Teachers’ Beliefs and the Integration of Technology in the EFL Class

Abstract

Over the past few decades, information and communication technologies have been integrated into the language teaching and learning scenario with relatively great success. Accordingly, teachers’ role in this process is fundamental in order to make this integration really relevant for students’ learning. This paper reports the results obtained in a study that was addressed to examine what teachers believe about the effectiveness of using technology in an English program at university level and how these beliefs affect the use of these types of tools in their classes. The research conducted was a qualitative study and the analysis of data revealed that the use of technology-based activities in the English classroom is twofold: reinforcing already studied topics in class and promoting motivation.

Keywords

• Collaborative learning
• information and communications technology
• teachers’ beliefs
• teacher development