Pedagogic benchmarks for information and communications technology in teacher education

Abstract

This special issue has described a number of excellent initiatives for the implementation of information and communications technology (ICT) into teacher training which achieve more than functional digital literacy. This article is a synthesis of these 26 cases of good practice and reveals that there are many examples of good practice which can be used as models for calibration and/or modelling of ICT teacher training across the world. The results show that top priorities for both pre-service and in-service programmes for teacher training are that teachers become sufficiently competent to make personal use of ICT, competent to make use of ICT as a mindtool, become masters of a range of educational paradigms that make use of ICT, and sufficiently competent to make use of ICT as a tool for teaching. These characteristics are found in almost all of the programmes that the experts in this research project chose as good practice. Aspects which were considered to be important, but which are not always present in the programmes evaluated, are that teachers master a range of assessment paradigms which make use of ICT and understand the policy dimension of the use of ICT for teaching and learning. All of this needs to take place in an environment that not only talks of modern constructivist thinking and pedagogy, but adopts and models those practices. The days of teaching aboutthe use of ICT are over and directed teaching of ICT skills is not recommended. The article provides evidence that it is possible to catalyse and model appropriate practice for teacher education with ICT in ways that promote educational renewal for the twenty-first century.