From A Survey of Primary School Teachers
June 2006
The year 2006 is a turning point for “school education and the media.” One of the goals of “Informatization of Education” policy of the government-oriented “e-Japan Strategy” is to install computers at every classroom in public schools across the nation and connect them via broadband to build up an environment where every teacher can utilize computers in the classroom by March 2006. Along with providing educational programs, NHK has also been developing “NHK digital learning materials” by offering materials and videos on-line to facilitate interactive learning
Due to a major delay in connecting general classrooms, except for PC rooms, via the Internet, Japan has not achieved a goal set by the government to create an environment where teachers can use PCs in a daily basis. Therefore, the “New IT Reform Strategy” issued by the government in January 2006 to follow the “e-Japan Strategy” promotes establishing not only hardware infrastructure but also policies such as setting specific targets so that all teachers shall be able to utilize PCs and the Internet to conduct classes efficiently in five years time.
The NHK Broadcasting Culture Research Institute has been periodically conducting “NHK School Broadcast Utilization Survey” since 1950 in an effort to enrich planning and programming of NHK's school broadcasts and related educational services. The research has recently been focusing on penetration level of PCs and the Internet and their usage to understand changes in media environment at school. However, at the current transition time of the media, we realized it is extremely significant to understand individual teachers' detailed media usage and their views on the media in addition to surveying current situation at each school. Thus, we introduced a nation wide survey targeting individual primary school teachers in 2005.
The Survey of Primary School Teachers not only reveals diversified usage of the media by teachers, or how they use TV, VCR, PC, and the Internet, depending on which grade they teach (second, fourth, and sixth), age and years of experience as a teacher, gender, years of experience in using PCs, or views on the media, but also illuminates that teachers are becoming more interested in “learning about the media”
This article outlines the results of the Survey of Primary School Teachers to consider what roles are expected for broadcasters and other media to play to serve for the future school education.