Abstract
This study was conducted to investigate secondary school students’ use of ICT and the factors that relate to their technology use.
A total of 3380 students from 24 public and private schools from four regions in Ghana participated in this study. Descriptive
statistics, Analysis of variance and multiple regression analysis were used to analyze the findings. The study found that majority
of the students used ICT to communicate with peers more than other types of ICT application. However, the study revealed that
students’ pedagogical use of ICT was low. The analysis showed that students in public schools pedagogically use ICT more than
students in private schools. In addition, urban school students pedagogically use ICT more than semi-urban and rural school
students. Finally, the findings indicated that students’ ICT competencies were the most predictor of their technology use. The
findings of this study have added to the body of knowledge documenting the fact that digital divide continues to exist.
© 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of WCES 2014.
Keywords: study, conducted, investigate, divide
1. Background of the Study
Countries around the world have realized the opportunities of the emerging information age characterized by
information and communication technologies (ICTs). These technologies are driving national development efforts
globally and a number of developed and developing nations are exploring ways of facilitating their development
process through the development, deployment and the exploitation of ICTs within their economies and societies. As
* Buabeng-Andoh Charles. Tel.: +233-269196730
E-mail address:cbandoh@hotmail.com
© 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of WCES 2014
Charles Buabeng-Andoh and Yidana Issifu / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 191 ( 2015 ) 1282 – 1287 1283
part of the Government of Ghana’s commitment to a comprehensive programme of rapid deployment, utilization
and exploitation of ICTs within educational sector and other sectors in the country, a National ICT Policy and Plan
Development Committee was set up in 2002 to formulate ICT policy referred to as Information and Communication
Technology for Accelerated Development (ICT4AD) (Ministry of Education, 2003) which was approved and
adopted in 2004. This policy takes into consideration the provision of key socio-economic development framework
documents such as Vision 2020. ICT4AD provided the basis for Ghana’s vision for the information age. The
ICT4AD document identified 14 priority focus areas and one of the areas was promoting ICTs in education by the
deployment and exploitation of ICTs in education. The ICT4AD focused on the development and implementation
of ICTs in education by prioritizing training, research and generation of resources for expansion of ICTs. The
objective of this policy is to improve human technical expertise and the training of facilitators and experts in the
applications of ICTs in education. In furtherance to this, the Government of Ghana set up a committee to review the
whole educational system and recommend ways to integrate ICTs in Ghanaian education. Working under the theme
“Meeting the challenges of education in the twenty-first century” the committee recommended educational reforms
that would be technology driven. Aside from proposing reforms in the current educational structure, the committee’s
proposals on technology driven education included: the expansion of distance education initiatives, the
establishment of Open Colleges that would collaborate with industry and provide more education opportunities for
Ghanaians, the establishment of digital libraries and information services at institutes of learning, and finally the
prioritization and promotion of Science and Technology in Ghana. To meet the challenges of education in the 21st
,
the Ministry of Education (MoE, 2008) formulated a draft policy titled: “ICT in Education Policy”, policy
framework describing how ICTs should be introduced and implemented in second-cycle institutions. The policy
proposed the introduction of ICT as a core subject, the introduction of ICT as an elective subject, the integration of
ICTs as a teaching tool for all subject areas and the integration of ICTs to support educational management and
administrative functions. As a follow up to this document, MoE conducted a research in 2009 under the theme “eReadiness
Assessment of second-cycle institutions in Ghana”. The objective of this base line study was to “examine
and establish the extent to which ICTs are being exploited and deployed to facilitate education and training efforts
within the country” (MoE, 2009, p. 22). According to the survey report, the level of computer literacy is low in the
country and this has been identified as one of the key factors limiting the utilization of ICTs in education. Therefore,
this study intended to investigate secondary school students’ use of ICT. This study also sought to investigate the
differences in technology use in terms of school type and location as well as the factors that relate to their
technology use.
2. Literature Review
2.1 ICT integration into teaching and learning
There have been many studies on students’ integration of ICT into learning worldwide. For instance, a study
conducted by Kennedy, Judd, Churchward and Grey, (2008) on 2000 Australian students revealed that some
students use computer for general study purposes, others use computer to develop web pages but a great number of
students use computer to play music everyday or once a week. Further and Kvavik, (2005) conducted a study on
4374 students to investigate their use of ICT in school. The study found that students frequently use ICT for email,
instant messaging, word processing and internet surfing. Again, Zakaria, Watson and Edwards (2010) conducted a
research on Malaysian students’ use of ICT in schools. The result showed that students use email to disseminate and
share digital contents. In a similar study, Yukhymenko and Brown, (2009) investigated the use of ICT among 122
Ukranian high school students. The result found that 53.3% of the students use ICT in school once a week but
33.5% indicated that they never use ICT in school. However, the study was silent on what the students use ICT for
in schools. As a comparison with advanced countries, the technology use in education in developing countries is
relatively limited. Though, there is much information on the availability of ICT and the way they are being
implemented in advanced nations, there is little information in the literature on the use of ICT among students in
schools in Africa in general, and especially Ghana (Beukes-Amiss and Chiware, 2007). In Ethiopia, Woreta, Kebede
and Zegeye, (2013) surveyed the knowledge and utilization of ICT among 1096 students. The result showed that
33% of the students use a computer once a week and almost 41% of the students a computer once in a month.
