Attitude of Teacher Trainees towards the Use of ICT and its Impact on Their Academic Achievement

Abstract

Teaching has become one of the most challenging professions in our society as knowledge is expanding rapidly and much of it is available to both students as well as teachers at the same time. As new concepts of learning have evolved, teachers are expected to facilitate learning and make it meaningful to individual learners rather than just provide knowledge and skills. Recent developments of innovative technologies have provided new possibilities to the teaching profession but at the same time have placed more demands on teachers to learn how to use these technologies in their teaching. The main objectives of this study are as follows: to study the attitude of teacher trainees of science and arts streams towards the use of ICT; to compare the attitude of teacher trainees of science and arts streams towards the use of ICT; and to study the impact of attitude of teacher trainees of science and arts streams towards the use of ICT on their academic achievement. The researchers, after taking cognizance of the nature of the sample, used purposive sampling to select the college. A random sampling technique was adopted to select a sample of 100 teacher trainees, where 50 belonged to the science stream and 50 to the arts stream. In the present study Mean, Standard Deviation and t' test has been used for data analysis Computer Attitude Scale (CAS) developed by Khatoon and Sharma was used to collect the required information. The findings of this study indicate that the teacher trainees had a positive attitude towards the use of ICT and there was no significant impact of the attitude of teacher trainees on their academic achievement. The study showed the necessity for developing positive attitudes towards the use of ICT among the teacher trainees so that they can keep themselves abreast of the latest technologies and later on integrate them in to their professional lives as per the demand.