ITE Tutors ICT Practice in Initial Teacher Education - A North/South Collaboration
Dr. Martin Brown, Professor Joe O'Hara (EQI - the Centre for Evaluation, Quality and Inspection) together with colleagues (Dr. Pamela Cowan, Dr. Stephen Roulston and Professor Roger Austin) from Queens University and the Ulster University have just completed a 2 year SCOTENS funded research study who purpose was to explore Initial Teacher Education (ITE) Tutors' Practice in ICT on the island of Ireland.
Summary research findings derived from the study suggests that the attitude of ITE tutors to technology varied considerably among higher education institutions and also seemed to be impacted by gender, with females more likely to be higher in Optimism and Innovativeness, and lower in discomfort than males. Optimism and Innovativeness largely seemed to decline with age, but changes to discomfort were less clear.
Taking account of the length of service, this seemed to suggest that newly appointed tutors believed that they had lower levels of Innovativeness than more established staff. Those in the post for 21 years or more had distinctively low levels of Optimism and high levels of Discomfort.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, those tutors working in STEM subjects appeared to have higher scores for Optimism and Innovativeness in using ICT and lower scores for Discomfort compared to non-STEM colleagues. It would appear that ICTs are not only more used in STEM subjects for Teacher Education, but that those tutors are more comfortable in their use. In the interviews following observations, it appeared that Optimism in ITE tutors primarily occurred as a consequence of collaboration and peer-support.