Heralding an ICT Environment in Initial EFL Teacher Training Programmes through a Curricular Innovation

Abstract

Information and communication technology (ICT) has become a prominent part of education and offers numerous means of improving teaching and learning in the classroom (Bransford et al., 2000, Yelland, 2001). However, the tendency to take the teacher education curriculum for granted and the assumption that it adequately prepares the teachers for the integration of ICT into their teaching practice need to be questioned. Correspondingly, providing pedagogical training for teachers rather than simply training them to use ICT tools is an important dimension. This paper, thus, investigates whether the new EFL teacher training curriculum provides an efficient ICT training or not through both a quantitative and a partially qualitative research methodology. One hundred twenty eight prospective EFL teachers attended this study and the results highlight that the prospective teachers having five ICT-related courses displayed reasonably better attitudes in comparison to those not completing this training period. The results also imply that the success of the integration of new technology into education varies from curriculum to curriculum, depending on the ways in which it is applied.