engleski

Secondary school teachers in Croatia and Internet

The study was conducted in order to assess the extent to which secondary school teachers in Croatia use Internet in their classrooms as well as their general attitudes towards Internet and the main factors that prevent them from using it. 420 teachers from 18 randomly selected technically oriented secondary schools from all over Croatia participated in the study. 11.29% of them reported having access to Internet from their home computer, and 29.41% from school computer. Although 20.9% of teachers reported using Internet only 4,70% of them use it for educational purpose (mainly for finding interesting contents for their lectures and informing students about links). There were no teachers using Internet resources directly in the classroom. Scale of general attitudes towards using Internet in school revealed two factors: Including Internet in the regular curriculum and Using Internet only as an optional activity not included in regular curriculum. Teachers who have access to Internet from their home computer reported more positive attitudes towards it. There were no differences between teachers in their attitudes according to gender, age, nature of subject they teach or access to Internet from the school computer. The questionnaire about advantages of Internet revealed that although all the teachers appreciate the advantages of Internet this is especially true for users and female teachers. The questionnaire about factors that prevent teachers from using Internet revealed three factors: a. inadequate training and equipment, b. lack of time and c. negative attitudes towards using Internet (inadequate training and equipment being the most pronounced). Non - users and female teachers rated inadequate training and equipment and lack of time as more significant than users and men teachers. Lack of training is evident from the data indicating that only few teachers learned how to use Internet through training courses and education, while all the others learned it by themselves, from books, friends, spouses, children and even their students!

internet; secondary school; teachers

nije evidentirano