A study on Malaysian Teachers’ Level of ICT Skills and Practices, and its Impact on Teaching and Learning

AbstractThis study intends to investigate the levels of Malaysian teachers’ ICT skills, namely, Basic and Advanced ICT skills, Internet skills for information seeking and sharing as well as Internet skills for communication. It also plans to investigate the correlations between teachers’ years of services and their computer experiences, and the effects of ICT use on teaching and learning. In addition, the study intends to investigate whether there are any significant differences on the frequency of ICT use in classroom for (i) teaching and learning, (ii) searching educational resources, (iii) creating presentation/delivery materials, and (iv) preparing lesson plan between male and female teachers, and between teachers from different age groups. A set of questionnaire has been sent to 7,320 primary and secondary school teachers throughout Malaysia. A total of 2661 teachers have responded to the questionnaire (a return rate of 36.4%). The findings indicate that the teachers are ‘highly skilled’ in (i) Internet skills for information seeking/sharing (mean: 3.35), (ii) Basic ICT skills (mean: 3.13), and (iii) Internet skills for communication (mean: 3.01). However, the respondents’ level for the Advanced ICT Skills is at the ‘Moderate’ level (mean: 2.31). Also, there is no correlation between the teachers’ years of service and the perceived impact of ICT on their teaching (r: -0.038) and student learning (r: 0.022). A very weak correlation (r: 0.109) was also observed between their computer experience and the impact of ICT on teaching. There is also no correlation between the respondents’ computers experience and the impact of ICT on students learning (r: 0.0069). Furthermore, the findings indicate that male teachers use ICT in classroom significantly more frequent than their female colleagues for teaching and learning as well as for creating presentation/delivery materials. Moreover, there are significant differences in the use of ICT for searching educational resources, creating presentation/delivery materials, and preparing lesson plan for teachers in the different age groups. Therefore, the relevant parties need to propose an initiative and prepare an action plan so that the teachers, especially the senior ones, acquire the four ICT skills. Ample and continuous trainings should also be conducted to ensure that our teachers are competent in using ICT. This in return, will produce a generation of students with high levels of ICT skills in the future