Acquisition of Information and Communication Technology Skills among Basic Science Teachers in Kogi Central District of Kogi State

Abstract

The need for acquisition of skills in information and communications technology among science teachers cannot be over-emphasized. Any science teacher who does not have sufficient skills in ICT may therefore not be able to cope with the 21st century demands of the teaching profession as the use of these technologies take central stage in everyday planning and delivery of teaching and learning in science classes. This study assessed the extent of acquisition of ICT skills among Basic science teachers in Kogi Central District of Kogi State, Nigeria. It adopted a descriptive survey research design. Three hundred and fifty teachers drawn through multi-stage sampling technique were used for the study. Information and communication technology skills acquisition questionnaire (ICTSAQ) was used to collect relevant data for this study. Five research questions were posed and four hypotheses were tested in the study. The research questions were answered using mean and standard deviation while the hypotheses were tested using t-test at .05 level of significance. The findings of this study revealed among others that the basic science teachers do not have sufficient skills in applying arithmetic operations in Microsoft excel. They do not also have sufficient skills in creating and editing power point slides as well as inserting pictures or objects in slides. It further revealed that teaching experience has no statistically significant influence on the acquisition of ICT skills among the teachers. The educational implications of the findings were discussed and adequate recommendations were also made