Effect of Teachers ICT’ Pre-requisite skills on adoption and use of Information Communication Technologies (ICT) in public secondary schools in Kenya

Abstract

The government of Kenya funded five secondary schools in every constituency in 2010/2011 financial year under ICT Economic Stimulus Programme (ESP).The move was geared towards catalyzing the adoption and use of ICT in secondary schools. The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of teachers’ ICT prerequisite skills on adoption and use of information communication technology (ICT) in public secondary schools in the republic of Kenya. The objective was to assess the effect of teachers’ ICT pre-requisite skills on adoption and use of ICT. The study adopted a mixed methods research design, it was informed by the pragmatic philosophical paradigm and guided by diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory. The target population was 30,080 teachers from public secondary schools funded by the government of Kenya under ICT Economic Stimulus Programme (ESP). Participating regions, counties and schools were selected using simple random sampling design to obtain 384 teachers. ICT pre-requisite skills, was the independent variables while adoption and use of ICT in public secondary schools was the dependent variable. Data was collected by closed ended questionnaires and interview schedules. It was cleaned and presented using the mean, mode and range descriptive statistics. The hypothesis was tested via Pearson’s Correlation Coefficient. The study established a statistically significant relationship between teachers’ pre-requisite ICT skills and adoption and use of ICT of + 0.154. The study recommended a follow up/monitoring and evaluation of adoption and use of ICT on termly basis until it picks the momentum, a review of the teacher education curriculum to reflect more courses in ICT, emphasis on in-service training in ICT. Finding and recommendation of this study will be of use to education stakeholders; policy makers, teachers, students and the government as they strives to attain vision 2030.