Abstract
Research suggests that there is a need for better training of prospective teachers on information and communication technologies (ICTs) in order to encourage their use for teaching and learning in schools. This paper presents findings on the self-perceptions of competence by pre-service teachers to use ICTs for teaching science content. A mixed method approach was used where 103 final year pre-service teachers completed a questionnaire on their competence to use ICTs for teaching and 21 of them participated in focus group interviews concerning their experiences with ICTs during teaching practice. Results show that pre-service teachers seem to be more competent in the non-technology related skills compared to the technology related knowledge fields and that there are significant variations in their ICT competences. These variations largely result from the uneven opportunities to learn that are provided to the pre-service teachers. More significantly, the directional trend shown by the correlations indicates that the more lecturers or mentor teachers use ICT tools to teach, the more pre-service teachers learn to use ICT tools in their own teaching. The paper concludes with a discussion on the implication of these findings for policy and practice and specifically suggests that there is a need to review the policy guidelines on the development of the teacher education programmes to be more deliberate in their inclusion of ICTs. The key recommended contribution is for teacher preparation programmes at universities to be restructured in order to improve the training of future teachers on the use of ICTs to teach science.
Highlights
There is a great deal of variation in terms of how prospective teachers use information and communication technologies (ICTs) to teach their subjects (Hennessy et al, 2007)
The first research question is “what are the pre-service teachers’ perceived competencies with respect to the technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK)?” The TPACK survey was used to examine sources of ICT skills, knowledge areas and the opportunities to learn for pre-service teachers
This was followed by in-depth analysis of all technology related knowledge areas (TK, Technology Content Knowledge (TCK), Technology Ped agogical Knowledge (TPK) and TPACK) with the purpose of examining the data on the use of the ICTs to teach science content during teaching practice and looked at the significant role of ICTs when pre-service teachers teach during teaching practice
Summary
There is a great deal of variation in terms of how prospective teachers use ICTs to teach their subjects (Hennessy et al, 2007). Pre-service teachers’ development of competence to teach science subjects using ICTs requires knowledge, skills and opportunity to learn during the teacher preparation programmes. In its recent policy guidelines for teacher education programmes, the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET, 2013) classifies ICTs as a fundamental learning area that all graduating South African teachers are required to be competent in. In spite of this policy pronouncement and ambition, to date there is no clear guidelines and/or national researchgenerated recommendations on how teacher educators should provide for, support and assess such competence in the use of ICTs for teaching subject matter in the various subject disciplines. There is a clear gap in terms of how teacher educators are expected to break the “digital divide” in their preparation of prospective teachers
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