Pre-service English teachers’ ICT tools experiences during Remote Teaching

Abstract

The current needs that education faces entail innovative strategies, tools, and techniques to respond efficiently to the modern demands of society in pandemic times. This study aims to recognize, describe, and explore technological and pedagogical competencies applications that facilitate the teaching practice and process by implementing ICT (Information and Communications Technology) sources during remote teaching in a public school. In this qualitative study, action research was employed, following the Kemmis’ model steps for this type of study, to analyze the gathered data obtained from a survey, an interview, and five observations where pre-service English teachers reported on their experiences framed in remote reaching during the pandemic. The study findings showed that even when the pre-service English teachers were not all aware of technological resource utilization, they carried out personalized strategies involving the implementation of ICT sources in their teaching practice. Additionally, participants stressed the advantages of ICT inclusion in the English class, the challenges involved in remote teaching, the lack of ICT resources for teaching, and the lack of training in ICT use for teaching as core concepts extracted from their responses. The study concludes that although pre-service English teachers positively view ICT integration in language teaching, they showed difficulties and frustrations while teaching due to the lack of training in ICT use, displaying a basic level of technological and pedagogical competencies. Therefore, the research suggests expanding the number of courses related to ICT use for teaching purposes and arranging the curricular time when they are delivered.