The Extent of Teachers’ Fulfillment of Their Roles at Public Schools in Palestine in the Light of Information Age

Abstract

This study tried to investigate two aims: 1) to what extent do Palestinian

government teachers in northern disticts practice their role under the Internet

age? and 2) what the things that would help teachers enhance their role and

increase their qualifications form their points of view?

653: (357) male and ( 296) female Palestinian government school teachers

from the northern districts was taken randomly for the purposes of this study.

Teachers were asked to respond to a questionnaire measured the teacher’s

role in four domains: 1) designing instruction, 2) using technology and instructional

aids, 3) encouraging students’ interaction, and 4) promoting the

self- regulation of students. They also were asked to write any suggestions

that would help them to enhance their role and increase their qualifications

from their points of view.

Descriptive and analytic statistics have revealed the following results:

1- Palestinian teachers practice their role quite good. The percentage of

their practices was (77%). The highest percentage was in designing instruction

domain (85.4%), followed by promoting students’ self regulation

(83.6%), and encouraging students’ interaction (77.8%) domains. The

lowest practice was in using technology and instructional aids domain

(66.6%).

2- The post-hoc analysis of variance by using “Scheffe” test showed at (p>

.05) of significant that teachers who hold BA degree practice their role

better than who hold either community college or general secondary

degree. It also showed that teachers who have taken more training programs

either in computer or methods of teaching or instructional aids did

practice their role better than teachers who got less training programs.

Whereas, teachers’ practices did not differ significantly with respect to

their gender, general specialization, educational stage they teach in, or

the years of teaching experience.

3- Regarding the second aim of this study, teachers suggested the following

needs: 1) securing enough number of computer apparatus, 2) connecting

them with the Internet. 3) conduction enough number of training

programs on how to use computers and the Internet, 4) conduction

enough number of training programs on how to use the latest models of

instructional media, 5) securing a climate of democracy in the school, 6)

hiring the qualified persons, either teachers, principals or supervisors, 7)

increasing teachers’ salaries, 8) securing the social securities, 9) building

compounds for teachers at special rate, 10) teaching their children in the

universities with fair tuitions,11) lowering teachers’ load of teaching, 12)

reducing the number of students in classrooms.

These results have accompanied with discussion and recommendations

as it just mentioned in item number (3) above.