1 E-TEACHING READINESS OF TEACHERS THE EFFECTS OF PERSONALITY TRAITS AND ICT SKILLS ON CHANGES IN TEACHING STYLE OF EXPERIENCED EDUCATORS

Analyses on the proliferation of Information and Communication Technologies in education unanimously position teachers as key factors for the success of ICT in schools. In spite of in-service courses, rigorously controlled for quality by government accreditation agencies, the percentage of teachers using ICT regularly in class as reported by international surveys has not increased considerably since the eighties. Pre-service courses include technological and pedagogical knowledge and practice but rarely focus on personality development. Our assumption is that the failure of in-service ICT teacher training courses to produce conceptual change among teachers towards the use of ICT is due to neglected personality factors. The UNESCO Centre for ICT in Education EPICT, the European Pedagogical ICT Licence (www.epict.org) is based on collaboration of teacher teams mentored in a highly interactive e-learning environment by experienced peers. Learners must teach using ICT already during their studies that usually means a gradual modification of their teaching style by the end of the course. When adapting and piloting EPICT, our team decided to reveal how personality factors contribute to e-teaching readiness in order to identify personality traits of teachers enhancing or hindering ICT use in education. In order to identify ICT-relevant individual characteristics reflected in technology acquisition strategies, respons