Mohd Yunus, M. (2007). Malaysian ESL teachers' use of ICT in their classrooms: expectations and realities. ReCALL, 19(1): 79-95.
I used the keyword ‘language teacher perception and IT’ in Google and I found this article. It is quite interesting to learn about the ICT policy of the neighbouring country in language teaching. Malaysian is a country which people use English as a second language, therefore, the context of learning and using English is quite different from the Thai context. How about the language teachers’ perceptions on the ICT? Does the difference of language use context affect the teachers’ perception on the ICT application? This study also features an interesting model that can determine the usage of ICT in teaching.
Summary: The study presents the use of ICT among ESL technical school teachers, factors that affect the use of ICT and the perceptions of their skills in ICT. The model adopted is Davis’ Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) (1989) which provides the basis for determining ICT attitudes and factors affecting the usage of ICT in teaching. Data was collected via a questionnaire survey and semi-structured interviews. The findings of this study reveal that teachers' attitudes (teachers' lack of computer competence in teaching) and insufficient computer resources affect the current use of ICT use in Malaysian schools. Teachers' main perceived challenges to ICT integration is low level access to computer which may have played arole in teachers' modest computer competence. They need additional training opportunities and experimenting with ICT before being able to adopt it in their teaching.
When I read the rationale at the beginning of the paper, I found this information very interesting. There is a pressure upon Malaysian ESL teachers as the country is aiming to set up the Smart School Project by 2010. The main objective of the project is to reinvent learning and teaching practices to prepare children for the Information age. However, there is no official mandatory from Thai Ministry of Education to push students into the IT era. What I have seen so far in Thai educational evolution is we are trying to decentralize the system that each school will have more freedom to design their own curriculum under a framework from the government. Therefore, large schools which have supports of both financial and intellectual will provide students with well-balanced curriculum and encourage teachers to use technology in classes. If there was the same mandatory applied in the Thai context, Thai EFL teachers would be very anxious to adopt the technology as there is always a lack of support in both technical and pedagogical terms. Moreover, it’s very difficult to push teachers to go online and feed the students via the web. It’s not because of technical skills but the perceptions of ICT and how the technology fit into their teaching context and personal beliefs.
8 comments:
It s not actually all rosie over here. English may officially be the second language, but in actual this happens only in certain urban areas, in others, it is pretty much a foreign language.
IMO, the smart school project is in many ways a bad joke. It has some good points but when you started off without much grounding in reality (as many politicians are apt to), you tend to fall hard. What's interesting is that in some schools the concept worked well not because of technology, but because of old-fashioned teaching. Personal observations, no data tho.
Very interesting point made here
So the government didn't really see the diversities among urban and rural schools.
On the contrary, I believe they see that very clearly. There are prob people who believe that technology may be an equaliser, which in a way could be true. However, mastery and integration of technology depends on many other factors such as socio-economic status and mobility. This is the the difficult part to handle i think, especially for developing countries with varying demographics.
Another thing to remember Tess, governments mean politicians. Most, not all, politicians care more about staying in power and/or looking or acting like they are doing great stuff. Put them in charge of education and you'll have a lot of fairy tales and science fiction. just my two cents.
Post a Comment