ICT INTEGRATION IN INITIAL TEACHER TRAINING IN CHILEAN UNIVERSITIES. A CURRICULAR COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

At present, the Chilean educational system shows a lack of definitions and inequalities related to the transfer of knowledge, as well as in the use of technologies. Since more than twenty years Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) has been used progressively in primary and secondary education thanks to the government investments in infrastructure and connectivity. In this context emerge as one of the priorities of the its public policies is to study the digital skills that children and young people need to develop in the 21st century and to explore technological proposals to enrich classroom learning environments. However, there are still incipient efforts to integrate technologies in initial teacher training in universities. There is no doubts that the quality of the future professionals of Education must be enhanced with the management of tools that their future students will manage, and that will undoubtedly allow them to strength their own professional practice and the development of the skills that the society demand today. Preparing future teachers to be part of the development of citizens of this millennium is an enormous challenge, so universities that train teachers should update their training itineraries to make the difference between today's teachers and those of tomorrow and also considering the definition of ICT standards made by the Ministry of Education. In this scenario the objective of this article is to present a curricula comparison between 25 Chilean universities.

A bibliographic study was carried out based on the information that the most important institutions of higher education published in their official websites. This descriptive study was developed during 2015 using the technique of observation with the objective of identifying the courses related to Information and Communication Technologies in the formative itineraries of the Initial Teacher Training programs. The documentary revision was limited to the programs given by institutions of higher education, being finally conformed by 21 universities that offer pedagogy programs and have courses related to ICT in their curricula’s.

The analysis show that in average there are four programs in each university that include ICT’s in their curriculum. The mode is one course per program, which is taught during the first three years. Another interesting aspect is that the courses not only include basic contents of use of productivity tools (Word, Excel, tools for presentations), but rather the integration of this applied knowledge within pedagogical practice is evidenced.

Main conclusions reflect the that the ICT is present in the Chilean universities curriculum because they have been incorporated this topic but not transversely and nor constant throughout the preparation of future teachers, which implies the challenge of incorporating ICT as a relevant element in the definition of the egress profiles of the future teachers.