TEACHERS' CONTINUOUS TRAINING ON ICT: SEF-EFFICACY AND USAGE

ABSTRACT

Information and communication technology is an undeniable constant in our daily lives. Therefore, it has been recently made a major investment in Portuguese schools in order to equip them with technological tools. It was intended that such material investment would become synonymous with a deeper change, that is, by taking advantage of the numerous possibilities that information and communication technology offer, especially with regards to enriching educational contexts, it was hoped that the result would be a change of educational paradigm. However, teachers still show some resistance on using information and communication technology, not only on tasks related to teaching practice, but also on the integration of new technological tools in students’ teaching/learning. Thus, for the desirable change of scenery to happen, not only do we have to take into consideration extrinsic, material aspects, but also we must take in consideration intrinsic, affective ones.

Bearing this in mind, we focused on the correlation between teachers’ self-efficacy towards the use of computers and teachers’ use of information and communication technology, that is, we focused on the correlation between teachers’ belief in their ability to use technology and the effective use of technologic tools by teachers. Consequently, we applied a questionnaire at two different moments to a small group of teachers who attended a training course in ICT: at the beginning and end of the course. This way, we were possible to ascertain the impact of training on teachers’ self-efficacy towards the usage of ICT to accomplish various types of teaching tasks. It was also possible to verify the correlation between the self-efficacy felt by teachers and the effective use they make of technologic tools.

KEYWORDS: teachers’ continuous training; information and communication technology; self-efficacy.