Teachers' attitude and beliefs towards Use of ICT in Teaching and Learning

Abstract

The purpose of the research is to study the attitude and beliefs of secondary school teachers towards the use of ICT in the classroom. Participants of the study are one hundred and fifty secondary school teachers from schools of Punjab state of India. Survey was used to study Teachers' attitude and beliefs towards ICT in Teaching and Learning. Semi-structured interviews were also carried out with the purpose of deepening into major motivations and beliefs of teachers. The findings show that teachers' attitude towards the use of ICT is highly positive but the use of ICT in classrooms is inadequate. Overall, the key issues and challenges that were found to influence use of ICT tools by teachers are, limited accessibility of internet connection, lack of modern infrastructure, limited technical support, lack of effective training, limited time, rigid curriculum, traditional methods of evaluation, certificates and degrees-oriented education and lack of teacher's competencies to use ICT. Moreover, the results from t - test show that there are no gender differences in use of ICT by teachers. Findings also indicate that new ways of teacher training need to be developed so that teachers make adequate use of ICT tools efficiently.