Abstract:

Global, the use of the interactive whiteboard in pedagogy has become a common feature. Its attractiveness to the education was because it has lessons’ visual impact and promotes interactivity. These features assist in improving whole-class teaching as interactive whiteboard (IWB) promotes engagement between the learners and the teachers. The massive adoption of the IWB in education may be observed as a response to Fourth Industrial Revolution, which is driven by automisation economy, whereby the world is becoming more and more digitalised. This relentlessly, drives the schools to follow suit. The modern education system, which is Education 4.0, promotes the use of technology in pedagogy in order to meet the demands of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. It was essential in this study, to examine teachers’ perception towards the pedagogical use of IWB. For the reason that teachers’ perception towards the use of IWB has mostly yielded positive results in a convenient way for presenting lesson in class. This was because IWB has templates, graphics, interactive resources and access to the Internet, which makes learning active and interactive. These features provide teachers with the opportunity to conduct the lesson in a conducive way. Research shows that teachers also expressed negative feelings about the IWB use during teaching and learning. This usually happened when teachers encounter challenges relating to hardware failures, challenges in creating their lessons, power failure, and not being equipped to use IWB for teaching.

The aim of this study was to examine teachers’ perceptions towards the pedagogical use of interactive whiteboard in high schools in South Africa. Participants comprised of eight female and 12 male teachers who taught with the aid of IWB. Of these teachers, more than half (11) had formal training on IWB. The question asked in this study was: How do teachers’ perceive the pedagogical use of interactive whiteboards in high schools? To answer this question qualitative case study was conducted. Data were collected by using semi-structured interviews and observations. Atlas ti was employed to analyse data. It was found that teachers experienced IWB as a good technology to use during their lesson presentations. On the other hand, the findings revealed that some of the teachers were not properly trained to effectively utilize IWB for pedagogical purposes. It is recommended that information technology specialists be dispatched to schools to provide technical support and service the IWB.

Keywords:

Teachers’ perceptions, pedagogy, interactive whiteboard, high school.