Educational Technology as a significant discipline within the educational landscape has been firmly accepted by many countries throughout the world. Most notably, countries such as the United Kingdom, United States of America, Australia, Hungary and Scotland are amongst the forerunners in implementing educational technology in their educational systems. The value and significance of educational technology is such that democracies throughout the world can ill afford to ignore. This study is thus an attempt to investigate, assess and identify the role and policies of educational technology in post apartheid South Africa. The rationale behind this study is thus to examine and ascertain whether the Government of National Unity has gone far enough to affect major changes in the educational landscape with special reference to the assimilation and in co-operation of educational technology. Based on this rationale, the study investigates amongst others, the perception and understanding of educational technology amongst educationists in primary and secondary schools in Phoenix which is located approximately 25 km north of Durban in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. This limitation of concentrating and restricting the study to Phoenix was unavoidable due to various mitigating circumstances amongst which were the factors of time, cost, human and financial resources and also the issue of security. However after all these concerns were analysed it was found that the majority of schools in the Phoenix area were ideally suited to the study as these schools were made up of a well balanced racial mix of pupils. In investigating the understanding of "educational technology" amongst the various respondents, a number of correlations such as the influence of age, tertiary institution where the respondents graduated, qualification levels, the role of media centre and it's staff, etc were made. Thus this study eventually strengthened the resolve in providing significant information on the previously uncharted territory of "educational technology" in South Africa. In fact this is one of the only known research studies that was undertaken on educational technology in KZN. The study also gleaned various other data to assess whether there exists any policy frameworks on educational technology within the educational landscape of South Africa. In the final analysis various conclusions were drawn, and were subsequently followed by recommendations.

Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of Durban-Westville, 1997.