The relationship between teachers’ ICT competency and academic performance of students in Information and Communication Technology in East Akim Municipality.

Abstract

Advances in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT’s) are changing the way people share, use, and process information. Overtime, students’ academic performance had been used to determine excellence in teacher teaching. This study was conducted to investigate the relationship between teachers’ ICT competency and students’ performance in ICT in East Akim Municipality in the Eastern Region of Ghana. It also sought to find out whether availability of ICT resources have influence on students’ performance. In the study, 19 public Junior High Schools were sampled from 67 schools. Questionnaire was employed for data collection from the total sample of 322 students and 19 teachers of ICT. Descriptive research design was selected for quantitative research approach. The findings on the academic performance of students revealed that only 7(2.2%) out of 322 students and 9(2.8%) had a mark above 80 for term 1 and term 2 respectively. Majority of the students also rated themselves as either poor or very poor in performing computer related tasks. Most students’ performance in both practical and end of term examination were low due to the unavailability of computers in their schools. This reflected in a positive linear relationship between the availability of ICT resources (computers) and students’ academic performance. The null hypothesis H0 was rejected at 0.05 level of significance with p = 0.032. The level of teachers’ ICT competence on the six UNESCO standards generally recorded a low mean value of 3.77. It was recommended that teachers who do not have the required ICT qualification and practical skills in ICT usage should seek training to enable them competently and confidently use them in teaching the subject.