Young Teachers May Be ‘Digital Natives’ But Need Support in Using Tech, Studies Find
June 24, 2019
By: Alyson Klein
Source: Ed Week
Millennial teachers may have grown up with Snapchat and iPads, but that doesn’t mean that they feel prepared to enter the classroom ready to integrate technology into their lessons. And it’s not clear if their student-teaching experience helps them make that happen.
That was the upshot of a pair of studies discussed at the International Society for Technology in Education here.
One study, by Kristin Weber, a professor at Edinboro University in northwestern Pennsylvania, found that students set to teach elementary school were less confident that they knew how to use tech in the classroom when they finished their student teaching than before they began. Prospective teachers who had completed just a literacy field block and early education technology course reported a high self-efficacy score, of 4.35. But those that had taken those courses, and also been through student teaching and had other hands on experience reported a self-efficacy score of just 3.95.