Researching the use of communication technologies in teacher education

Abstract

The role and use of information and communication technologies in teacher education is of growing concern across Europe. The King’s College London component of a five nation European experimental study (FETICHE Project) has been exploring the reality of communications between teacher trainers in the university and their co-tutor partners in schools. What effect does the establishment of e-mail and conferencing facilities have upon the initiation, content and range of communication, and indeed the pedagogy of teacher education. The trial involves three college lecturers, six of their teacher tutor colleagues in schools and their PGCE students. Preliminary results indicate that identifying and getting operational suitable means of communication are fraught with difficulties. Impoverished and differential resourcing is a major inhibitor to schools going “on line”. Teacher educators, whether in universities or schools appear to have limited understanding and experience of ICT, with a complex set of perceptions that may be at odds with reality. The staff of university computer networks fail to understand users’ needs of distributed and distance networks. But most significantly it is clear that the existing partnership relationship between trainers in college and schools is out of balance, operating in parallel rather than together, and based upon substantial misconceptions. Nevertheless both partners perceive the need for improved communications, and in the whole FETICHE project, it has been possible to analyse the role that ICT may play, and define a related conceptual framework of users needs. It is clear that other projects planning similar experiments would need a greater commitment from institutions, including time for the actors to explore the systems, and a substantially improved technical and support infrastructure.