Student teachers and their attitudes towards ICT

Abstract

This paper explores the attitudes that student teachers in Malta, Norway, and Spain convey to digital technologies in formal educational settings as they start the 1st semester. A number of studies look at educational inclinations and employment of digital technologies (Granić & Marangunić, 2019; Ritter, 2017; Scherer & Teo, 2019). We have chosen to examine student teachers’ attitudes towards the professional use of digital technologies within a pedagogical framework. In this respect, a comparative qualitative analysis of one open-ended question that forms part of a more extensive questionnaire distributed to all participants is considered. The employed analytical lens subsequently centres on four concepts: ‘adaptability’, ‘creativity’, ‘critical thinking’, and ‘understanding of technology’. In this regard, our findings support arguments for asserting ‘attitude’ as a kind of teacher-specific digital competence for guiding their practice. We conclude by suggesting our analytical framework as a potential point of initiation for further development to understand attitudes as forming part of teachers’ specific digital competencies within teacher education and professional practice.

Keywords

• attitudes
• initial teacher education
• professional digital competence
• student teachers
• technology integration