Investigating Indonesian teachers' knowledge and use of ICT in mathematics teaching

Abstract

Countries around the globe see Information and Communication Technology (ICT) as a potential tool for enhancing education. Indonesia, like many other countries, is keen to integrate this technology in the classroom. The aims of this study were to investigate Indonesian teachers’ knowledge and practices in the use of ICT in secondary mathematics classrooms as well as to examine the relationship between teachers’ knowledge and their classroom practices. In addition, this study sought to reveal barriers faced by teachers to using ICT in their classrooms. The study employed a mixed methods approach whereby both quantitative and qualitative approaches for the data collection were undertaken sequentially. It was conducted in one of Indonesia’s provinces, Aceh province; 341 secondary mathematics teachers participated in the quantitative phase, and 10 of them participated in the qualitative phase.

The findings showed that Indonesian secondary mathematics teachers had largely inadequate knowledge of both ICT and ICT use in teaching. In total, 67% of the teachers had used ICT at least once in their teaching, and the most common use of hardware was computers/laptops while in terms of software the teachers used general software more frequently than they used mathematical software. In addition, the teachers commonly used the digital tools to do arithmetic, draw graphs, present contents of mathematics and give classroom instructions. Finally, teachers had not yet achieved a high level of ICT use as most of them still used it for an established form of classroom practices. The findings of the study revealed a significantly positive correlation between teachers’ knowledge and their classroom practices in ICT use. Moreover, the correlation between teachers’ knowledge of ICT use in teaching and their classroom practices was stronger than the correlation between teachers’ knowledge of ICT and their classroom practices.

The qualitative findings provided deeper insights showing that the relationship between teachers’ knowledge of ICT and classroom practices appeared at the subject level and the task level while the relationship between teachers’ knowledge of ICT use in teaching and classroom practices appeared at the classroom level, the subject level and the task level. Finally, based on the findings, the study suggested that Indonesian secondary mathematics teachers need to improve knowledge of both ICT and ICT use in teaching. In addition, teachers as well as policymakers should overcome the main barriers to ICT integration, namely teachers’ lack of time to prepare ICT-based lessons, teachers’ lack of confidence, and the assessment of students not being in line with the integration of ICT, in order to enhance the integration of ICT in Indonesian secondary mathematics classrooms.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Michaela Brockmann: orcid.org/0000-0003-4978-1883

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