Student teachers' perceptions of the Internet: motivation, influences, and use

Abstract

The Internet's rapid growth and diffusion, both worldwide and in Portugal, as well as its importance for teacher education, made the authors feel the need to reflect on how their student teachers integrate themselves in such quite novel environmental conditions and teaching communities This paper reports on one specific Portuguese university's student teachers' Internet usage during their teaching practice and what reasons motivated them to do so. It also looks into student teachers' perceptions about Internet discussion and usage by other teachers in their schools and, in particular, in their own disciplinary groups. The data was collected using a questionnaire which was anonymously answered by 189 of the entire 360-student teacher 2000/2001 population from all 9 different preservice programs.