Do student teachers learn enough about the ICT in their education?

Governments all over the world are investing money in education and educational ICT equipment. In Slovenia primary and secondary are very good equipped with ICT (IWB, computers, WI-FI, etc.), but the educational faculties are... [ view full abstract ]

Governments all over the world are investing money in education and educational ICT equipment. In Slovenia primary and secondary are very good equipped with ICT (IWB, computers, WI-FI, etc.), but the educational faculties are not, due the lack of financing for this purposes. Consequently, the different ICT equipment usually overwhelms them when student teachers get their first position in school as a teacher. They do not use them in their daily school practice adequately though.

Slovenian Government decided that it will, based on the findings of a different reports (Ministry of Education, Science and Sport, 2017), additionally invest in all faculties that train student teachers and their teacher trainers with one goal, to increase the ICT competency and usage of ICT by teacher trainers and therefore consequently also the students will use ICT more confidently when they enter school practice.

On our University an ongoing project was started on three faculties, Faculty of Education, Faculty of Arts and Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, that train student teachers for different subjects. Project’s outputs are:

• Analysis of knowledge, competencies and skills of using ICT on all levels of educational system
• Implementation of a pilot courses with student groups
• Creating a group of teacher trainers that will adapt or change their courses to incorporate good examples and practices of ICT usage in primary and secondary schools
• Handbook of principles of application of ICT in education for the teachers
• Recommendations for the needed and meaningful ICT equipment in the schools.
• Evaluation of project implementation

One of the first project goals was to find the reasons for inadequate use of ICT in education among student teachers of all subjects.

The research question we tested are:

• Student teachers are overconfident in the assessment of their ICT competences and they feel that there is no need for the improvements.
• Student teachers do not have enough good examples how to use ICT in education in their study programs.

These two research questions are not the only influences for inadequate use ICT in education but they are most promising for the testing purposes.

We will present the current results of our ongoing project and the plans for the future work.

 
Bibliography:

Ministry of Education, Science and Sport. (2017). Analysis "Innovative and flexible forms of teaching and learning in pedagogical study programs" (orig. Analiza področja "Inovativne in prožne oblike poučevanja in učenja v pedagoških študijskih programih"). Ljubljana: Ministry of Education, Science and Sport.