6. Teachers and technology

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Teachers are one of the most important factors affecting the extent to which ICTs are adopted and implemented at school. Education policymakers are increasingly aware of the need to make teachers feel comfortable using ICTs and to encourage them to integrate ICTs into their lesson plans. Establishing school policies for ICT use is a key step in creating an environment conducive to learning using ICT. About seven out of ten schools reported having a policy for the appropriate use of ICT by teachers during the 2003/04 school year (Table 12). All schools in the Yukon reported having such a policy for teachers, followed by New Brunswick (93%), Alberta (85%) and the Northwest Territories (83%). Although Prince Edward Island had one of the highest proportions of schools with a use-policy for students, only 48% of schools had such a policy for teachers – the lowest in the country.

6.1 Teacher skills

There is some evidence that although teachers are using ICT in the classroom, they may not always feel that they are using it in the most effective and efficient way (O’Haire 2003). It is not surprising that most teachers possess the required technical skills to use ICTs for administrative purposes. In fact, 76% of schools reported that more than three-quarters of their teachers use ICTs for preparing report cards, taking attendance or recording grades. This proportion was lower for private (57%), small (64%) and rural (67%) schools. However, when assessing teacher ICT skills to engage students to use ICTs effectively, only 46% of schools reported that more than three-quarters of their teachers possessed these skills. When examining these skills by school characteristic, private (32%) and secondary (39%) schools had the lowest proportion of more than threequarters of teachers with ICT skills to enhance student learning. In the case of secondary schools, this could be related to the fact that teachers are often subject specialists, thus ICT skills may be more prevalent among teachers specializing in an ICT-related course, and less prevalent among teachers of other subjects. It is also possible that because secondary students may have already attained some of the knowledge required to use ICTs for learning, it is not as crucial for the majority of secondary school teachers to possess the technical skills required to engage students in the effective use of ICTs.

The proportion of schools with more than three-quarters of teachers possessing ICT skills to engage students was highest in Alberta (66%), the Yukon (57%) and Prince Edward Island (56%). Moreover, Prince Edward Island was the only province to report a higher proportion of schools with teachers possessing ICT skills for engaging students than for administrative purposes (Chart 11).

Chart 11
Percentage of schools with more than 75% of teachers possessing ICT skills by province and territory, 2003/04

* Estimate for schools with more than 75% of teachers possessing ICT skills to engage students in using ICT effectively is suppressed to meet confidentiality requirements of the Statistics Act.

6.2 Teaching practices

According to 78% of school principals, word processing software was frequently (‘most of the time’ or ‘always’) incorporated into teaching practices (Table 13). This was followed by use of Internet/intranet to disseminate information (34%), software for special needs students/remedial programs for individualized learning, and use of Internet for online learning (29%) and software for specific subject areas (28%).

New Brunswick had a relatively low proportion of schools incorporating various technology applications into their teaching practices; word processing applications were frequently used for teaching by only 61% of schools, while use of the Internet for disseminating information and for online learning were used by only 17% and 15% of schools, respectively (Table 13). This likely has less to do with the accessibility of these applications and software, which is widespread, and more to do with specific teaching practices and school environments. Newfoundland and Labrador had the highest proportions of schools with teaching practices involving the use of the Internet for online learning (51%) and for the dissemination of information (46%). Ontario schools were leaders in incorporating word processing applications, software for special needs/remedial students, and software for specific subject areas into their teaching practices.

Subject areas for which ICT learning was included in teacher training and development were also examined in the ICTSS. Overall, 40% of elementary and secondary schools in Canada incorporated ICT learning into their teacher development programs for Mathematics, followed by Computer Education and Informatics (35%) and English (31%). As seen in Table 14, schools in the Yukon were most likely to include ICT learning in teacher development for a wide range of subject areas, including Mathematics (68%), Computer/Informatics (64%) and English (46%). For schools in Quebec, French was the subject for which ICT learning was most likely to be used in teacher development (41%). In Alberta and Manitoba, a large proportion of schools counted General Science among the leading subject areas for which ICT learning was included in teacher development.

6.3 Strategies to help teachers use ICT

According to principals, mentoring activities among teachers was the most emphasized strategy to help teachers learn how to use ICTs. It was also the strategy perceived as the most highly effective. Other preferred strategies included information-sharing with other staff members, personal-learning activities, professional development and training sessions. Formal credit courses and online courses were among the least common strategies.

Interestingly, 8% of principals reported placing a lot of emphasis on staff meetings, but only 4% perceived this strategy to be highly effective. Similarly, while formal credit courses were among the least likely to be heavily emphasized to train teachers to use ICTs, they were perceived to be highly effective by about 12% of principals. Thus although some strategies are considered to be effective for training teachers, they are not necessarily emphasized by principals. A number of factors may be contributing to this phenomenon, such as cost, and lack of time and resources to implement the strategy. Private and small schools were more likely to place little or no emphasis on strategies for helping teachers use ICTs. This may be due to the more informal structure of these schools, where teachers learn to use ICTs on an ‘as needed’ basis or in a more informal setting.

The proportion of schools using mentoring activities to help teachers learn how to use ICT was highest for schools in the Yukon, Alberta and Quebec (Table 15). The Yukon also had the highest proportion of schools making use of information sharing strategies. Personal learning activities and training sessions were highly emphasized strategies by schools in Quebec, while Alberta had the highest proportion of schools using professional development to train teachers in ICT.