Attitudes of english teacher candidates toward ict

The purpose of this study was to investigate the attitudes of English teacher candidates at formal and distance higher education contexts toward ICT and reveal whether there was a significant difference between these two groups in terms of their attitudes toward ICT. The sample of the study consisted of 175 prospective English teachers at two different higher education contexts. The participants were randomly selected among forth-year students at the ELT departments of Euopean University of Lefke (EUL) in North Cyprus and Anadolu University (AU) Open Education Faculty in Turkey during 2009- 2010 Academic Year. Due to differences between the educational context and instructional method, the nine item questionnaire developed by the researchers was administered to the prospective teachers at EUL (N=92) and AU (N=120) to collect data. The return rate from AU prospective English teachers was 70.8% (N=85), while the response percentage from EUL prospective English teachers was 97.8% (N=90). Data were analyzed using frequencies, percentages, mean and standard deviation and independent samples t-test. While the general ICT attitudes of prospective EFL teachers at the formal higher education context were positive with an overall mean score of 4. 29 (SD= 0.69), a great number of prospective EFL teachers at distance higher education context exhibited less positive attitude toward ICT integration in education with a mean score of 2.77 (SD= 0.19). The results also indicated that there was a significant difference between the attitudes of prospective EFL teachers at formal higher education contexts and the attitudes of prospective EFL teachers at distance higher education contexts toward ICT integration (p < 0.05). The ELT curriculum should be reconsidered to provide real ICT experiences for prospective teachers. Furthermore, the number of courses as to ICT use in education should be increased. More opportunities should be presented to allow the prospective EFL teachers to attain valuable experiences and gain self-efficacy in the use of ICT in their future teaching.

Language Education ,

Information And ,

Communication Technology (ICT) ,

English Teacher Candidates ,

Englısh Aducation ,