The Integration Of Information And Communication Technologies (Icts) In The Preparation Of Teachers At Colleges Of Education In Namibia

ABSTRACT

After independence, the Namibian government wished to exploit the new opportunities

created by the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). Therefore, the

government embarked upon developing national policies and strategies for integrating ICTs

into the education curriculum. The need for ICT integration and application in the entire

educational system has become a national policy in Namibia. In order to contribute to

Namibia becoming a Knowledge-based Economy, the Colleges of Education are expected to

integrate ICTs across the curriculum, aimed at achieving Level 4 in terms of use, knowledge

and expected teaching competency.

The research study investigated the teacher educators and students’ perceptions on the use

and integration of ICT in teaching and learning opportunities at all four Colleges of

Education in Namibia. To achieve this goal, six research questions were formulated in order

to facilitate a better understanding of perceptions of teacher educators and student teachers.

This study used both qualitative and quantitative methods of collective data and these

were interviews, observations, document analysis and questionnaires. A total of 81

teacher educators and 199 student teachers from all four Colleges of Education

participated in this study. The study used purposive sampling to choose teacher educators

who were teaching Integrated Media and Technology (IMTE) at the Colleges of

Education while cluster sampling was used in selecting a group of teacher educators who

were not teaching IMTE. The students were also selected through cluster sampling which

was based on class groups.

The main findings of the study were that the majority of teacher educators expressed

interest and willingness to integrate ICT in their teaching and learning situations.

Participants also perceived ICT to be useful in their teaching and learning despite the

difficult circumstances with the lack of ICT equipment, hardware and educational

software. Findings have, however, revealed that much of the ICT integration was taking

place in IMTE and to a lesser extent in ETP, Mathematics and Natural Sciences while in

other subjects little or nothing was taking place. Most of the ICT integration activities

encouraged drill and practice kind of skills and mostly used common software such as

Word Processing, PowerPoint, Excel and Spreadsheet.

Successful implementation of the use and integration of ICT, however, will also depend

on the management of Colleges of Education accepting and recognising factors and issues

as identified in this study as barriers to the integration of ICT. Further, participants

agreed that professional development opportunities in ICT integration would result in

more teacher educators becoming comfortable in its use and integration; hence speeding

up the rate of adoption. Finally, the current available ICT infrastructure at the Colleges of

Education and lack of knowledge among the teacher educators in e-learning approaches

makes it extremely difficult to create e-learning opportunities. Based on the findings of

the study, the study made recommendations directed at the student teachers and teacher

educators, the management at the Colleges of Education and recommendations for further

research in order to improve the current ICT integration practices at the Colleges of

Education.