Browsing by Author "Inkeroinen, Taina"

The aim of this study is to investigate the reasons and restrictions behind teachers' use of ICT in their teaching, in a situation in which the school has a good number and variation of devices available. The main research question was: Why does or doesn't a teacher use the ICT devices in his/her teaching? For studying this further I used more specific questions that concerned 1) the amount and ways of using different equipment, 2) thoughts about the relevance of using the devices available and 3) the teachers' perceptions of their own competence regarding the same equipment. The study is a qualitative interview study. A semi-structured interview was used to collect the data from three primary school teachers. The teachers work in the same school where ICT devices are relatively well available. The research material was analyzed by the means of direction based content analysis. The teachers had many reasons for their use of ICT in teaching. The most common ones were the possibilities offered by the equipment, the different ways of learning, the importance of having ICT skills in today's society, the motivational reasons and the added practical value in everyday teaching. The main issue restricting their use was lack of time along with difficulties in prioritising, when the possibilities seem unlimited. Technical challenges were also a topic. Despite the challenges, the teachers were motivated to harness the potential of the devices to their legitimate purpose.