The Influence Of Information And Communication Technology In Early Childhood Classrooms In A Nigerian State

Abstract

The paper was designed to ascertain influence of information and communication technology in early childhood classrooms in a Nigerian state. Three research questions guided the study while three hypotheses were formulated and tested. Descriptive survey research design was utilized and it was carried out in Imo state. A total of 270 nursery school teachers were selected from the 27 local government areas in Imo State. A 23 item questionnaire was developed from literature and used to obtain data for the study. The questionnaire was validated by seven lecturers of Early Childhood Education. Cronbach alpha was used to determine internal consistency of the questionnaire which yielded a coefficient of 0.86. Data collected were analyzed using mean while t-test statistic was used to test null hypotheses. Mean cut off point of 2.50 was applied in decision making thus items with mean values of 2.50 or above was interpreted as agreed while items with mean less than 2.50 were interpreted as disagree. For the null hypotheses, they were upheld if the calculated level of significance was greater than 0.05 or otherwise rejected. The findings reveal ten roles of ICT in the learning environment of primary school pupils, seven challenges of utilizing ICT in nursery school classrooms and six roles of teachers in integrating ICT within the nursery school classroom. The findings also reveal that that gender, years of experience and age of teachers had no statistical significance on the opinions of the teachers. Based on the findings, the study recommended among others that the state government should provide the funds needed to purchase ICT resources needed by nursery school pupils which are expensive; and Local governments should organize training/retraining for teachers in schools within their jurisdiction on the use of ICT for teaching nursery school kids so as to achieve the aims of utilizing ICT for learning among the children.