Chemistry Teachers' Attitude Towards The Use Of ICTs In High Schols Of Changchun, Jilin Province, China

The global adoption of information and communication technology (ICT) has been the landmark of the educational scene for the last three decades. A main feature of most technology initiatives worldwide is their focus on the technology itself and their inattentiveness to the human factor involved in the implementation process. The overall purpose of this study was to investigate the attitudes of high school chemistry teachers in Changchun city-China toward the use of ICTs in education and to explore the relationship of teachers' attitudes with a selected set of variables. These variables included ICT attributes, cultural perceptions, ICT competence, ICT access, and demographic variables (including ICT training background). Teachers' attitudes were examined from two related theoretical frameworks:Rogers's (1995) Diffusion of Innovations and Bandura (1986) Model of Reasoned Action.Both quantitative and qualitative methods were employed to collect data on the population of high school chemistry teachers in Changchun city, Jilin Province China, on January 2011. The city has the total of 93 high schools and it was selected because of its proximity to the researcher. A questionnaire was developed and distributed to 50 sample teachers in only 10 high schools selected Non-randomly from the population. The sample was selected according to the colleagues in same profession as the researcher and availability of ICT tools in their schools. The survey stage was followed by group interviews with a purposeful sample of 6 teachers.Results from both quantitative and qualitative data indicated that the participants had positive attitudes toward ICT in education. While the participants had somewhat positive perceptions of the attributes of ICT, they were relatively neutral about the cultural relevance of ICT to Chinese society and schools. The teachers also reported low levels of ICT competence, access (especially old teachers), and training. Significant positive correlations existed between teachers'attitudes toward ICT and five independent variables, including ICT attributes, cultural perceptions, ICT competence, ICT training and ICT access. Multiple regression analysis indicated that only the first four of the above independent variables had a significant predictive value of teachers'attitudes toward ICT. The results indicated that 87.1% of the variance in ICT attitude was explained by the independent variables included in this study.Based on the findings, it was recommended that policy-makers sustain teachers' positive attitudes toward ICT, offer them more training opportunities, and take steps to alleviate the concerns of some teachers about the culturally improper material on the web.