Integrating information and communications technology (ICT) into pre-service science teacher education : the challenges of change in a Turkish faculty of education

Developments in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and its applications in teaching and learning science are calling for teachers to integrate ICT into science curriculum and instruction. This requires a strategic ICT training for prospective teachers. The literature suggests that integrating ICT into Initial Teacher Education (ITE) is the only option to accomplish the intended change in developing prospective teachers. This thesis focuses on exploring the process of integrating ICT into pre-service secondary science teacher education programmes (Physics, Chemistry and Biology) and its emerging challenges in a Faculty of Education (FE) in Turkey. In this thesis, qualitative dominant case study design was adopted as a result of a pragmatic reasoning. The analysis of data revealed that integrating ICT into ITE science programmes is yet to be accomplished. The data revealed that the participants, both the lecturers and student teachers, have positive attitudes towards ICT and considerable knowledge and positive understanding of ICT and its potential in teaching and learning science. However, the Faculty fails to provide appropriate ICT-training courses for student teachers to develop their technical ICT skills. Having said this, there are crucial examples of horizontal integration; that is, the lecturers provide opportunities for the student teachers to use ICT in meaningful contexts. The data suggest that there is a relationship between the practitioners‘ stages of concern and stages of adoption, which can be described as follows: the personal level of concern moves from the 'self-concerns' to 'task and impact-concerns', the personal adoption level is also likely to move from entry to invention. Although the participants and the researcher identified some crucial factors that has prevented the lecturers and student teachers from using ICT in teaching and learning, among these the institutional ones such as lack of proper access to ICT resources, overcrowded-classrooms, lack of technical and pedagogical support are more influential on the integration process.