Impact and Barriers to Information and Communication Technology Integration for Inclusive Science Education in Junior Secondary Schools in Rivers South-East Senatorial District, Nigeria.

Abstract

This paper investigated the impact and barriers to ICT integration for Inclusive Science Education at the Junior Secondary School Level. The researchers adopted an analytical descriptive survey for the study. It was guided by three research questions and three hypotheses. The population of the study included 95 Public Junior Secondary schools, comprising of 379 science teachers and 261 school administrators (principals and vice principals) in Rivers South-East Senatorial zone in Rivers State, Nigeria. The sample of the study consisted of all 379 science teachers and 261 school administrators; making a total of 640 respondents. The instrument for data collection was a questionnaire titled: Inclusive Science Teaching and ICT Usage Questionnaire. The reliability of the sections of the instrument using Cronbach Alpha were found to be 0.70, 0.69 and 0.81 respectively. This was appropriate for the study. The findings of the study revealed that ICT integration will go a long way in making science education more inclusive at the basic level. It also showed that science teachers are not prepared for integration of ICT for Inclusive Science Education at the upper Basic Level of Education. However, it showed that the barriers to ICT integration for Inclusive Science Education include: unavailability of ICT facilities, erratic electric power supply, inaccessibility to internet services, poor funding, lack of ICT skills among teachers, poor attitude of teachers etc. Based on these, recommendations were made among which were that Basic Schools should be equipped with ICT facilities and science teachers should be trained on the use of ICT facilities and E-learning platforms.