An Evaluation of the Status of Computer Knowledge of Public and Private School Teachers in Illinois

254 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1988.The purpose of this study was to assess the current technology based education knowledge of Illinois teachers, the importance this knowledge has to their work, and importance for all educators.The most important component of computer literacy is control of the computer, followed by implementation of computers into the classroom, the computer and its component parts, and societal impact of computers. The two most important components of office automation are understanding and using word processing and teaching word processing, followed by understanding and using spreadsheets, understanding and using data bases, teaching spreadsheet analysis, and teaching data base management. Both components of telecommunications are rated identically by all teacher groups: low expertise, low personal importance, and medium importance for all educators. The two components of graphic generation hardware and software are rated similarly to telecommunications. The only variance is found in personal importance. General and technical teachers rated both components as somewhat important to their teaching; in addition, the technical teachers rated using graphic generation hardware and software somewhat important to their teaching.On the last page of the questionnaire, respondents ranked the fifteen components according to general importance. The four components rated highest by all teacher groups and all surveyed teachers are implementation of computers into the classroom, control of the computer, the computer and its component parts, and understanding and using word processing. General and non-technical teachers rated implementation of computers most important. Technical teachers rated control of the computer most important. For all surveyed teachers in Illinois, understanding and using word processing is the most important, which seems to indicate that computers have crossed the curriculum and are being used in many subject areas for things traditionally completed on a typewriter. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.)U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD