Conceptions on Information and Communication Technologies and its educative implications

Exploratory study with elementary school teachers of the Province of Ñuble, Chile

Abstract

This article studies the conceptions that elementary school teachers have on two aspects of information and communication technologies: a) knowledge of these technologies; and b) beliefs around the educative use teachers actually give to these technologies. The authors have chosen aquantitative methodological approach and a non-experimental descriptive survey design. Data analysis was performed through SPSS 14.0 and the techniques were descriptions, frequency and percentage, data reduction techniques (factorial analysis) and statistic inference (media and percentage comparison). The results show that most teachers are aware of the fact that technology arouses the interest of students because of its learning opportunities in terms of tolerance to different learning curves and the attention paid to specific needs. This article identifies the search for information as a vital competence. It is also noted that there is a causal relation between the formation level, the attention that teachers pay to the resource and its educative use. Results encourage the promotion of continuing education programs in this area and the strengthening of future teachers’training in its initial stage.