Teachers’ Perspectives Towards The Use Of Information And Communication Technologies (ICTS) In Junior Secondary Schools Of Changchun, Jilin Province, China

The adoption of ICTs by the education sector has been the landmark of the educational scene in teaching and learning for the last three decades. The main feature of most technology initiatives worldwide is their focus on the hardware and their inattentiveness to softer issues like the human factor involved in the implementation process.The overall purpose of this study was to investigate the perspectives of junior secondary school teachers in Changchun city-China toward the use of ICTs in education. The investigation explored teachers’ attitudes toward ICT use in teaching and learning; their perception toward a selected set of variables:ICT attributes, cultural perceptions, ICT competence, ICT access, and demographic variables (including ICT training background). Further challenges of using ICTs in the teaching and learning process were investigated. Teachers’ attitudes were examined from the related designed conceptual framework as designed by the researcher.Both quantitative and qualitative methods were employed in collecting data from the sample of junior secondary school teachers in Changchun City, Jilin Province China, in December2013. A questionnaire was developed and distributed to150teachers in10non-randomly selected junior schools from the population. The sample was selected according to the availability of ICT infrastructure in the schools. The survey stage was followed by interviews of6purposefully selected teachers. Findings from both quantitative and qualitative data indicated that the teachers’attitude toward ICT in teaching and learning was positive. While teachers showed positive perceptions towards ICT attributes, they had relatively low positive perception 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. On average, there were minor barriers encountered by the teachers with regard to ICT use.Based on the findings, it is recommended that policy-makers sustain teachers’positive attitudes towards ICT by offering them more training opportunities, provision of more ICT tools like computers in schools and additional planning time for teachers to experiment with new ICT-based approaches and take necessary steps to address the concerns of some teachers relating to culturally improper materials from the web.