Attitude towards Information Communications Technology and Interventions among Teacher Trainees in Public Primary Teacher Training Colleges in Machakos County, Kenya
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Date
2024-11
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Publisher
Kenyatta University
Abstract
Over the past few years, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has tremendously transformed the ways of teaching and learning. Recently, the Kenyan educational system has increasingly been financing the use of ICT devices into the educational sector. However, the teaching of the ICT subject in teacher colleges neglects students’ attitudes towards computers. This study sought to explore the attitude towards Information Communication Technology subject and intervention measures applied among primary school teacher trainees to promote a positive attitude towards ICT in public primary teacher training colleges in Machakos County in Kenya. The study was guided by the following objectives: to determine the proportions of teacher trainees’ attitudes towards ICT; to assess the challenges influencing teacher trainees attitudes towards computers; to establish the influence of computer experience on teacher trainees attitudes toward ICT; investigate the influence of specialisation in science or arts on teacher trainees attitudes towards ICT, establish gender differences in trainees’ attitude towards ICT and to find out the intervention measures on teacher trainees attitudes towards ICT in public teacher training colleges in Machakos County. This study was guided by B.F. Skinner’s operant conditioning theory (1954) and the social learning theory of Albert Bandura (1971). The descriptive survey designed was used for the research. The target population of the study was 400 second year teacher trainees. The investigation used Krejcie & Morgan (1970) formula to select the sample size of 49%. Simple random sampling technique was used to choose five out of the ten second year streams of the college for the study. It was hoped that the results were to be generalized to the entire country, Kenya. The study used a self-administered questionnaire to collect data from teacher trainees and the test-retest approach to determine the reliability of the instrument during piloting. The research tool's Cronbach's alpha was 0.76. The expert approval was used to test the validity of the instruments. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS 26) was used to code and input the data, then analyse it using descriptive statistics. The data was presented in tables and in figures. The study found that the majority (93.3%) of the teacher trainees had a positive attitude towards ICT. The majority (74%) of the respondents cited the subject not being examined by the Kenya National Examinations Council as their greatest challenge to learning ICT in teacher training colleges. Results also showed trainees' positive attitudes toward computers were influenced by their duration of computer experience, although gender and their concentration in the sciences or the arts had little bearing on this. For the majority of trainees (88.8%), the primary intervention strategy utilized to foster positive attitudes toward ICT in the college consisted of ICT teachers persistently persuading trainees of the utility of ICT for them. In conclusion, the most significant challenge for the respondents, 74% was discouragement of learning of ICT in teacher Training colleges due to lack of a national examination for the subject. Therefore, this study recommends that, there should be a national examination for the ICT subject to encourage all trainees to learn ICT more seriously than before.
Description
A Project Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Award of the Degree of Master of Education (Educational Psychology) in the School of Education and Lifelong Learning of Kenyatta University, November 2024.
Supervisor
Samuel Mutweleli