Some barriers intrinsic to the teachers and in south Africa
these intrinsic factors are further complicated by the nations unique historical
and cultural dynamic .ministerial committee on teachers education, particularly
those from disadvantaged backgrounds, carry out their assigned duties without
the requisite content or pedagogic knowledge .south African schools have
changed little since the end of apartheid in 1994 .ICT usage, in general are
fairly well studied in developed countries.
Main factors prohibiting the successful integration of ICT in SA SCHOOLS
.lack of teacher confidence
Much of research proposes that this is a major barrier to
the uptake of ICT by teachers in the classroom .Balanskat et al (2006)found
that limitation in teachers ICT in classroom knowledge makes them feel anxious
about using ICT in the classroom thus not confident to use it in their
teaching.
Resistance to change and negative attitude
.at
broader level, Becta(2004) argued that resistance to change is an important
barrier to teachers use of technologies in education watson an Australian
researcher (1999) argued that integrating the new technologies into educational
setting requires change and different teachers will handle this change
differently. Attitude to change is important because teacher beliefs influence
what they do in classroom.
Lack of teacher
competence
.in Australian research, Newhouse (2002) found
that many teachers lacked the knowledge and skills to use computers and were
not enthusiastic about the changes and integration of supplementary learning
associated with bringing computers into their teaching practices
.current research has shown that the level of this
barrier differs from country to country ,in the developing countries ,research
reported that teachers lack technological competence and adoption of
ICT(Pelgrum;2001;Al-Oteawi;2002)
Lack of accessibility
.various research studies indicates several reasons for
the lack of access to technologies occurred ,in Sicilias study (2005)teachers
complained about how difficult it was to always have access to computers.
School-level
barriers
Lack of time:several recent studies indicate that
many teachers have competence and confidence in using computers in classroom
,but they still make little use of technologies because they do not have enough
time .(Al-Alwani;2005;Becta,2004;Beggs;2000;Schoepp;2005;Sicelia 2005.)
Lack of technical
support
.without both good technical support
in the classroom and whole-school resources, teachers cannot be expected to
overcome the barriers preventing them from using ICT (Lewis; 2003).
My personal
experiences about my own schooling year.
During
my school years , I was never exposed to
any technology in school, I grew up in
the rural areas also it is underdeveloped called Ga- Molapo village situated at
zebediela in Limpopo, during my school years it was all about copying from the
chalkboard, learners were not allowed to use any form of technology. Only
admission office had two laptops and photocopy machine although it was for
office use only. Learners were not allowed to touch them only our teachers were
allowed to. My school years were amazing because I never repeated a class till I
completed my metric in 2015. During my matric year in was better because we
used to rely on hand-outs that teachers photocopied for us at least it was
simple for us to study.
However,
even in the most poorly resourced schools, it is important that learning ICT
skills takes in a context that is meaningful to the learners .the overall aim
is to enrich learning for all pupils and to ensure that teachers develop
confidence and competence to use ICT in the effective ways.
