The influence of Age and Gender in introducing Technology for Teaching and Learning in Gauteng Public Schools

Introduction: The study investigates the influence of educators’ age and gender to use technology in teaching. The objective of this research was to offer policy insights and recommendations on how ICT can be successfully integrated by public schools in the Gauteng Province in South Africa.

Goals and Methods: This is a Mixed-Method using a stratified random sampling method of two hundred and ten (210) educators extracted from the identified population. In addition, the purposive sampling technique was applied to sample twelve (12) HODs and five (5) senior officials from the Gauteng Department of Education (GDE). The majority of the respondents were aged between 31-40 years; and 55% of the educators were male, while 45% were female.  A triangulation technique was employed using a survey (questionnaires and semi-structured interviews) as data collection instruments to gather data from respondents. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used to analyse quantitative data whilst content analysis was used to analyse the qualitative data.

Results: The results clearly indicate that the majority (57.5%) of the respondents agree that age determines the educators' preparedness to use technology. Conversely, 42.5% respondents indicate that age has nothing to do with the educators’ preparedness to use technology. It was also found that most of the participants (74%) agree that educators' preparedness to use technology also depends on gender, while the other (26%) disagree.

Conclusions: The majority of the respondents agreed that age and gender determine educators’ preparedness to use ICT in teaching because younger and male educators are more ready to adapt than older and female educators. Nevertheless, those who disagreed that the age and gender of an educator determine their preparedness to use ICT indicated that one is able to adapt to changes regardless of age or gender.