June 2014

Media Usage of Teachers at a Transition Period of Media

From the 2013 NHK Survey on Primary School Teachers’ Media Usage

Yuji Ujihashi / Sachiko I. Kodaira

The NHK Broadcasting Culture Research Institute conducted a “NHK Survey on Primary School Teachers’ Media Usage” in 2013 in order to understand the present status of media environment at primary school classrooms across Japan as well as to grasp the whole picture of how NHK’s educational services such as broadcasts, websites, and event are used there. This survey is aimed at individual teachers (first to sixth grade class teachers) and was introduced to replace the “NHK School Broadcast Utilization Survey” that had been regularly conducted from 1950 through 2012 aiming at schools.

As TV receivers and computers have become available for use in classrooms on a daily basis and some schools have started using interactive whiteboards and digital textbooks for teachers, primary school teachers are in the midst of a media transition period. Analyses of the usage of those new media by attributes of users show a trend that they are used more frequently by upper-grade class teachers than lower-grade class teachers, by those in their 20s and 30s than those in their 40s and 50s, and by male teachers than female teachers.

Regarding “NHK school broadcast TV programs” or online learning materials “NHK Digital Curriculum,” more than half of teachers, and more than 70% of upper-grade class teachers, used either of them in the FY 2013. As to the usage of teaching/learning materials on media by school subjects, while “NHK school broadcast TV programs” and/or “NHK Digital Curriculum” were used more frequently in science, social studies, and moral education, “digital textbooks for teachers” were used more in Japanese language, math, and foreign languages.

NHK is required to look ahead to the days when teachers and school children use various types of media on a daily bases to further develop and provide broadcast programs and educational contents that could be only achieved by a public service broadcaster.

The NHK Monthly Report on Broadcast Research