Teachers' information and communication technology (ICT) skills and practices of using ICT

Abstract

KAI HAKKARAINEN [1] HANNI MUUKONEN [2] LASSE LIPPONEN [1] LIISA ILOMAKI [1] MARJAANA RAHIKAINEN [3] The purpose of the study was to analyze relations between teachers' skills in using the new information and communication technology (ICT), their pedagogical thinking, and their self-reported practices. About 600 Finnish elementary and high school teachers representing 64.1% of the intended teacher population responded to a self-report questionnaire. The study indicated that only a small percentage of teachers had adequate technical ICT skills although a majority had access to computers either at home or at school. The study furnished evidence that, in the classroom, teachers who actively used ICT emphasized (more than other teachers) the importance of using information technology for supporting a research-like process of inquiry, collaborative learning, learners' active engagement in the knowledge-formation process, and the learnability of intelligence. Further, the results indicated that the discrepancy between teachers' pedagogical principles that commonly emphasized active construction of knowledge, and t heir self-reported pedagogical practices, was lower for teachers who intensively use ICT as compared with other teachers. The educational system in developed countries is facing major challenges as a consequence of the revolution of communication and information technology. Relationships in modem societies are transformed by emerging new means of creating, processing, accessing, and transferring information. Information and communication technologies are dramatically altering many aspects of economic and social life: production systems, working methods, and relations, the organization of companies, and the way people communicate with each other are under-going changes throughout the world. Productive functioning in emerging collaborative learning organizations requires, in adults, new self-regulative skills of controlling and directing one's own thinking processes and knowledge activities (Keating, 1995; 1996). The revolution of information and communication technologies (ICT) is a major challenge for teachers' professional development. They have to learn technical skills adequate to use ICT productively, as well as to instruct and guide the students to use ICT purposefully and generatively. Teachers not only have to become familiar with ICT but also to acquire the pedagogical expertise needed for fruitfully working with new technology-based learning environments. New pedagogical practices have to be explored and developed to facilitate higher-level knowledge acquisition skills the learners need to constructively adapt to the knowledge society. Currently, teachers' lack of technical expertise in ICT appears to significantly constrain possibilities of developing new and innovative computer-supported pedagogical practices. Further, to fully use new pedagogical possibilities offered by ICT, profound changes in teachers' conceptions of learning and knowledge are required. Technical expertise alone is not sufficient for exploiting new pedagogical possibilities provided by ICT; insofar as ICT is used in the educational system as a purely technical innovation, it is not likely that significant pedagogical progress will be achieved. Several cognitive researchers (e.g., Salomon, 1997; Salomon & Perkins, 1996; Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1994) have pointed out that many applications of educational technology support only lower-level processing of knowledge. Yet new pedagogical models of using educational technology, and particularly computer-supported collaborative learning environments, promise to provide new opportunities for solving pedagogical problems in the schools. Scardamalia and Bereiter (1994; in press), and others, have proposed that to meet the future challenges, schools be transformed into communities where productive working for advancing communal knowledge is a primary goal of both students and teachers. …