Education in the Knowledge Society (May 2016)
Growing up digital … teachers, too?
Abstract
This paper attempts to explore the relationship between technological and educational change focusing on the role of teachers´ attitudes towards ICTs. Modernizing schools and adapting them to the new learning environment posed by new ICTs is something else than buying computers and has to be related to teachers’ motivation and willingness to reshape their classroom practice. The paper shows how many teachers feel upset having to learn to teach in ways they were not taught, do not clearly see the benefits they and their pupils would gain and seem also to be affected by a kind of staff divide between those eager to accept the challenge and reshape their classroom practice with the aid of ICTs and those reluctant, indifferent or scekptical towards it. Fearful feelings related to age and the perception of ICTs as a generational marker seem to be the key variables explaining this attitude of resistance against change.