Teacher Development and ICT: The Effectiveness of a Training Program for In-service School Teachers

Resumen

Information and Communications technologies (ICT) are becoming crucial tools for teaching because they improve students’ performance and motivation. For this reason many education programs start to include them as essential grounding for teachers’ repertory. Eighty-five teachers participated in a year-long program in which they learnt to use ICT with the purpose to apply that knowledge into their teaching. The program consisted of three training modules: information and operating systems (i.e. programs for teaching –word, ppt, etc.-, use of internet); Interactive tools (i.e. Digital boards, Android Systems); and multimedia materials and teaching strategies (i.e. web designing, web 2.0). As part of their training they completed a Likert type questionnaire (154 items) about (a) ICT uses, (b) attitudes in classroom and (c) satisfaction with the training received (Cronbach alpha = .89). Descriptive statistics, Factorial Analyses and ANOVA were applied to data. Main findings from the third part of the questionnaire indicate that teachers were highly satisfied with the course syllabus: specially the methodology and the resources. A second reading shows that the learning of teaching strategies and creation of new materials for classroom (module 3) was better valued than the learning of technical skills to manage the suggested programs and technologies. Conclusions point out that advancing towards an effective use of ICT in classroom would further require guided mentoring in practice and peer collaboration besides traditional training.