Geography Teachers' Attitudes towards Geographic Information Systems

European Journal of Educational Studies 1(1), 2009

European Journal of Educational Studies 1(1), 2009 © 2008 Ozean Publication

How do Teachers Approach New Technologies: Geography Teachers’ Attitudes towards Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Ali Demirci1 1

Fatih University, Department of Geography, Istanbul, Turkey E-mail: [email protected]

__________________________________________________________________________________________ Abstract: This study was aimed at understanding the extent to which GIS technology has been diffused throughout secondary school geography lessons in Turkey by focusing on geography teachers’ attitudes towards GIS. A survey form was sent to geography teachers of around 200 private secondary schools in Turkey, 79 of which were responded to from 55 high schools located in 33 separate provinces. The study provided an understanding of teachers’ knowledge, skills, and attitudes about GIS. As the study revealed, knowledge of GIS and its use in geography lessons by teachers was minimal. More than half of the teachers (66%) had no precise understanding of what GIS is and 82% of the teachers did not know how it could be used in geography lessons. The use of GIS among teachers in geography lessons was also found to be dramatic low. Around one seventh of the teachers (16%) said that they had used GIS software on a basic level before. Only seven of these teachers indicated that they had used GIS software in their geography lessons. Teachers’ attitudes, however, were positive towards GIS. Most of the teachers (76%) thought that GIS is an effective teaching tool for geography lessons. Although some external barriers regarding lack of hardware, software, and data exist, the positive attitudes of teachers towards GIS is a significant factor which will contribute to integration of GIS into geography lessons in Turkey in the future. Keyword: GIS, geography education, secondary school, teachers’ attitudes _____________________________________________________________________________________________

INTRODUCTION The rapid developments over the last two decades in computer and internet technology have resulted in many changes and reforms in education as well as in other sectors of society. Teacher, textbook, and blackboard were the three most significant components of teaching and learning in classrooms not more than a few decades ago. However, today’s classrooms are often equipped with computer, internet and projector allowing teachers to benefit from many and varied materials and methods in their lessons. Technology changed the teacher’s role from a traditional one to that of facilitator in the classroom (Paraskeva, et al., 2008). Teaching no longer centres around the transfer of knowledge from teacher to student; learning comes from student inquiry, critical thinking, and problem solving based on information accessed from a variety of sources (Scheffler, 1999). Technology has now changed how teachers and students access, gather, analyse, present, and transmit information by giving them more power in the classroom (Dooley, 1999). Information and communication technology (ICT) has not only changed the role of teachers in classrooms but has also provided them with a large number of software and websites which can be utilised for educational purposes (Ruthven et al., 2005; Seal and Przasnyski, 2001). PowerPoint, MS Word and Excel are among the most commonly used software packages in schools today and their pedagogical benefits and contributions to learning and teaching have been studied and tested long ago (Fitzpatrick, 1993; Bartsch and Cobern, 2003; Rozalind and Muir, 2004; Joshua, 2005). Rapid technological development is giving teachers new opportunities to test many more software packages and websites in their lessons. Google Earth, online games, virtual reality and YouTube are only a few examples of resources that are being tested in classrooms today (Ramasundaram et al., 2005; Patterson, 2007; Dickey, 2007; Snelson, 2008).

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Positive outcomes of using technology in education has led many governments to initiate programs for the integration of technology into schools. Governments are competing to equip schools with more computers, assessing progress in terms of computer-to-student ratio. In the US, around $8 billion was spent by school districts in the 2003-2004 school year alone to equip schools with necessary technology, primarily in the form of computers. In the US, the computer-to-student ratio was 1:3.8 and the internet-connected computer-to-student ratio was 1:4.1 in 2004 (Hew and Brush, 2007). The computer-to-student ratio in schools was around 1:7 in Canada and the UK in 1999 and the same ratio in those countries is close to that of the US now (Watson, 2001; Granger et al., 2002). Supplying schools with high number of computers does not necessarily mean that educational goals to integrate technology into the curriculum are accomplished. Many studies report failure in different countries to incorporate ICT into educational systems (Dooley, 1999; Russell, 2003; Scheffler, 1999; Ottesen, 2006; Eteokleous, 2008; Keengwe and Onchwari, 2008). Despite reports of an increased number of computers at schools, computers are not extensively used in classrooms in many countries (Scheffler, 1999; Eteokleous, 2008). As Watson (2001) indicated in his study, although teachers own and use computers for their own administrative work, many of them never use computers in their classrooms. The results of a survey conducted by Keengwe and Onchwari (2008) indicate that many teachers use technology less today than they did in the mid-1980s. These studies show that merely making technology available to teacher and students in schools and classrooms is not sufficient to attain educational goals and to ensure that the technology contributes to learning and teaching. What is needed is effective integration of technology into instruction. Although research studies show that use of technology contributes to teaching and learning, this use is generally affected by certain barriers (Ertmer, 1999; Scheffler, 1999; Watson, 2001; Ottesen, 2006; Zhang, 2007; Hew and Brush, 2007; Keengwe and Onchwari, 2008). A number of different barriers to technology integration in classrooms have been identified. Ertmer (1999) categorised these barriers into external and internal. Lack of equipment, unreliability of equipment, lack of technical support and other resource-related issues form the external barriers while school level and teacher level factors such as beliefs about teaching and technology were considered internal barriers in his study. By making a very detailed literature review, Hew and Brush (2007) identified 123 barriers to technology integration in schools and classified them into six main categories: barriers related to (a) resources, (b) knowledge and skills, (c) institutions, (d) attitudes and beliefs, (e) assessment, and (f) subject culture. Research studies in education have shown that technologies engage students in higher-order thinking only if they coupled with the necessary pedagogical strategies (Lim, 2007). If barriers are examined from this perspective, it is seen that teachers are at the heart of the success or failure of technology integration in classrooms (Watson, 2001; Cope and Warp, 2002; Ottesen, 2006). Technology integration is a complex phenomenon that involves understanding teachers’ motivations, perceptions, and beliefs about learning and technology (Keengwe and Onchwari, 2008). If teachers like a type of technology and believe that it is beneficial for their lessons, technology integration can be achieved more easily (Hew and Brush, 2007). In other studies, teachers’ lack of competence, lack of knowledge, lack of prior experience and their resistance to apply new technologies in their lessons have been found to be major obstacles (Scheffler, 1999; Ottesen, 2006; Zhang, 2007; Sadık, 2008; Paraskeva et al., 2008). When teachers lack the necessary confidence to integrate a technology into their lessons, they tend to ignore it (Dooley, 1999). Access to resources, quality of software and hardware, ease of use, incentives to change, support, collegiality in the school, and commitment to professional learning are among other factors influencing teachers’ decisions to use new technologies in classrooms (Mumtaz, 2000). The number of new technologies which can be utilised for educational purposes increases rapidly today. However, incorporating these technologies into school curriculums and utilising them effectively in classroom settings is not easy. This is even more obvious with the integration of advanced technologies like the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) which was specifically designed for professional spatial analysis. GIS is a set of integrated software programs designed to store, retrieve, manipulate, analyse and display geographical data-information concerning people, places and the environment (Fitzpatrick and Maguire 2000). GIS, which was first developed in the 1960s, is today utilised in more than 100 disciplines (Phoenix, 2000). Although it was not designed for educational purposes, GIS has been used in education over the last two decades. Today it is used at secondary schools in diverse programs including Geography, Science, Environmental and Social Sciences, Biology and Mathematics mainly in the USA, Canada and some European countries (Broda and Baxter 2003; Kerski 2003; Wigglesworth 2003; Bednarz 2004; Bednarz and Van der Schee 2006).

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GIS has many advantages, especially in geography education, because it enables versatile analysis of data connected to geographic references (Patterson et al. 2003; Bednarz 2004; McClurg and Buss, 2007; Demirci, 2008). Although its contributions to education have been well documented and various GIS materials including data, lesson plans, and exercises have been developed to use in the classroom, the educational use of GIS is not widespread throughout the world today (Bednarz and van der Schee, 2006). Since the early 1990s, GIS use has spread slowly into K-12 classrooms in the USA, one of the first countries to use GIS in secondary education (Bednarz 2004). GIS was used by less than 5% of high schools in 2003 in the USA (Kerski 2003). Kerski reported that 54.9% of the schools that owned GIS software were not using GIS for teaching. The level of the use of GIS in secondary schools in the UK is approximately the same (OFSTED 2004). Many other countries, such as France, Sweden, and Finland, have recently included GIS in their secondary school curriculum, but have found it difficult to incorporate it into their geography classrooms (Johansson 2006). Only 8% or less of schools used or had access to GIS software in secondary schools of New Zealand at the beginning of the new millennium (Olsen, 2002). The use of GIS is much higher in Singapore. Yap et al. (2008) found that 43.8% of 89 schools that responded a questionnaire had GIS software. GIS has started finding a place in secondary school geography lessons in many other countries. One of the latest countries to have taken bold steps to incorporate GIS into secondary school geography lessons is Turkey. A new geography curriculum was introduced in secondary schools of Turkey in 2005. Prior to this curriculum, GIS was only discussed at a very rudimentary level in some textbooks. In the new curriculum, however, GIS was recommended 20 times as a tool for activity development (Demirci, 2008). This change in the curriculum drew the attention of geography teachers to GIS and motivated them to learn more about it and its use in lessons. The number of studies discussing GIS activities in secondary school geography lessons in Turkey is very limited. Demirci et al. (2007) stated that none of the 46 geography teachers who responded a survey from 36 high schools on ICT used GIS in their lessons in 2006. Demirci (2008) has also tested how a GIS-based exercise could be implemented in secondary schools with 14 teachers who were given education in GIS along with the GIS software, digital data and other necessary documentation for the exercise. The GIS-based exercise was successfully implemented by only two out of the 14 teachers. The remainder of the teachers could not complete the experiment due to a variety of reasons. Lack of understanding of GIS, lack of training, lack of time and lack of hardware and software facilities were among the reasons behind the failure of teachers. Although three years have passed since the new curriculum advised teachers to implement GIS exercises in their geography lessons, it seems that there are many obstacles confronting teachers in incorporating this new technology into their lessons in Turkey. This study aims at understanding how the diffusion of a new advanced technology like GIS is taking place throughout the secondary schools in Turkey where many problems still face the use of computers and other necessary ICT in classrooms. The main focus of the study is to answer the following research questions: 1- Are the physical conditions sufficient in schools and classrooms for geography teachers to use GIS in their lessons? 2- Do geography teachers possess the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to successfully and effectively implement GIS technology into their lessons? 3- To what extent do teachers utilise GIS in their lessons? METHODOLOGY Determining the level of technology use within schools is very difficult especially in countries where the number of schools and teachers is overwhelmingly high. It is easier to conduct a survey in small countries like Singapore where there are only 166 secondary schools (Yap et al., 2008), however, in Turkey there are 6,861 secondary schools containing over 3 million students and 167,949 teachers (MEB, 2005). To overcome this difficulty, surveys are usually conducted with a sample group in a particular area or sent randomly to different schools throughout a country. The results of such surveys give an incomplete overall picture of the country, but they do offer an idea about the current situation. In this study, a survey form was prepared of 25 questions in four sections. The first section of the survey included seven questions regarding the personal characteristics and teaching experiences of teachers. The second section of the survey had five questions regarding the physical conditions of schools and classrooms. The third section of the survey asked twelve questions which measured the knowledge, skills and experiences of teachers in terms of GIS. The final section aimed at determining the attitudes of teachers. In this section, teachers had to respond to eight statements about attitudes towards GIS. Each statement was measured on a five-point Likert scale with 1= strongly

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disagree to 5= strongly agree. The survey was sent to around 200 private high schools located throughout Turkey by mail and e-mail. Schools were chosen randomly, ignoring whether or not they had purchased GIS software before. The survey results were evaluated as frequency and percent.

The advent of GIS and its diffusion in Turkey Diffusion of new technologies does not take place abruptly in societies but follows a process which consists of a series of actions in different stages (Dooley, 1999). In the first stage, society learns about the new technology’s existence and functions. In the next stage, favourable or unfavourable attitudes towards the new technology develop. In the third stage, a decision is made whether to adopt or reject the technology. In the fourth stage, the new technology is implemented. Finally, reinforcement of new technology is made (Dooley, 1999). The diffusion of GIS technology from its initial place to higher education and then to secondary education, which represents the first three stages in diffusion of new technologies, took almost three decades in the USA. GIS was first used in the USA in the 1960s, however its educational use at secondary school level started only in the 1990s. Diffusion of GIS technology did not take the same amount of time in other countries. After being tested in the USA and the UK, GIS has diffused much faster in other countries. This situation can be seen in Turkey. GIS use started in Turkey in the 1980s in both public and private sectors. General Command of Mapping started using GIS in 1986 by digitising existing maps for military purposes (Yomralioğlu, 2002). In the 1990s, GIS had spread to other public sectors namely the Land Title and Cadastral General Directorate, the Turkish Statistical Institute, the Turkish State Meteorological Service, and the General Directorate of Mineral Research and Exploration. The first national conference on GIS was held in 1994 (Yomralioğlu, 2002). GIS use started in municipalities in the 1990s. The first GIS department in municipality was established in 1996 in Bursa. In 1999, new GIS departments were established in other provincial municipalities such as Istanbul, Ankara, and Eskişehir. The number of GIS departments in municipalities increased in following years and stood at 29 in 2007. Today, there is at least one GIS department in 21 of Turkey’s 81 provincial municipalities. The number of employees working in these departments has increased too. GIS departments employed 214 staff employed in 2007. Of these 214 employees, only one was a geographer who had graduated from a geography department (Demirci and Kocaman, 2007). A similar diffusion pattern of GIS can be seen in the private sector. The first private company doing GIS related work was established in 1981. It is difficult to count the number of private GIS companies in the country. Demirci and Kocaman (2007) looked at 20 private GIS companies that produced GIS software or were doing GIS projects in Turkey. They found that the number of private GIS companies increased rapidly between 1996 and 2005. In those years new private GIS companies were established and the number of provincial branches of existing companies increased. Demirci and Kocaman (2007) also found that the number of private GIS companies and their branches stood at 39 in 2007. According to the same study, 769 employees were employed in 13 private GIS companies in 2007, of which only three were trained geographers (Demirci and Kocaman, 2007). The use of GIS in higher education started in the 1990s, firstly at Geodesy and Photogrammetry Departments in Turkey. The number of departments giving GIS education in universities increased almost fifteen-fold between 1991 and 2004 (Olgen, 2005). Today, GIS is taught in many different disciplines in universities, mainly in Geodesy and Photogrammetry, Geography, Urban Planning, Geology, Forest Sciences, and Soil Departments. Geography departments realised the importance of GIS towards the end of the 1990s. The first GIS laboratory, of 20 computers with GIS software, was established at a geography department in Turkey in 1998. The first national GIS conference hosted by a geography department was organised in 2001. The number of geography departments teaching GIS increased after the year 2000. Today there are 36 geography departments in Turkey. Twenty-four of them are in Art and Science Faculties while 12 of them are in educational faculties. Only six of these departments have fully equipped GIS laboratories. A few of the remaining departments use general computer laboratories owned by the faculties and the majority of the departments do not have GIS laboratories for GIS courses. There are still many geography departments in Turkey without even a single GIS course in their program. As can be clearly seen from this situation, the third stage for diffusion of GIS into geography departments at higher education is not yet complete in Turkey. However, both the interest of geography departments in GIS and the effort to incorporate GIS into their programs are increasing in the country. It is likely that the fourth stage of diffusion, the widespread implementation of GIS into geography departments throughout Turkey, will take at least another decade. The diffusion of GIS into secondary school geography education started in the 2000s. The first “GIS for Teacher” workshop for teachers was organised in 2004. Only 30 teachers from around the country participated in this

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workshop. GIS was an unknown technology for the majority of geography teachers until 2005. When the new secondary school geography curriculum recommended the use of GIS for geography lessons, more teachers became interested and started learning about the technology. The number of workshops and symposiums on GIS for teachers increased since that time. Today, obtaining digital data for general geographic features such as elevation, rivers, lakes, roads, buildings and remote sensing data such as air photographs and satellite images is not as difficult as it was a few years ago in Turkey. Many of these data are freely available from municipalities or can be purchased from General Command of Mapping at a suitable price. None of the GIS companies have developed specific software to be used in secondary school education. Today there are several GIS software packages, including ESRI and Intergraph products, Map Info, and NetCad, which can be used in geography lessons. A Turkish-language version of ArcView 9.2 became available in 2007. NetCad is a Turkish GIS company and its GIS software is available in Turkish. Obtaining one of these GIS software packages presents no difficulties for teachers today in Turkey. Teachers may obtain old versions of GIS software from companies free of charge or they can get the newest versions at a reasonable price. Until recently there was no Turkish language documentation for instructing teachers how to use GIS in geography lessons. However, a book entitled GIS for Teachers was published in 2008 with the support of ESRI (Demirci, 2008). This book, which is available for geography teachers in the country at a very suitable price, includes almost everything teachers need to incorporate GIS into their geography lessons. Sample lessons plans, digital data, and ArcView 9.2 accompany the book, with a one-year free license for the software. Although an increasing number of high schools and geography teachers have obtained this book, the number of high schools that are effectively using GIS in Turkey seems to be not more than 1% today. RESULTS The survey was responded to by 79 geography teachers working in 55 different high schools located in 33 separate Turkish provinces. The number of surveys responded to varies from 1 to 14 in different provinces. Fourteen teachers in Istanbul responded to the survey while for 17 provinces, including Ankara, Aydın, İzmir, Manisa, and Kocaeli, the response level was between 2 and 5. For fifteen provinces only one response was forthcoming, including Eskişehir, Mersin, Sivas, Hatay, Diyarbakır, Van, Balıkesir, Afyon and Bursa. Although the number of responses to the survey do not represent the whole country, the results were still helpful in answering the research questions of the study. Personal Characteristics and Teaching Experiences of Teachers The majority of the respondents (77%) were men, with 23% of respondents being women. The ages of the teachers who responded the survey were between 21 and 52. Only a small number of teachers (9%) were between 20 and 25 years old. Around 30% of the teachers were between 26 and 32 years old while the majority of the teachers (61%) were above 33 years in age. The teachers who responded to the survey are quite experienced in terms of the number of years which they had taught geography at school. More than half of the teachers (54%) had more than 10 years teaching experience. Almost one fifth of the teachers (19%) had teaching experience of between 1 and 4 years while around one fourth of the teachers (27%) had been teaching geography for 5 to 9 years. The weekly teaching load of the teachers ranged from 9 to 35 hours. One fifth of the teachers (20%) said that they were teaching geography between 9 and 16 hours per week. Almost the same number of teachers (38%) had a weekly teaching load of between 17 and 24 hours, while 42% of them were teaching geography for more than 25 hours a week. The average number of students per geography classroom was between 16 and 30 for nearly all the respondents (99%). Only one teacher (1%) had a class size lower than 15 students. The majority of the teachers (82%) had a bachelor’s degree while 18% had completed their master’s degree in geography departments. Physical characteristics of Schools and Classrooms The obstacle of not having separate classrooms for geography, as opposed to other lessons, was removed years ago in Turkey. Schools were officially advised to construct separate classrooms for teaching different subjects. However, a lack of classrooms can prevent school managers from dedicating a separate room to every discipline taught at schools. This is especially evident in public schools, with the situation being much better in private schools. The number of geography classrooms, that is, those with basic ICT and special instruction materials peculiar to geography such as maps, globes, etc., in private schools has been increasing. In this study, teachers were asked if they had a geography classroom dedicated solely to geography lessons at their schools. Somewhat satisfyingly, 42% of the teachers said that they had been using a separate classroom designed specifically for geography lessons. More

47


than half of the teachers (58%), however, said that they did not have geography classroom at their schools and that they had been sharing the same classroom with teachers who taught other subjects such History, Sciences, and Mathematics. The availability of ICT in classrooms is very important in providing the ability to use different teaching methods and techniques. In the case of GIS in the geography classroom, at a minimum, a computer and projector are required. In the survey, teachers were given a table of different types of technologies and were asked to show which were available in the classrooms where they conducted their geography lessons. As shown in Table 1, less than half of the teachers (47%) indicated that there was a computer at the classrooms where they instructed their geography lessons. In terms of LCD projectors, the situation was almost the same, with a slight difference in favour of LCD projectors. Almost half of the teachers (51%) indicated that they had an LCD projector in their classrooms. As the difference between the number of computers and LCD projectors indicates, there are some classrooms where there is an LCD projector without a computer (Table 1). Some of the teachers stated that they took their personal laptops into classrooms if they needed to use computer in their lessons. Internet access in classrooms where geography lessons are taught seemed to be insufficient. Only around one third of the teachers (37%) stated that they had an Internet connection in their classrooms. The study revealed that modern technologies such as computers and LCD projectors have already replaced old ones such as over-head projectors and television-video systems. Around 6% of the teachers indicated that they still had over-head projectors in their classrooms while only 10% of teachers stated that they had television-video systems in their classrooms (Table 1). Table 1. Technologies exist at classrooms where geography lessons are instructed. Number of teachers n=79

Type of technology Computer LCD projector Internet connection Printer Television-video system Over-head projector

f

%

37 40

47 51

29

37

15

19

8

10

5

6

There are different ways to use GIS in classrooms. Conducting projects, implementing applications, using internetbased mapping and instructional modules are among the methods which are being used at classrooms today (Wilder et al. 2003, Shin, 2006, Johansson 2006; Milson and Earle 2007). Although teachers can use GIS with a single computer, many of the abovementioned methods require individual student access to separate computers. Because it is not reasonable to equip geography classrooms with so many computers, computer laboratories at schools are ideal places to conduct geography lessons which incorporate GIS. But the question remains as to what extent geography teachers in Turkey are able to use computer laboratories in schools. The survey included two questions regarding computer laboratories at schools. The majority of the teachers (95%) indicated that there is at least one computer laboratory equipped with between 20 and 30 computers, updated and maintained regularly. Only 5% of the teachers responded that there was no computer laboratory in their school. Teachers were also asked if there were any technical or administrative obstacles to using the computer laboratory at their schools for a few hours a week for their geography lessons. More than half of the teachers (56%) responded in the negative, however, 44% of teachers indicated some obstacles, such as lack of interest in geography lessons by school managers and the busy schedule of computer laboratories with usual computer classes. Simply having the hardware is not sufficient for the effective implantation of GIS in secondary schools. GIS software must also be available for teachers and students. The study revealed a very important fact about the availability of GIS software in Turkish schools. In the survey, teachers were asked if GIS software had been purchased or obtained by their school. All teachers indicated that not a single GIS software package had been obtained by their school.

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GIS knowledge and skills of teachers Teachers’ lack of confidence in their computer skills and their ability to integrate computers into the classroom hampers effective computer implementation (Scheffler, 1999). Examining teacher knowledge and skill with regard to GIS will provide an insight to how teachers use GIS in their schools and if they are successfully incorporating it into their lessons. The survey asked 10 questions to measure the level of knowledge and skill of geography teachers about GIS. In the first question, the teachers were asked whether they knew what GIS is and how it is used in general. As the results reveal, the majority of teachers (66%) had no precise knowledge of what GIS is and how it is used. Only one third of the teachers (34%) indicated that they thought they knew enough about GIS and its application areas. The second question in the same section of the survey targeted teachers’ knowledge of the use of GIS in geography lessons. The majority of the teachers (82%) indicated that they had no idea about how to use GIS in geography lessons. Only about one fourth of the teachers (18%) said that they knew why and how GIS is used in geography lessons. The study revealed important results about the teachers’ use of GIS. In the survey, the teachers were asked if they had ever used GIS software before. The results revealed that the majority of the teachers (84%) had not used GIS software before. Only 13 teachers (16%) said that they had used GIS software on a basic level. Teachers who said they had used GIS software before were asked further questions regarding the details of their use. Six teachers out of 13 indicated that they did not know how to incorporate their GIS skills into geography lessons although they knew how to use GIS software. The thirteen teachers who had used GIS software before were further asked if they owned GIS software themselves. Only seven teachers responded that they had GIS software at home while six teachers said they used GIS software in a workshop. The same thirteen teachers were asked if they had ever used GIS software with their students in their geography lessons. Only seven teachers said they used GIS software with their students in geography lessons. Upon being asked how they utilised GIS software in their geography lessons, three of the seven teachers said they used GIS software on a project with their students while five stated that they used GIS software on a GIS-based exercise. The 66 teachers who had not used GIS software before were asked if they were planning to use GIS in their lessons in the future. The majority of the teachers (92%) said that they would use GIS in their geography lessons in the future while only five teachers (8%) said that they did not think they would. The study revealed that the majority of the teachers (80%) had not undertaken any previous GIS education. Only 16 teachers (20%) indicated that they had attended a GIS course or workshop. In the survey, the teachers were also asked if they knew where they might learn about GIS. More than half of the teachers (54%) stated that they did not know where they could learn about GIS. Upon being asked whether they would like to attend an in-service GIS education organised by Ministry of Education, if offered, the majority of teachers (87%) said yes while 13% said that they did not think they would participate.

Attitudes of teachers towards GIS Teachers’ attitudes and beliefs towards technology is among the factors effecting whether technology will be integrated successfully into classrooms (Hew and Brush, 2007; Keengwe and Onchwari, 2008). Teachers who easily accept and incorporate new ideas, changes and reforms into their practices are more likely to integrate computer applications in their teaching (Dexter et al., 1999). In the survey, the teachers were given seven statements about GIS and asked to indicate their agreement level on a five-point Likert scale in order to understand whether their attitudes towards GIS was a contributing factor to the integration of GIS into geography lessons. The statements and level of teachers’ agreements for each statement are indicated in Table 2. As seen in Table 2, most of the teachers (76%) regarded GIS as an effective teaching tool for geography lessons. Almost one fifth of the teachers (19%), however, were neutral. Only 5% of the teachers disagreed with this statement. Around half of the teachers (51%) agreed or strongly agreed that the use of GIS is necessary in geography lessons. Almost one fifth (21%) of the teachers were neutral while 28% of them disagreed or strongly disagreed. As the results reveal, in general teachers think that GIS technology is difficult to understand and use for both teachers and students alike. Only 33% of the teachers disagreed or strongly disagreed this statement (Table 2). Almost the same number of teachers (35%) agreed or strongly agreed with the same statement while 32% stayed neutral. The positive attitude of teachers towards GIS was further revealed by the responses to the statement that the use of GIS contributes to student-centred instruction methods. Only 2% of the teachers disagreed or strongly disagreed this statement while 69% agreed and strongly agreed. However, almost one third of the teachers (29%) remained neutral.

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Table 2. Geography Teachers’ attitudes towards GIS

Statements

5

Response (%) n= 79 4 3 2

GIS is an effective teaching tool for geography lessons.

28

48

19

5

0

It is necessary to use GIS in geography lessons.

14

37

21

27

1

GIS is a technology that cannot be understood and used easily by geography teachers and students.

6

29

32

29

4

The use of GIS contributes to student-centred instruction methods.

21

48

29

1

1

Learning and teaching with GIS takes much time.

6

23

42

29

0

Classrooms should be equipped with a computer, LCD projector, and a GIS software in order to use GIS at schools.

46

41

10

3

0

All teachers need to take an education for learning what GIS is and how it will be used at geography lessons.

48

37

9

6

0

1

Note: Strongly Agree (5); Agree (4); Neutral (3); Disagree (2); Strongly Disagree (1)

Teachers were cautious in the responses to the statement regarding time required to learn and teach with GIS. The same number of teachers (29%) supported and did not support the statement that learning and teaching with GIS takes a great deal of time. However, nearly half of the teachers (42%) remained neutral to the same statement. The other important result of the study was that majority of the teachers (87%) think that there must be a computer, an LCD projector, and GIS software in order to utilise GIS in the classroom. Almost the same number of teachers (85%) thought that all teachers needed education in order to learn what GIS is and how it can be used in geography lessons (Table 2). As the study revealed, the general attitude of teachers towards GIS technology and its use in geography lessons is positive. However, between 9% and 42% of the teachers remained neutral to each statement. This result indicates that many teachers do not know what GIS is and how it is used at their lessons.

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS GIS is a highly advanced technology which is used in many disciplines around the world. GIS offers a wide range of services to educators in teaching and learning for different school subjects. Although GIS has long been utilised in different disciplines, especially geography, at university level, recognition of its potential at the secondary school level only became obvious at the beginning of the 1990s. Diffusion of GIS from higher education to secondary education took place almost two decades ago in the USA, the UK, and Canada. However, many countries have only recently become aware of the importance of GIS for their secondary school education. Turkey became one of these countries when the use of GIS was officially recommended for geography lessons in the new secondary school geography curriculum in 2005. Three years after the development of the new curriculum, this study attempted to discover how GIS technology has been diffused throughout secondary school geography lessons in Turkey by focusing on geography teachers’ attitudes towards GIS. As the study revealed, physical conditions at secondary schools and classrooms are not adequate in terms of hardware and software to incorporate GIS into geography lessons throughout Turkey. Nearly all schools have a computer laboratory. However, almost half of the teachers indicated that there are some obstacles in using those laboratories for their geography lessons. The number of classrooms which include a computer, an LCD projector, and an Internet connection was found to be insufficient in the study. More than 49% of teachers had been teaching geography without a computer in their classrooms. The situation is much worse as far as GIS software is concerned. None of the schools surveyed had GIS software.

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This study further provides an understanding of teachers’ knowledge, skills, and attitudes about GIS. As the study revealed, geography teachers in Turkey were insufficiently knowledgeable about both GIS and its use in geography lessons. 66% of teachers were not exactly sure what GIS is and 82% of the teachers did not know how it is used at lessons. This result is consistent with the number of teachers who had taken a course or attended a workshop on GIS. The majority of the teachers (80%) indicated that they had never participated in a course or workshop on GIS. These results show that teachers in Turkey lack the knowledge and skill to implement GIS technology successfully into geography lessons. Teachers’ attitudes, however, were positive towards GIS. Most of the teachers think that GIS is a useful tool for teaching and learning and should be utilised in geography lessons. This positive attitude is an important first step for the eventual implementation of GIS into geography lessons. The majority of the teachers (87%) would like to attend an in-service GIS education organised by the Ministry of Education if offered. This attitude of teachers is a significant factor which will contribute to integration of GIS into lessons in Turkey. The use of GIS among teachers in geography lessons was also found to be dramatic low in the study. As results indicate that the majority of the teachers (84%) had not use GIS software before. Only 13 teachers (16%) said that they used GIS software on a basic level. This result is even more alarming when the use of GIS in geography lessons is taken into consideration. Only seven teachers said that they had used GIS software for their geography lessons. Overall, the study indicated that the diffusion of GIS technology into secondary schools is in the third stage in Turkey. Over the last decade in Turkey, teachers have learned about the existence and functions of GIS. New geography textbooks already discuss GIS and its application areas. As seen in the study, teachers have developed a favourable attitude towards GIS. Today, geography teachers are trying to learn more about GIS and are seeking opportunities to use it in their geography lessons. However, as the study indicates, teachers who would wish to use GIS at their lessons need to overcome a number of obstacles ranging from lack of hardware and software to their lack of knowledge and skills about GIS. The positive attitudes of teachers towards GIS is an important factor contributing to the incorporation of GIS in geography lessons. Therefore, it is likely that in Turkey the more teachers gain knowledge and skills about GIS the more they will incorporate it into their lessons. However, it seems likely that integration of GIS into geography lessons will be accomplished by teachers who are so-called “personal entrepreneurs”. For this reason, teachers who are trying to learn more about GIS and integrate it into their lessons need adequate resources and support from school managers and the educational systems of the country. Teachers should be able to find adequate hardware, software, and data, along with necessary competency to use these in geography lessons. The book GIS for Teachers, written in Turkish with support of ESRI, is a good resource including lesson plans, digital data, and GIS software. As it was published in the second half of 2008, its contribution to the integration of GIS into secondary school education will be seen in the following years.

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