The attitudes of elementary school administrators and teachers toward computers

This study attempts to discover the attitudes of elementary school administrators and class teachers toward computers in Istanbul. The attitudes held by the elementary school administrators and class teachers toward computers have been determined first, and a survey research design has been prepared to find out whether these attitudes change in correlation with demographic and some other personal factors. The research universe is the public elementary schools with their administrative and teaching staff located in Kadıköy, Kartal and Sultanbeyli districts of Istanbul?s Anatolian side. The sample of the study includes 111 administrators and 518 class teachers from 30 schools within these districts. A valid and reliable tool consisting of 42 items and 3 subscales named as Computer Attitude Scale-Marmara developed by Deniz (1994) has been applied to find out the attitudes of the subjects.Within the purpose of the research, it has been studied whether the elementary school administrators? and class teachers attitudes toward computers correlate with factors like gender, age, job position, seniority, education level, having had a computer lesson in undergraduate/postgraduate school, having attended a computer course, the possession of a PC and the level of computer literacy. The results of the analyses indicate that administrators? general computer attitudes is at the medium level whereas teachers? general attitude level is low, while both groups score high on computer anxiety (CA) and remain within the medium range for the subscales of interest in computers (IIC) and using computers in training and education (CTE). The findings show that the elementary school administrators are more positive than the class teachers in the scales of general attitude, interest (IIC), anxiety (CA) and specific attitude toward using computers in training and education (CTE).The possible explanations for the findings and the study topics that can be generated from these findings have been mentioned under the ?Discussion and Conclusion? heading.Key Words: Elementary school administrator, class teachers, computer attitudes, computer anxiety.