The purpose of this study is to explore and describe the perception of the perceived competence, importance, and educational needs of instructional technology for vocational and career-technical education teachers and draw comparisons between Ohio and Taiwan. The objectives of this study are to determine: (a) the demographic characteristics of vocational teachers such as age, gender, highest degree earned, instructional technology experience, and specialty; (b) the perceived knowledge and importance of instructional technology competencies for vocational teachers in Ohio and Taiwan; (c) the perceived need for further education in instructional technology by vocational teachers in Ohio and Taiwan; and (d) the relationships among the demographic characteristics of vocational teachers and their instructional technology education needs.
The population was all vocational education teachers working at 44 comprehensive high schools and six Joint Vocational Schools (JVS) in the Central Region of Ohio and 22 vocational high schools in Kaohsiung district, Taiwan, during the 2001-02 academic year. The Borich needs assessment model was adapted to determine the need of instructional technology knowledge and skills for vocational teachers and the instrument consists of two parts: (a) demographic data, and (b) a Likert-type scale, to measure the perceived importance and knowledge of instructional technology for teachers. A questionnaire was designed to gather information about vocational teachers' characteristics and their perceptions of the instructional technology importance and competence in their teaching field. The questionnaire was developed with two parallel versions - English version used for Ohio and Mandarin version used for Taiwan.
The magnitude of the relationship between characteristics was defined according to Davis (1971). The t test for independent means was used to compare the mean scores of two different groups. The Pearson correlation coefficient r was used to measure the relationships between ages, year of teaching, instructional technology training experience and calculated perceived educational needs for instructional technology competencies. The Spearman correlation coefficient was used to measure the relationship between teachers' education degree earned and perceived educational needs. The multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) Eta Squared (R2) was used to measure the association between gender, teachers' teaching specialty and perceived educational needs.
The following conclusions and implications were drawn from the research findings and are applicable only to the subjects of the study. The top 10 instructional technology competencies for educational needs that were ranked by both Ohio and Taiwan vocational teachers could be summarized in three categories: setup, maintenance, and troubleshooting of computer system; telecommunications; and media communication. The recommendations are based upon the findings and conclusions of this study. The findings of this study could be useful to a career-technical education department, in its endeavor to focus on vocational teachers' needs, as a guide in developing teacher education materials; conducting seminars, in-service training, and training workshops for vocational teachers.