EXPLORATION OF PRE-SERVICE ENGLISH FIRST ADDITIONAL LANGUAGE STUDENTS’ TECHNOLOGICAL READINESS TO TEACH DURING TEACHING PRACTICE

Abstract

"The outbreak of pandemics, such as Covid 19 and the need to learn “21st century skills” has resulted in universities intensifying the adoption and use of information and communication technology (ICT) in the training of pre-service teachers. Each teaching subject that pre-service teachers specialise in requires ICT skills relevant to the content of that subject. This paper focuses on English First Additional Language (ENGFAL) pre-service teachers’ readiness to teach using ICT. This group of students specialise in a Bachelor of Education Degree at Further Education and Training level. A qualitative approach was used to gather data from final year ENGFAL students who will be on teaching practice (TP) in the middle of the year. Two focus group interviews comprising of five students each, were used to collect data from the ENGFAL pre-service teachers at a developing university in South Africa. This study was informed by the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge framework (TPACK). Data were analysed using a thematic approach. Key themes that emanated from this study were that most students were confident that they could teach ENGFAL using the traditional methods of teaching. The students revealed that ENGFAL has many aspects derived from the Language and Literature components of the subject and that sometimes confused them. However, only a few were confident that they could select appropriate ICT with the most affordances to achieve lesson objectives. Therefore, the majority of the ENGFAL pre-service teachers had limited TPACK. Another important issue that also emanated from this study was that the participants felt that they would have learnt better on how to use ICT to teach if they had done that in a physical classroom. They did not get adequate time to practice teaching using ICT in the physical classroom due to the Covid19 lockdown. Researchers of this study concluded that more practice, teacher, and peer support is needed for pre-service teachers to master ICT use in teaching ENGFAL."