ICT IN TEACHING – EUROPEAN TEACHERS ’ VIEWS

Students should learn digital competencies at school as a part of comprehensive education to be able to join the information society. How much students use information and communication technology (ICT) in their studies depends on the teachers ’ confidence to use it. Teachers are the key persons who either bring ICT to teaching or leave it out. If teachers are confident with ICT they tend to use it in teaching and vice versa. Pedagogical use of ICT has three main lines: availability of information and knowledge, the independency of time and place and collaboration opportunities to work simultaneously or separately. There are some previous researches about the impact of ICT. This article presents the considerations of a limited group of European teachers on the use of ICT in teaching. The research data was collected in the frame of FISTE-project, A Future In-service teacher training across Europe. The analysis is based on European teachers’ discussions. Teachers from different parts of Europe in 5 groups discussed the pedagogical use of ICT. The results will offer perspectives on how teachers actually consider ICT in teaching nowadays and what kind of new opportunities teachers think ICT could offer learning and teaching. Teachers ’ views concerned mainly the value of using ICT in teaching, the ICT competencies of teachers, the pedagogical challenges of using ICT in teaching and the future of ICT in pedagogical use. The results can be used in planning training for teachers to promote the pedagogical use of ICT and evaluating the relevance of the project plans which aim at extending the digital competencies of teachers combined with pedagogy