Student-teachers' ICT Skills and their Use during Placement Related to Pre-Service Teacher Education Program at Yarmouk University in Jordan

Abstract

Identifying Pre-service teachers' Information and
Communication Technology (ICT) skills and the degree to
which they apply these skills in their teaching is a vital issue
both to inform future planning and to implement new ICT in
educational systems in Jordan and worldwide. This study
investigates ICT skills of student-teachers at Yarmouk
University in Jordan and their degree of ICT use in practice
schools during the first semester of 2003/2004 academic year.
Data were obtained via questionnaires with a random sample
of the (90) student-teachers and interviews with a random
sample of (40) student-teachers. In addition, interviews with
all teacher trainers (22) at Yarmouk University were
conducted to further triangulate findings from studentteachers' questionnaires and interviews. Regarding ICT skills
the results showed that student-teachers possessed low to
moderate ICT skill levels. With regard to the degree of ICT
use at practice schools, results from the questionnaires
showed congruency between student-teachers' ICT skills level
and the degree to which they apply these skills. However,
results from the interviews indicated lack of ICT skills used by
student-teachers during their teaching practice. Lack of
adequate training at the university, lack of access to ICT
resources, teacher-trainers' inability to model the use of ICT
in their teaching and inability to incorporate ICT in teaching
were among the factors that affected student-teachers' ICT use
at practice schools.