Assessment of Science Teachers’ Knowledge and Use of Information and Communications Technology for Teaching in Kwara State Secondary Schools

Abstract

There is no doubt that emergence of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has significant impact on education especially for teachers in the discharge of their teaching duties. In this contemporary era, ICT is being used as synchronous and asynchronous teaching and learning platform that caters for both teachers and learners’ needs. The purpose of this study was to investigate science teachers’ knowledge and use of Information and Communication Technology for teaching in Kwara State. The study was descriptive research of the survey method using random sampling techniques to draw a sample of 200 (130 males and 70 females) science teachers from ten secondary schools in Kwara State, Nigeria. The main research instrument employed for data collection was a researcher-designed questionnaire. The research question was answered using mean and standard deviation. Hypotheses one to three were tested using T-test statistics while hypothesis four was tested using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). All hypotheses were tested at a 0.05 significant level, and the statistical tool used for analysis is Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 21. Findings from the study indicated that science teachers were competent to use ICT for teaching and all the teachers’ variables considered in the study except years of teaching experience have no influence on science teachers’ knowledge and use of ICT for teaching. Thus, it was recommended among others that more professional development-oriented policies should be encouraged and sponsored by the government to maintain teachers’ ICT knowledge for teaching in the classroom.