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VIRTUAL TEACHING DYNAMICS IN URBAN SRI LANKA: CURRENT ATTITUDES OF SECONDARY SCHOOL TEACHERS TOWARDS VIRTUAL TEACHING

A. L. Christy*

Excelsior College, New York, U.S.A

Introduction

Incorporation of Technology is the current trend of 21st century and the field of education is not an exception to this. There have been many research studies done in the past in many countries regarding the effects of incorporating technology in the field of education and virtualizing the education system. This trend was first introduced to Sri Lanka in year the 2000 at the tertiary level of education with the introduction of Bachelor of Information Technology (BIT) by University of Colombo which later evolved to e-BIT (Mozelius, Hewagamage, & Hansson, 2011). Later this trend of virtual education system was followed by the Open University of Sri Lanka from year 2003 (Sivalogathasan, 2019). Even though incorporating technology in education system worked well at tertiary level, this was not given much focus and attention at the secondary level until the unexpected sudden closure of schools that occurred on the 12th March 2020 due to the pandemic situation (“Distance education for school children,” 2020). Sri Lanka, the country which has followed a free education system from 1945 (Kadirgamar & Thiruvarangan, 2020) engaged in traditional classroom teaching as an accepted method of teaching for its secondary level of education until the lock down. Even though there was an attempt made in incorporating technology in the secondary level of education by Dr Harsha Subasinghe with the introduction of first Cloud Smart Classroom at the Sri Jayawardenepura Maha Vidyalaya, Kotte, it was not introduced to other schools and put into practice (Inayathulla, 2017). Before the lock down, most of the schools in Sri Lanka were following the traditional classroom teaching as an accepted method of teaching and the teachers accepted the traditional way of teaching as the most effective teaching method. The schools which practiced traditional method of teaching in urban areas of Sri Lanka went through a rapid evolution to virtual mode in a short period of time and most of the schools in urban areas of Western Province started conducting lessons online since they were not allowed to reopen the schools. Not only the schools and students but also the teachers adjusted themselves to this rapid transformation in a short period of time by planning and conducting classes virtually. Since teachers are one of the important active personnel in the education system (Kasturiarachchi, 2019), it is important to understand the attitudes of teachers in the virtual education system in order to have a deep knowledge on this topic. This research study was done in order to analyse the virtual teaching dynamics in urban Sri Lankan secondary schools situated in Western Province of Sri Lanka. This paper will deeply analyse the attitudes of secondary school teachers towards virtual teaching.

Research question: What are the attitudes of teachers towards the effectiveness of virtual teaching and what are the motivating factors behind this new mode of teaching

Methodology

To find answers to this question the survey method was employed. This method was chosen since this method fits best to find the answers to the research questions in a limited time. For this research, teachers who are conducting virtual classes from urban areas of Western Province were selected randomly. Due to the time limitation only 88 teachers responded. The respondents in the sample differed in age, experience and gender. An online questionnaire was sent to teachers who were conducting virtual classes. The questionnaire was sent along with the explanation regarding the purpose of this research and the research guidelines. The questionnaire included questions regarding the subject they are teaching, teaching experiences, virtual class duration per week, teaching aids used, syllabus coverage, disciplinary issues of students, preferred and effective mode of teaching and the reasons for the answer. The questionnaire did not include any questions related to personal information or name of the school they are working in and all the participants were made aware of their right to withdraw from this study in case of any discomfort. From the participants 13 teachers were interviewed through phone to find out their opinions regarding virtual teaching. Then correlation analysis was used to analyse the data statistically. Correlation analysis was used between the virtual teaching method and its effectiveness and also for virtual teaching and the motivating factors. Finally in the questionnaire the participants were asked to choose their preferred method once the situation returns to normal.

Results and Discussion

Urban areas of Western Province were selected because according to a report published by the National Education Commission of Sri Lanka in 2016, most of the schools and teachers in the Western Province have more internet facilities and awareness than other places as only 12% of schools have internet facilities and 59.3% of teachers have computer awareness island wide (National Education Commission of Sri Lanka, 2016). From the data collected, 72.7 % of the respondents belonged to the age category of 18-35 while only 27.3% were older than 35 years. The lower number of participants in the survey and in virtual teaching who belong to the age category of over 35 years can be due to the subjective norm that traditional classroom teaching is the best way of teaching which is very much evident in previous research studies done in the past (Wasserman & Migdal,2019). All the participants of this study are teachers who teach different subjects in the national curriculum. Of the participants 45.5% had less than 2 years of teaching experience, 13.6% of participants had 2-5 years’ experience, 15.5 % had 5-10 years of experience and the rest had more than 10 years of experience. Even though there were differences in traditional classroom teaching experiences, in virtual teaching experience only 13.6 % of the participants had prior experience before the pandemic situation while 86.4% of the respondents were new to virtual teaching. From the ratings of the participants a moderately positive correlation was found between the virtual teaching method and its effectiveness whereas a strong positive correlation was observed between the traditional classroom teaching method and its effectiveness from the previous researches done by other researchers. Studies done in the past states that this result can be due to the duration of experience of teachers in both traditional and virtual teaching methods, teachers’ attitudes towards teaching, availability of internet facilitates, preparedness and management support (Bandara, 2018). In the analysis of motivating factors and virtual teaching, a negative correlation was found between the virtual teaching and the motivating factors such as salary & promotion, and a positive correlation was observed for the motivating factors such as support and training from school and colleagues. A strong positive correlation was observed between virtual teaching and factors such as job security and current pandemic situation. For the final question of preferred method of teaching after two months of conducting virtual classes, 4.6% of participants preferred complete virtual teaching and 54.5% preferred both methods of teaching while only 40.9% preferred complete traditional classroom teaching. Even though 68.2% of respondents have said that the virtual teaching is more challenging, 72.7% of the participants has stated that they find less disciplinary issues in virtual teaching than in classroom teaching and 59.1% have stated that syllabus coverage is faster in virtual teaching. The reasons given by the participants for stating that virtual teaching is more challenging are lack of training, lack of support from colleagues, less experience and knowledge with technology, and lack of confidence which is very much similar to the findings of the studies done in the past related to this topic ( Gobbo & Girardi, 2006).

Table 1

Preferred Method of Teaching Post COVID-19

|Preferred method of teaching |Percentage |

|Traditional classroom teaching. |40.9% |

|Complete virtual teaching |4.6% |

|Blended approach |54.5% |

Conclusions/Recommendation

This study was conducted to analyse the attitudes of secondary school teachers towards virtual teaching. The attitudes of teachers related to the effectiveness of virtual teaching was attempted to find out trough correlation analysis since it was already proved in other researches that traditional classroom teaching method is believed to be effective and most welcomed among secondary school teachers in Sri Lanka before the pandemic situation raised. The finding can be summarized that teachers do accept virtual teaching currently as an effective way of teaching but only in exceptional situations where they are unable to conduct traditional classroom teaching. In other words, even in normal situation teachers do not deny the fact that virtual teaching is an effective way of teaching, but they consider it as moderately effective when it is compared to the efficiency level of traditional class room teaching. And like it was already found in previous studies done by other researchers a strong link was found between virtual teaching and the knowledge, beliefs, perceptions, and acceptance towards technology and virtual teaching (Rana, 2012). It was also found that it is job security, support and training from school and colleagues rather than salary and promotion that has motivated teachers to engage in virtual teaching. From the findings we can come to a conclusion that after this pandemic situation attitudes of teachers in the method of teaching has changed. Even though the teachers do not prefer complete virtual mode of teaching, they have moved forward from the traditional classroom teaching and currently welcoming the blended approach with proper training. In Sri Lanka, after three months of complete virtual teaching in most of the schools in urban areas of western province, blended teaching is much more preferred by the teachers from the three different modes of virtual teaching such as Support teaching, blended teaching, complete virtual teaching (Mangal, & Mangal, 2019). Since there is a change in attitude towards the inclination of blended teaching approach in Sri Lanka due to the current pandemic situation, this way of teaching should be encouraged in by the government to make teaching more effective and efficient with the introduction of policies at government level (Samsudeen & Rashida 2015).

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Proceeding of the Open University Research Sessions (OURS 2019)

Proceeding of the Open University Research Sessions (OURS 2020)

ISSN 2012-9912 © The Open University of Sri Lanka

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ISSN 2012-9912 © The Open University of Sri Lanka

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