Influences on pre-service teachers’ preparedness to use ICTs in the classroom

The role of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in the school classroom is becoming increasingly prominent, both because of the need for children to develop skills that will empower them in modern society and because of the potential value of such technologies as tools for learning. One of the challenges facing teacher educators is how to ensure that graduate teachers have the necessary combination of skills and pedagogical knowledge that will enable them to both effectively use today’s technologies in the classroom as well as continue to develop and adapt to new technologies that emerge in the future. This study explores first year teacher education student preparedness to use ICTs in the classroom. The primary data source for the study is a set of intensive interviews with eight teacher education students. The results suggest that despite the prevailing view that this generation of University students are ‘Digital Natives’ (Prensky, 2001), there are a number of barriers to their preparedness to use ICTs in the classroom. In particular the study suggests that as well as looking at the teacher education curriculum and other aspects of the formal preparation of these pre-service teachers, the pre-service teachers’ personal preparedness including attitude, motivation, and confidence, along with various social factors are important. The results are discussed in the context of various models of preservice teacher ICT pedagogical development. As well as being important for teacher educators, the findings are also important in the context of academic staff development associated with the use of ICTs as a learning tool in tertiary education, as well as in the context of other disciplines where similar assumptions about the ICT literacy of first year university students are being made.