Browsing by Author "Li, Qin"

Teachers’ epistemic beliefs may play a role in their own ICT use for learning as well as their students’. This study, focusing on how teachers’ epistemic profiles are related to teachers’ and their students’ ICT use reported by their teachers, is a new attempt to investigate teachers’ ICT use as a learning tool. The participants were 157 subject-matter teachers in Finland filled in a Likert-type questionnaire measuring epistemic beliefs and categories of ICT use based on the three metaphors of learning: knowledge acquisition, participation, and knowledge sharing and building. First, confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to assess the validity of the ICT instrument. Concerning teachers’ epistemic profiles, a person-oriented approach was applied. Based on latent profile analysis, means of all variables in ICT use scales between profiles were compared to examine the relation between epistemic profiles and ICT use for learning. The results showed that in terms of ICT use reported by teachers in two scales, knowledge acquisition was dominant as compared to the other two categories. Two epistemic profiles were defined among Finnish teachers: Knowledge-transmission and Reflective-collaborative profiles. By comparing teacher reported ICT use across the two profiles, the results demonstrated that teachers in the reflective-collaborative group were more likely to report using ICT for their own learning and for supporting their students’ learning.