Last modified: 2017-03-24
Abstract
Rapid development in information and communication technologies (ICT) affects every side of our life and those technologies have possession an inevitable place in instructional settings (Aktürk, 2006). Also, those technologies make students focus on their courses carefully and understand the content more meaningfully (Kenar, 2012). As well as the effective use of ICT in education, parents’ perspectives towards using IT in education is essential since the positive or negative attitudes about the ICT usage by their kids both in their schools and home may affect the potential and efficiency of ICT. Parents’ manners also determine the students’ attitudes and cause changes in cognitive developments of their kids (Myers, 1990). However, most of the studies regarding in this issue have focused on the environments of schools but students’ houses (Odabasi, 2005). In this study, we aimed to examine the parents’ attitudes, views, behaviors, and control mechanisms about their children’s ICT use at home as well as in their schools. For this purpose, a questionnaire was conducted among 354 6th and 7th grade students from eleven schools in Turkey. This questionnaire was composed of demographic questions and parents’ attitude survey consisted of 14 items (5 point Likert Scale). This survey has three factors: Attitudes towards ICT use, negative effects of ICT use, and supervision and restrictions of ICT use. We found that 57% of parents think that ICT tools are effective to draw students’ attention during instruction while 77% of them support their kids to use instructional software. Almost half of the participants (45%) stated that ICT use may have negative effects on children’s health. An interesting finding of this study is that %81 of parents think that using filters for Internet connection is necessary while 40% of them have no idea about family protection software.