Are the perceptions of lower form secondary computer student teachers the same after further training?

Are the perceptions of lower form secondary computer student teachers the same after further training?

• Ng, Mee Wah Eugenia The Hong Kong Institute of Education
• Lai, Yiu Chi The Hong Kong Institute of Education

1997

Hong Kong Educational Research Association (HKERA) 14th Annual Conference: Compulsory Education and Beyond (1997: The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China)

• M Teachers & Education for Teachers
  • MA Professional Education for Teachers
• F Learning & Teaching
  • FD Application of Communicative Media, IT in Learning & Teaching

• Hong Kong

• 1997.7 onwards

• Secondary Education

The Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIEd) largely provides training to students who wish to pursue their career in teaching in compulsory education. The authors, computer literacy lecturers, were interested to find out if there was any difference between the perceptions of computer student teachers when they were at year one and at year two regarding the importance of computer knowledge they should possess as competent computer teachers. A questionnaire was distributed to student teachers of Northcote Campus after teaching practice in 1996 and again in 1997. The content of the questionnaire was based on the computer literacy curriculum for lower secondary students. The computer topics were grouped under basic computer knowledge, Logo programming, computer applications and others. Student teachers perceived all the computer knowledge were important. Student teachers gave highest regards to computer applications category, followed by Logo programming category, basic computer knowledge category and others category when they were in year one. However, the rankings of basic computer knowledge and Logo programming category were reversed in 1997. The rankings for computer applications category and others category remained the same even though the average mean scores for computer applications category had increased and others category had decreased in 1997. The means for the first three categories actually were very close for both years. When we looked into details we found that five out of seven topics of computer applications category had increased their importance. It was not surprising to find out the largest increase was the social implications of computers on society as there were successful charges for computer hackers recently for the first time. For the basic computer knowledge category, the increase was mainly caused by the large increase of importance of limitations of computers which was also the greatest among all topics. For Logo programming, all the sub-categories had decreased their importance except workspace and file handling commands which had a slight increase in importance. The decrease of Logo programming could be due to some student teachers did not have to teach Logo programming during their teaching practice this year (year two). For others category, there were minor increases and decreases in general. However, the largest decrease was computer organization which was also the largest albeit categories. The largest increase was computer networking in the others category. It was expected as Internet are becoming more and more important. It was rather surprising to learn that after gaining more computer knowledge and have grown up a little, students teachers' perceptions had not changed significantly. It could be caused by the fact that student teachers had taken majority of computer subjects in year one. To conclude, there was only slight difference between student teachers' perception of the importance of computer knowledge when they were in year one and in year two of their studies.

Paper presented at the Hong Kong Educational Research Association (HKERA) 14th Annual Conference: Compulsory Education and Beyond

• English

Conference Papers

https://bibliography.lib.eduhk.hk/bibs/803f30cb

2015-07-29