PRIMARY SCHOOL TEACHERS' PERSPECTIVES ON THE USE OF ICTS IN EDUCATION

This paper reflects primary school teachers’ beliefs regarding the integration of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in the Greek educational system aiming to address their perspectives on the subject. The importance of studying teachers’ attitudes lies in the fact that although teachers have little choice over whether to use new technologies or not, they retain a great deal of control over how and when they will use them. A first approach of the existing literature regarding teachers’ perspectives and attitudes on the subject indicates that teachers perceive new technologies as a new subject matter rather than a new approach of teaching supplemented by the use of innovative software and hardware that can potentially enrich and ameliorate the teaching and learning process. This means that although they recognize the importance for ICTs implementation in education, they tend to be less positive about its extensive use in the classroom and far less convinced about its potential to improve teaching. Research also reveals that many teachers have positive attitudes towards technology but they do not consider themselves qualified to effectively integrate ICTs into their instruction. Therefore, despite an initial acceptance of theirs on ICTs enhancement in education, they report a concern regarding the non-computing specialist teachers who may experience a feeling or foreboding that much more support and training is required.

In order for the above to be investigated, an intervention that involved teachers’ participation at workshops that held at Ileias and Achaias region in Greece was organized. The participant teachers had the chance to engage themselves with the use of software that can be used for educational purposes and with hardware such as the Tablet Classmate PCs. Moreover, they had the opportunity to discuss and share their ideas concerning the potential use of ICTs at the context of primary education. The findings presented in this paper demonstrate that teachers recognize the importance of ICTs introduction in an educational context. Moreover, they reveal teachers’ belief that students need to become familiar with the use of ICTs in order to become computer literate in our, according to Castells, network society. Nevertheless, despite the fact that teachers are positive on the use of new technologies for educational purposes, the findings reveal that they also have some reservations and express concerns regarding the use of computers by young students.