English abstract
This study aims to identify the Perspectives of Social Studies Teachers of the Basic Education in the Sultanate of Oman Using Google Earth in Teaching and their Attitudes towards it. To achieve the objectives and answer the questions of this study, the researcher has used two research instruments. The first one is a questionnaire aiming to identify the perceptions of social studies teachers at basic education stage in the Sultanate of Oman about using Google Earth in teaching. Where the questionnaire consisted of twenty-five (25) items distributed over five (5) fields with five (5) items for each field. The second one is a scale of attitudes aiming to determine the attitudes of social studies teachers at basic education stage in the Sultanate of Oman towards using Google Earth in teaching. This scale consists of twenty-one (21) items distributed over three (3) fields with seven (7) items for each field.
After verifying the validity and reliability of the two instruments, the researcher has applied them by adopting the descriptive survey approach to a sample of (413) social studies teachers at basic education stage, who have been selected using the random sampling method. In this study, the researcher has reached the following results:
- The social studies teachers at basic education stage in the Sultanate of Oman show very high degree of positive perspectives about using Google Earth in teaching.
- There are no statistically significant differences at the significance level of (α ≤ 0.05) between the arithmetic means of the social studies teachers' perspectives about using Google Earth in teaching according to the variables of gender and scientific specialty. There are statistically significant differences at the significance level of (α ≤ 0.05) between the arithmetic means of the social studies teachers' perspectives about the use of Google Earth in teaching according to the variable of years of experience in favor of social studies teachers with more than 15 years of experience.
- The social studies teachers at basic education stage in the Sultanate of Oman show very high degree of positive attitudes towards using Google Earth in teaching.
- There are statistically significant differences at the significance level of (α ≤ 0.05) between the arithmetic means of the social studies teachers' attitudes towards using Google Earth in teaching according to the variables of gender in favor of males. There are no statistically significant differences at the significance level of (α ≤ 0.05) between the arithmetic means of the social studies teachers' attitudes towards using Google Earth in teaching according to the variables of scientific specialty and years of experience.
In light of the study results, the researcher has reached a set of recommendations, the most important of which are: It is necessary to include Google Earth application as an educational and a scientific tool in teaching the social studies subject, and prepare and implement training programs for teachers on how to use this application based on the development of the school technical infrastructure.
