Information and Communications Technology Training Needs Analysis of Teachers in Maragondon National High School

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

Teachers' training needs in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) is very vital for ICT integration into daily teaching practice, along with competencies in ICT and teachers' use of these technological resources. This action research aims to assess the ICT training needs of all teaching staff in Maragondon National High School and serve as a basis to come up with an action plan that will cater to such needs.

METHODS

Maragondon National High School has 58 teachers only. Since the study aimed to determine the training needs of all teachers, the researcher chose to subject the whole population to the study. The researcher used a researcher-made questionnaire which is divided into two parts. Part One (1) consists of items asking for the respondents’ profile such as gender, age, educational attainment, years of teaching, teaching position and ICT training attended. Part Two (2) is an inventory of the respondents' ICT skill. Every component of the questionnaire has provided a list of skills that teachers have to answer with 5=Outstanding, 4= Very Good, 3=Good, 2= Poor or 1=Very poor or no knowledge at all. For the analysis and interpretation of data, the following statistical tools were used: Frequency and Percentage, Weighted Mean, One-way ANOVA or Analysis of Variance and t-test.

RESULTS

Findings of the study revealed that the respondents showed very good skills on general PC operation and word processing software which means that the teacher-respondents can perform the specified computer tasks and functions on these areas with ease. However, the respondents demonstrated good skills on electronic spreadsheets, presentation software, emails and the internet/web which means that the teacher-respondents can perform tasks on these areas but may need guidance or supervision from somebody who is knowledgeable on such areas. This suggests that these areas in ICT should be included in teachers' training program.

DISCUSSIONS

In view of the aforementioned conclusion, the following recommendations are hereby presented: the proposed plan of action may be implemented to cater to the needs of teachers in terms of Information and Communications Technology. Assessment of basic skills was only included in the study; it is therefore recommended that other advanced ICT skills may be used as the respondents' level of ICT skill assessment. In addition, a similar study may be replicated using other variables to validate the findings of this study.