digital literacy of the primary school pupils. The contribution is considered from the view how (fast) teachers’ adopt innovations in this field. Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovation Theory is applied on an intentionally selected sample of Czech primary school teachers (N = 167). Applying the tool designed by Kankaanrinta and based on the Rogers’ theory, teachers were structured into five groups (Innovators, Early adopters, Early majority, Late majority, Laggards) and the null hypothesis was tested stating that the level of digital literacy with the primary school learners does not depend on the teacher’s type (according to the Rogers’ typology of diffusion of innovation). Consequently, the increase in knowledge of learners (N = 173) was considered for each type of teachers through didactic pretest and posttest, each consisting of 18 tasks. For the purpose of testing, a special environment was designed to avoid any impact of learners’ previous knowledge on the results, and a Dell Latitude notebook was set as a hardware platform. The software part was based on the open-source software exploiting Xubuntu 15.10 operational system developed on Ubuntu/Linux basis. The findings proved learners’ results depended on the type of adopter of innovations in their teachers.