Teachers’ Professional Roles in the Development and Use of Instructional Technology: Survey on Ethiopian Secondary School Practices

Abstract

It is obvious that, media plays the role of enlivening the instructional process, thereby fastening instructional and learning roles. But, the roles of the key practitioners such as teachers in the production and use of instructional technologies such as radio and television is not well-pronounced. So, this research investigated teachers' roles in the production and implementation of instructional programs in secondary education, focus being on four general secondary schools of Oromia Regional State in Ethiopia. The destined instructional technology taken to view was televised instructional program which has been in use since 2005 under the auspices of the Ethiopian Ministry of Education. In the selection of the target schools, first local clusters were formed such being Eastern and Western. Accordingly, two schools were selected from each cluster according to their nearness and viability for data collection. From each school, two teachers of language, civic education and chemistry were selected at random in order to respond to the open-ended questionnaire. Focus was made on the three subjects because they represented compulsory subjects, subjects-areas of Social Science and of Natural Science respectively. The questionnaire items were prepared prehand under two separate sub-headings (production and implementation), based on which data were collected duly. The findings indicated that, even though televised subjects were produced and disseminated from the center with Center for ICT in Education of Ethiopia shouldering the spearhead role of enriching the quantity and quality of instructional provision, grass roots roles such as of teachers were highly limited to mere repetition of the televised lessons owing, mainly, to teachers' lack of due training and education on how to work with the destined technology, lack of intra-school and inter-school experiential exchanges, and indirectness of the communication channel for schools to access Center for ICT in Ethiopian Education. Lack of alternative technology which could enrich the televised provision was also the other roadblock. So, while the use of instructional technologies such as plasma TV was a way forward to developing viable access for instruction, role-confusion and lack of communication with the target stakeholders on the part of teachers were main factors which were found out to have had striking features. So, further steps are recommended in terms of training and research to develop teachers' roles if instructional technologies are to be effectively used across the country's secondary education.