Investigation of Future Educators' Readiness for Distant Technologies Application in Teaching

Abstract

This research study addresses issues of readiness and use of distant technologies in teaching. Subjects are the students of educational programs in Pedagogy. The researchers analyze different documents that set goals in computer technologies and digital education, and study theoretical and practical issues of digital didactics presented in the works of researchers worldwide. The analyzed literature has enabled the authors to clarify the concepts of distant education, distant technologies, teachers’ digital competence, digital didactics, and to review different approaches for examining the structure of teachers’ digital competence. Researchers have 1) administered a survey and processed the results with the methods of mathematical statistics package SPSS, 2) scrutinized which distant technologies the students are ready to implement in teaching, 3) examined students’ attitude to distant and blended education, 4) probed how students assess their ICT-skills, and finally, 5) correlated all aspects of the study with one another. Researchers have concluded that despite an ultimate readiness of the students to use distant technologies in teaching, there is a contradiction between their competences’ assessment and their relatively high level of skepticism towards the efficiency of distant technologies. Moreover, the students do not perceive digital technologies as a tool that demands the reinterpretation of educational principles and teachers’ roles and the comprehension of specific didactics. All this has proved the necessity for purposeful and systematic training of would-be teachers for applying technologies of distant education.

Keywords

• distant education
• distant teaching technologies