A proper policy in the permanent teacher’s training: Key impulse of the ICT Centre in Andalusia (Spain)

Premises of the investigation

We share the idea of Cabero (2000a), that the means are exclusively curricular elements that should be analysed and perceived not in themselves in an isolated way, but rather in a tight relation with the rest of the curricular elements.

The means do not work on their own, and for that reason any pretension of tackling them does not contemplate this decisional, contextual, institutional and multi-dimensional space, will simply lead us to introduce new instruments in the classroom, that more or less are soon forgotten by the teacher and left out of recreational and motivating functions.

We have one clear premise; the teacher is the most significant element of one half within the determined context of the teaching-learning process.

When the time comes to follow up the investigation, we consider that the following question should be: Does the mere presence of equipment, programmes and technology suppose per se a better educational process?

Which, in any case, leaves no doubt that it is the current society that demand changes in the educational systen, fundamentally, to promote «innovative experiences in the teaching- learning process supported in the ICT, that affect the didactic strategies of the teachers, the communication systems and the teaching material, instead of stressing the availabilty and potential of the technologies. The IT resources should be immersed in powerful and collaborative teaching environments, as tools that surrport the active process of teaching construction and skills development» (Ávila y Tello, 2003: 179).

The investigation design

The study that we present is presented within the line of investigation of means of education that have been happening in the last few years (Area, 2005; Cabero, 1995; Castaño, 1994), that abandon that comparative line to tackle the investigations in which the integration process is studied in the context of the teaching-learning process.

As Area (2005) shows, the process of use and integration of computers in the educational system is a complex process, subject to many pressures due to multiple instances (of a political, business, social, pedagogic nature) so that the problems and methods of investigation have been evolving since the concern of teaching individuals with computers in concrete teaching situations using experimental methodologies, carried out more longitudinal studies and with quantitative techniques aimed at case studies in real teaching contexts.

That way, managing the programmes from the educational adminstiration, organisational factors like teacher training processes taken place in the centre and the educational concepts of the teachers about the technological resources, are going to condition the didcatic use that is made of them.

From this point of view, the investigation that we have developed tried to test the incidences of ICT in schools for both the students as well as for the teachers.

The objectives

The objectives that we set out for this investigation project – which without doubt, are far more ambitious than what we had initially put forward, for obvious space reasons – its aimed therefore at describing the current state of use of the means of Andalucian educational centres, where computers have been introduced in a massive way in the classrooms the transform the teaching-learning process with its normalised and universal use for all students, that is, the so-called Andalucian ICT centres, which try to make the long distance learning technology a real occurrence in the life of the centres, implementing new virtual resources, all of them free software, looking for an educational impact in the teaching-learning process directly created in the classrooms.

The concrete objectives of the investigation are the following:

Describe the progress and the current state of the use of technological means of Communications in ICT centres in the autonomous region of Andalucia (Spain).
Know the different uses of the information and communications technologies by the teaching staff within the framework of the teaching-learning process.
Know the influence of the professional situation of the teaching staff in the use of the technological resources in their teaching activity.

These objectives apply especially to the I+D National Plan (2004-07) in the National Programme of Social Sciences by the Ministry of Education and Science by the Spanish government, and in particular serve the «didactic, methodological and technological components of the teaching-learning programme», as well as the line «new information and communications technologies throughout life», «learning in virtual contexts» and open and distance teaching-learning.

Sample

The population that carried out the investigation constituted in reality of the Andalucian ICT centres of the first 2003 promotion, that is, 50 centres in Andalucia; and of those 14 were Infant and Primary Education and 36 Secondary Education.

Our study has been done with 800 teachers from 16 teaching centres that participate in the first ICT project meeting, selected at random, of which 5 of them are Infant and Primary and the other 11 are Secondary teaching.

There is a certain bias by the larger amount proportionally of Infant and Primary Education (a 31% of our study, versus a 28% of the total sample), which we have rejected, given that choosing more Secondary schools, in detriment of the Primary that would have equally meant a biased sample (in this case in favour of the Secondary schools). For many reasons (good part of them being logistical) we could not extend the sample to more than 16 centres.