An example of effectively improving teacher's ICT competence: customized and school-based training in the primary and lower secondary schools in Leshan

Qianjun TANG

Doctoral thesis

Abstract:

There are earth-shaking changes in nearly all industries because of the information and communication technology (abbr. ICT), in fact, the huge changes in our daily life are most impressed. However, it is very striking contrast about the role of ICT between education and other industries. Likely Steve Jobs said why computers changed almost all industries, however, the effect in school education of computers was so little that surprised all of us. In China, every stakeholder pays more attention to the educational informatization, and many important policies have been made in recent years. Even though there is a great deal progress in educational informatization, there are still some issues, for example, there is gap between current situation of educational informatization and the prospect we expect. What is the essential reason on earth which affects negative, delays or even hinders the process of informatization? Through literature reviewing and observing teachers' teaching activities, I found teachers have not enough confidence in their teaching by ICT, and their ICT competences need to be further improved. Through my literature review, I found nearly every elementary teacher had attended two rounds of ICT training, but the effect of the training was unsatisfied. One of the reasons was that some of the trainees lost their interest, which leaded to low engagement in the training. The root cause of that is the pertinence of the ICT training. Moreover, the top-down (traditional) training model regulates too much and limits trainees' initiatives and enthusiasm. Therefore, to enhance trainees' engagement, I designed a bottom-up training model with the outstanding features of customized and school-based training. In the quasi-experimental study, there are some steps to implement the ICT training, including randomly sampling, randomly assigning the participants, and training the participants with ICT skills in the control group and the experimental group respectively. After the ICT skills training, I will test the trainees' ICT competence again besides the pre-test. Through analyzing the data by quantitative research, the method of empirical study will be used during this phase. Before the training, all participants attended the pre-test and I got their baseline. During the training, I selected the same training topics. On the one hand, the participants in the control group were trained ty the traditional model, on the other hand, the participants in the experimental group were trained by the new model (bottom-up). After the training, all participants took part in the post-test and I got their scores. To testify there was no significant difference between the control group and the experimental group before the training, except for randomly assigning the participants, I tested the homogeneity of mean on the pre-test between the two groups by the t-test (two tailed), and tested the homogeneity of count on the factors by the Chi-square test. To compare the pre-test with the post-test, I tested the effect of each factor (group, gender, age, school level, school place, school, and subject) by t-test or ANOVA. At first, I found the significant difference in the post-test between the two groups. To ascertain the primary impact factor, I adopted two approaches. For each factor, there were eight tests to testify whether there was difference between the two groups or the two tests (pre-test and post-test). Through analyzing the tests, I found that the factors did not affect the improvement significantly except the training mode. In addition, I changed my perspective to confirm the key independent variable, i.e., I compared the difference resulted from the training model with the difference resulted from another factor. In the six comparisons, each comparison got the same results: the difference by training mode was more significant than the difference by the other factor. Thus, I verified the training mode affected the ICT training

Abstract:

There are earth-shaking changes in nearly all industries because of the information and communication technology (abbr. ICT), in fact, the huge changes in our daily life are most impressed. However, it is very striking contrast about the role of ICT between education and other industries. Likely Steve Jobs said why computers changed almost all industries, however, the effect in school education of computers was so little that surprised all of us. In China, every stakeholder pays more attention to the educational informatization, and many important policies have been made in recent years. Even though there is a great deal progress in educational informatization, there are still some issues, for example, there is gap between current situation of educational informatization and the prospect we expect. What is the essential reason on earth which affects negative, delays or even hinders the process of informatization? Through literature reviewing and observing teachers' teaching activities, I found teachers have not enough confidence in their teaching by ICT, and their ICT competences need to be further improved. Through my literature review, I found nearly every elementary teacher had attended two rounds of ICT training, but the effect of the training was unsatisfied. One of the reasons was that some of the trainees lost their interest, which leaded to low engagement in the training. The root cause of that is the pertinence of the ICT training. Moreover, the top-down (traditional) training model regulates too much and limits trainees' initiatives and enthusiasm. Therefore, to enhance trainees' engagement, I designed a bottom-up training model with the outstanding features of customized and school-based training. In the quasi-experimental study, there are some steps to implement the ICT training, including randomly sampling, randomly assigning the participants, and training the participants with ICT skills in the control group and the experimental group respectively. After the ICT skills training, I will test the trainees' ICT competence again besides the pre-test. Through analyzing the data by quantitative research, the method of empirical study will be used during this phase. Before the training, all participants attended the pre-test and I got their baseline. During the training, I selected the same training topics. On the one hand, the participants in the control group were trained ty the traditional model, on the other hand, the participants in the experimental group were trained by the new model (bottom-up). After the training, all participants took part in the post-test and I got their scores. To testify there was no significant difference between the control group and the experimental group before the training, except for randomly assigning the participants, I tested the homogeneity of mean on the pre-test between the two groups by the t-test (two tailed), and tested the homogeneity of count on the factors by the Chi-square test. To compare the pre-test with the post-test, I tested the effect of each factor (group, gender, age, school level, school place, school, and subject) by t-test or ANOVA. At first, I found the significant difference in the post-test between the two groups. To ascertain the primary impact factor, I adopted two approaches. For each factor, there were eight tests to testify whether there was difference between the two groups or the two tests (pre-test and post-test). Through analyzing the tests, I found that the factors did not affect the improvement significantly except the training mode. In addition, I changed my perspective to confirm the key independent variable, i.e., I compared the difference resulted from the training model with the difference resulted from another factor. In the six comparisons, each comparison got the same results: the difference by training mode was more significant than the difference by the other factor. Thus, I verified the training mode affected the ICT training

Keywords

ICT, primary and lower secondary school teachers, teacher training, traditional training mode, bottom-up training mode, customized training, school-based training

Language used: English

Date on which the thesis was submitted / produced: 21. 5. 2018

Thesis defence

• Date of defence: 23. 8. 2018

PALACKÝ UNIVERSITY OLOMOUC

Faculty of Education

Doctoral programme / field:
Education / Education