A Study On Utilization Of ICT Among Middle School Teachers In Relation To Their Morale Attitude
J.Rajarajeswari,
Lecturer,
District Institute of Education and Training,
- Ariyur,
Villupuram Dt
Dr. S. Ravivarman,
Associate Professor,
Department of Education, Tamil University, Thanjavur
Introduction:
Information Communication Technology (ICT) has completely transformed our lives in all possible ways. India, a successful ICT powered nation, has always laid a lot of accent on the use of ICT, not only for good governance but also in diverse sectors of the economy such as health, agriculture and education etc. Education, undoubtedly, is one of the most important investments in building human capital in a country and a medium that not only shapes literate citizens but also makes a nation technologically innovative, thus, paving a path to economic growth. India’s need for education is diversified and extensive, as it requires individuals who are equipped with specific knowledge to assume development responsibilities. This requires not only basic education but also comprehensive continuing education programmes to upgrade the skills in the line with development requirements and the technological developments.
The internet world wide web has provided an inexpensive system for delivery of education contents anywhere 24/7. India is in a position to exploit this as its educational IT environment has the flexibility and the ability to support the recent information and communication technology initiatives. Indian education system has been working towards imparting need based technical education from early 90s.
ICT IN EMERGING INDIAN EDUCATION SYSTEM
India today aspires to emerge as front-runner amongst the knowledge-based societies. Thus, the benefits of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) revolution in providing education and training of desirable quality can hardly be over emphasized. In India, school computing began in the early eighties through initiatives of a handful of private schools. It gained momentum with projects and schemes started by Government of India from time to time.
ICT Development and Different Approaches
Advancements in technology and the way technology is used into a system is a dynamic process. Each school must work within the sphere of its own system to fit choices which best suit its unique situation and culture. Even within a school, various units or courses may use different approaches. The approaches are hierarchical with the emerging approach as a beginning point, and the transforming approach as a goal many perceive as the future of education.
Role of Teacher in Technology Classrooms
Teachers are the key persons to use ICT in educational settings productively and to help integrate ICT into the curriculum. They are the vital players in any initiative which aims at improving teaching and learning process. In classroom there are no more lecture methods or other traditional methods used, teachers are required to decide how to make appropriate educational use of ICT in classrooms. So, role of teacher is important, if teachers are not actively involved in integrating ICT in all phases of curriculum then ICT at schools will have little impact.
Technology using teachers plan classroom instruction on a large scale, students initiate, think and make decision daily in the classroom. Teachers think of wide things they want students to explore, find both print and electronic material related to the things and prepare students to deal with gathering and organisation and sharing their new found knowledge with others. Most teachers who recognise the benefit of using technology across the curriculum are now spending time locating materials on the internet that will support their thematic activities. Teachers are becoming better facilitators, helping students stay active in their pursuit of knowledge.
Teachers today are making more authenticated assignments and engaging students in topics that have themes of high interest to them. They are motivating students through the use of computers and telecommunication in ways that ensure that the student will participate in various literacy projects. They also are helping students design presentation of their research finding to share with their classmates, parents and people around the world.
Today’s teachers are taking greater responsibilities for learning that occurs when students visit their school computer laboratory. Previously, teachers could allow the lab assistant or computer teacher to instruct the classes. With the advent of more in service instruction for teachers and more in classroom use of computers, behaviors have changed. Now all teachers must know how to organize instruction in the ways that computers are being placed directly in classrooms. ICTs also help teachers in the following ways:
- ICT enables to enhance the initial preparation by giving good teaching material to use.
- with the help of ICT, teachers can have access to colleagues , institutions, universities, centre of expertise, rich resources and cyber space and national organization like UGC , NCTE, NCERT, NAAC etc.
- ICTs enable to interact with students over a physical distance.
- ICTs enable to access online libraries, journals and research to enable individual learning.
- ICTs enable to give feedback of students performance and evaluating students’ work objectively and fast without biases.
- ICTs provide lifelong and professionally developed courses at virtual situation, training on demand, orientation, and refresher courses through video conferencing or on-line.
The content and the presentation of the subject matter to the individual background, experience and needs of students become possible by use of ICT. It can facilitate differentiation and individualization in education.
ICT And Teacher Morale
Morale is a feeling or state of mind that involves a mental and emotional attitude.
(Mendel, 1987). Wilson Robert defines Morale as a configuration of many component parts all of which are important. Most important of all, morale is not a thing apart from the life of group and apart from the life of the individual. As a result of low morale, the educators would resist change, and the school would have a high rate of teacher absenteeism. Low morale is associated with an individual’s attitudes, self-esteem, and self-concept. They also state that these internal feelings may result in external reactions. The possible external reactions are quoted by Briggs & Richardson as the relationships with other teachers and administrators. These external reactions could result from some internal feelings of educators, such as insecurity, frustrations, and lack of confidence.
An effective educational environment is also characterized by a positive school climate where the teachers and students feel good about teaching and learning and cooperate to foster a caring attitude. Attitude has great importance in learning and teaching. It is one of the important objectives of teaching and learning to develop attitudes in the aspects and process of school subjects.
Objectives Of The Study:
- To assess the extent of use of ICT by teachers.
- To assess the level of teacher morale.
- To study the attitude of teachers towards ICT use.
- To study the relationship between use of ICT by teachers and their morale
- To study differences between male and female teachers in terms of ICT use in relation to their morale.
Methodology:
To achieve the objectives of the study the investigators has adopted normative survey method for the present study.
Sample:
The investigator intended to carry out the study on a sample of 100 Upper Primary school teachers from Government schools. So, for the present study, a sample of 100 Government school teachers from Thirunavalur Block at Kallakuruchi district of Tamil Nadu state was selected.
Major Findings Of The Study:
Findings related to overview of level of teachers’ Morale:
13 percent of respondents of the sample were having low level of morale. Around 24 percent of respondents had high level of morale and the remaining 63 percent had moderate level of morale. This clearly indicated that Upper Primary school teachers differ in their morale level.
Educational Implications
The most outstanding characteristics of any research is that it must contribute something new to the development of the area concerned. So, an investigator should find out the educational implications of her study. This study has implications for teachers, students in particular and the whole educational system in general.
Technology is becoming more and more dominant in our society. Technology is all around us whether we want it to be or not: it is the vehicles we drive. Upgrades are being made and new innovations are being discovered every day in field of information and communication technology (ICT). ICT has had a major impact on our school systems and is still impacting it today. ICT enables all students to master more complex subjects via rich interactions with resources outside of classroom walls just as geographically distributed workers create, share, and master knowledge. Thus technology is impacting the young mind to a great extent.
However, the issue is not whether instructional tools are more efficient at accomplishing current goals of education, but instead how much is this emerging technology being explored by teachers in their classrooms with high morale, positive attitude and required technology competence, so that it can provide an effective means of reaching essential educational objectives in the technology-driven evolution of a knowledge-based economy.
This research attempted to provide a few recommendations that may help in developing morale, attitude towards ICT and technology competence among middle school teachers. These are offered in the subsequent section under the heading suggested implications of the present study.
Training programmes should be run by administration bodies to make teachers competent in using emerging ICT in their classrooms. Teachers should be encouraged and motivated by giving some awards and incentives on integrating technology in their classroom by principles and administration to develop positive attitude towards ICT.
Conclusion
While going through the studies given in the chapter, it is clear that teachers’ use of ICT is influenced by many variables like gender, age, locality, teaching experience, nature of job, educational qualification, type of management and organisational set up of the institution.
Review of the studies of earlier years related with teacher morale give stress to find out the factors contributing to and related with teachers’ morale. In later years it can be seen that many of the morale studies were conducted to find out its relationship with variables like attitude, amount of salary, job satisfaction, professional skills, student perception of teacher effectiveness etc.. The investigator feels that there is a need to further explore the influence of these variables in order to improve teaching learning process. The review of related literature presents a glut of researches presently being conducted in field of variables like use of ICT, Teachers’ morale, their attitude towards ICT. Based on the research studies, the researcher felt that there is a need to explore the use of ICT by teachers in relation to their morale, attitude towards ICT in Upper Primary schools of selected district kallkurchi of Tamil Nadu state that it will help to adjudged the extent of all the variables related to teachers and suggest measures to overcome the problems of teachers in the application of ICT in teaching learning Process.