COMPARISON OF THE USAGE OF ICT AMONG SOME COMPULSORY SUBJECTS IN THE SLOVENIAN PRIMARY SCHOOLS

The ICT occupies a central position both in the knowledgeable information society and in the development strategies of education systems. The ability of working with knowledge, technology and information is one of the three key competences determined by the European Common Principles for Teachers' Competences and Qualifications, as well as one of the eight key competences for lifelong learning as provided by the European Qualification Framework. Comparison with EU shows that Slovenian schools have, despite highly motivated teachers for using the ICT as well as good equipment and broad band internet access, quite low usage of ICT for instruction in general. Hence, it is a challenge to study the use of ICT for the instruction of some compulsory subjects in the Slovenian schools. Our research involved 468 pedagogical workers. Teachers of lower grades classroom teaching level with higher education prevailed. The questionnaire they answered, and which was verified by the factor analysis and Cronbach coefficient alpha in regard to the measurements characteristics, was a combination of numerical rating scales and some open ended and closed questions. The results have shown that computer programmes are used the most for the instruction of mathematic and Slovenian language and the least for musical education. Similar results were obtained for the use of internet sites, which are used the most for teaching Slovenian language, as well as for teaching mathematics and the least for teaching music. The reasons could be found in the shortage of adequate didactic materials and weak equipment of classrooms. The results on the relations among the above mentioned subjects concerning the use of ICT are quite interesting, too. We discovered a positive and a statistically significant correlation, which is the highest between the subjects of Slovenian and mathematics and the lowest between the subjects of mathematics and music.