Preparedness Of Teachers In Integrating Information Communication Technology In Public Primary Schools In Thika West District, Kiambu County, Kenya

ABSTRACT

This study sought to investigate the preparedness of teachers in integrating Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in public primary schools in Thika West District, Kiambu County. The study was guided by the following objectives: to establish the ICT infrastructure that is there in public primary schools, to determine the attitudes and perceptions of the teachers towards the use of ICTs in public primary schools, to assess the levels of training of the teachers in the use of ICTs in public primary schools and to find out the initiatives the schools have taken towards integrating ICTs in teaching and learning. The study adopted a descriptive survey design. There were 17 headteachers and 250 teachers that made up the target population. Stratified sampling technique was used to group the participants by categories of headteachers and teachers while simple random sampling was used to select the study respondents from the sampled schools. The study sample was made up of 9 headteachers and 45 teachers. Questionnaires, interview guides and observation checklist enabled the researcher to collect data. Piloting was done in two schools, which were not included in the actual study, to test the reliability and validity of the research instruments. The quantitative data was analyzed using descriptive statistics with the help of Statistical Package for Social Sciences-version 21 (SPSS v.21). The qualitative data was analyzed using content analysis where ideas were grouped into themes. Tables and other graphs were used as appropriate to present the data findings. The study findings indicated that the schools are barely equipped with ICT infrastructure though majority are connected to the national power grid, that both the teachers and the headteachers are very positive towards the use of ICT in schools, majority of the teachers had acquired basic computing skills without being formally trained in ICT with the majority of those who had formal training in ICT being trained at computer Packages level and at school level, the schools are taking little initiatives towards integrating ICTs in teaching and learning. The study recommended that the government needs to equip the public primary schools with the necessary ICT infrastructure, intensive and sustained training in the use of computers for instruction need to be offered to both the pre-service and in-service teachers and that seminars/workshops need to be organized to sensitize as well as train the headteachers on the benefits of using ICTs in education.