Summary of Journal 8

Teachers’ Beliefs and the Integration of Technology

in the EFL Class

Martha García Chamorro

Universidad del Atlántico and Universidad del Norte, Colombia

Lourdes Rey

Universidad del Norte, Colombia

Over the past few decades, information and communication technologies have been integrated into the language teaching and learning scenario with relatively great success. Accordingly, teachers’ role in this process is fundamental in order to make this integration really relevant for students’ learning. Williams and Burden (1997) state that literature on teachers’ beliefs concluded that these have a great influence on the way they prepare their classes, the kinds of decisions they make and their general classroom practice more than their knowledge about it. As Ertmer (2005) points out, “although the conditions for successful technology integration finally appear to be in place, including ready access to technology, increased training for teachers, and a favorable policy environment, high-level technology use is still surprisingly low” (p. 2). This implies that it will be important to identify what other “unknown” factors underlie teachers’ decisions when integrating technology (or not integrating it) in their classes. One of these factors may be the confrontation between teachers’ fundamental viewpoints about “seeing and doing things” (Ertmer, 2005, p. 4) and the possibility of changing these beliefs. Teachers tend to rely on their previous experiences (familiar images) with the use of technology in class (Kagan, 1992).

This paper reports the results obtained in a study that was addressed to examine what teachers believe about the effectiveness of using technology in an English program at university level and how these beliefs affect the use of these types of tools in their classes.  Three instruments were used: class observation, teacher surveys and teacher interviews. A posterior triangulation of the data collected was made and then categorized in an attempt to understand teachers’ perceptions about technology and the way these beliefs affect the integration and implementation of ICT in EFL classes. The research conducted was a qualitative study and the analysis of data revealed that the use of technology-based activities in the English classroom is twofold: reinforcing already studied topics in class and promoting motivation.