Developing an ICT teaching workforce for the FE sector: rhetoric or reality?

As the global economy expands and the world becomes a more competitive marketplace, JCT is considered a key driver of economic success. Successive UK governments have promoted the need to develop a highly skilled JCT literate workforce. The previous government, New Labour, considered education to have a major role in developing skilled workers, competent in using ICT. As pioneers of technology in education, New Labour invested heavily in providing an JCT infrastructure and created policy agencies to develop JCT resources to support Further Education teachers to use JCT in the teaching and learning environments. This thesis considers how successful national policies were in impacting on the integration of ICT at a local level in enabling and expecting non-JCT Further Education teachers to integrate technology into classroom practices. The thesis is a case study of three different Further Education colleges in the south London area in the Schools of Business Studies. It makes comparisons and seeks to understand if the situation in one college is unique or part of a larger problem. The study has been carried out over two academic years (2007-2009) and uses a combination of qualitative methods such as semi-structured interviews, telephone interviews, questionnaire and documentary evidence. This study identified a gap between New Labour's vision of integrating JCT in teaching and learning and the reality of what is happening in Further Education. The study captures the views of non-JCT teachers and gave them a 'voice' to identify the factors that prevented them from using JCT. The findings show that the majority of non-JCT teachers clearly appreciated the potential of JCT to motivate and engage learners but were constrained by a number of institutional and personal factors. These factors included inadequate training, lack of technical, pedagogical and financial support, poor software resources, systems breakdown, heavy administrative and teaching workloads impacting on time to learn and gain confidence in using JCT. The study also highlighted the importance of situated learning and identified each college's position of restrictive or expansive environments. Finally, the study provides some sound recommendations to support non-JCT teachers in integrating JCT in their teaching and learning.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo