Teachers and computers : a survey of how teachers in seven High Schools in the Northern suburbs of Johannesburg perceive computers and their uses in education.

[摘要] This study presents the findings of a survey conducted inAugust 1991 to identify and analyse high-school teachers'perceptions of computers and their uses in education.The study has a triple purpose: to investigate howteachers perceive computers and their uses in education:to ascertain their knowledge and experience of computers;and to obtain demographic and bioqraphic information.The current uses of computers in education, and thequality of educational software available, are consideredfirst. A discussion of the term perception follows, witha description of the design, construction, and use of thesurvey instrument.The data provided by the instrument is then analysed, andthe findings are presented. (A copy of the surveyinstrument is appended, together with statistical analysesof the data provided by each question in it.)Some of the findings are::The respondents were positive about the general conceptof computers arid their use in education. None werenegative, although some had reservations or werenon-committal.• Although in favour of the use of computers, teacherswere not yet ready either to teach about them, or to usethem in their classrooms with their pupils.There was greater support for the use of the computer asa management tool than as a medium of instruction.* Lack of knowledge about computers was perceived as thegreatest disadvantage of computer use in general.* There was a great diversity of knowledge and awareness,both within the individual schools and among them, as tojust how their computers were used.*A significant number of teachers already found computersvaluable and used them regularly. Word-processing,spreadsheets, and Updating; Records (Databases) were thethree uses best known to those teachers.* A very large percentate of teachers (94.9%) wereinterested in learning more about how to use a computer.

[发布机构] University of the Witwatersrand