ICT in teacher education: Examining needs, expectations and attitudes.
Abstract
An exploratory case study was designed to obtain pre-service teachers’ expectations of and attitudes toward the learning and integrating of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) into their teaching and learning. Given the diverse demographic backgrounds and social conditions of the teacher candidates, such as age, gender, English language proficiency, and previous education, a wide range of responses to the online survey and the semi-structured focus group interview questions was expected. Implementation of the sequential mixed method research design resulted in emerging themes related to participants’ social conditions that impact their perceptions and attitudes regarding the ICT and beliefs about the use of ICT in their future careers. Findings from this study are compared to earlier studies done in the same setting. Findings from this case study show unexpected consistency in teacher candidates’ comments despite changed circumstances. This study could be employed as a useful reference for the design of an ICT curriculum for Teacher Education programs.