Higher teacher training colleges and ICTs in Africa: usage, challenges and impacts on teacher training.

Abstract

This study sought to investigate the use of ICTs in some higher teacher training colleges in Africa, the challenges faced by teacher trainers and the impacts that the use and challenges bring in the teaching learning process in these institutions. The objectives of the study was to identify teachers of the higher teacher training colleges knowledge of ICTs; find out their use of this ICT Knowledge; identify the challenges ICT usage posed for these teachers and identify the extent to which educators use of ICT impacts the quality of Teacher Training. Data was collected from the PanAfrican research agenda on the pedagogical integration of ICTs observatory, (www.observatoiretic.org). Qualitative data was interpreted on the basis of issues generated from the research objectives and related literature review on previous works in the same domain, while quantitative data was analyzed using a descriptive statistics. The results revealed that only the University of Education Winneba, Ghana has 100% that is, 322 teachers with at least 50 hours of professional training that includes ICT integration. The rest of the colleges follow with less than 50% of their teachers having had at least 50 hours of professional training that includes ICT integration; more than 50% of teachers have email addresses which tell us they are willing to use the knowledge acquired on the use of ICTs. Results also revealed that more than half of the teacher trainers in two out of four of the colleges chosen for this study use ICTs during training while less than 10% of teacher trainers in the other two schools do use ICTs during training. We therefore concluded that for better integration of ICTs in teacher training colleges in Africa, there is high need for the teacher trainers to receive at least 50 hours of professional training that includes ICT integration. The teachers need more than fifty hours pre-service training to be able to stand up to the challenges that come with the use of ICTs. This conclusion led us to recommend as follows: ICT integration should be included in the curriculum of higher teacher training colleges and frequent seminars and training workshops should be organized so that teacher trainers can improve on their knowledge as technology keeps changing.