Includes bibliographical references. / The aim of this study was to investigate the ways in which Information Communication Technology (ICT) was structured in a teacher education institution to prepare pre-service students for effective ICT integration in their future classrooms. The study investigated how a particular subject, viz. Information Communication Technology Design in Education (ICTDiE), was integrated into the teacher education programme.

This research investigates how Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) tools mediate in field supervision of undergraduate students. The research used Activity Theory systems to show that good supervisory practices lead to expansive learning. The study conducted over a two year period of eight weeks each, focussed on nine supervisors, students and administrators in the international programme (summer for the Western Countries) is organised by the College of Veterinary Medicine and Bio-Security of Makerere University. The students undertake field attachment and are supervised using various ICT tools. The research used qualitative methods and was grounded in Activity Theory. Data was collected through interviews, their participation and discussion in the Learning Management Systems (LMS) and the social media network (Facebook & Diigo) and through various feedback reports either from the supervisors or from the students to collect as much information as possible so as to understand the role ICT plays in this process. The research found that while ICT tools mediate in field supervision of undergraduate students through aggregation of multiple experiences and by providing a virtual proximity in the supervisory process. It also found that there are barriers in its usage which need to be addressed when doing so. These included; internet access and availability as key, power outages, and technical knowhow were also mentioned. The research further found that lack of adequate ICT tools to be used in the field, skills and at times failure to credit the source of content hindered its effectiveness. This inevitably creates lack of consistence in the way they are used. The research, therefore, concludes that there is need for a holistic approach to address the problem of barriers and usage so as to have a comprehensive implementation plan for the use of ICT in the supervisory process. This will assist supervisors in integrating them in their practice.

Includes bibliographical references. / This study is a response to the need to understand the meaning behind some of the unanticipated behaviour displayed by students in higher education institutions who have high access to information communication technologies (ICTs), but yet display limited use. The main objective of the study is to explore and highlight reasons why students privileged with high access to ICTs make such limited use of them.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 93-99). / Although Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has an empowerment and social inclusion effect in developed countries, it continues to create a digital divide in developing countries. This thesis is premised on the argument that, despite the disjuncture between ICT, social-cultural and developmental needs in a developing country, computer literacy training should continue to be offered and young people from economically and academically disadvantage backgrounds endeavour to acquire computer literacy skills. The objective of this study is to answer the question "Why do economically and academically disadvantaged young learners choose to engage with ICT and what role do they see for computer literacy?" Thus, the purpose of the study is to unfold learner agency in constraining conditions.

Technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) is the knowledge required for effective technology integration in teaching. In this study, New Zealand high school science teachers’ TPACK was assessed through an online survey. The data and its analysis revealed that New Zealand’s high school science teachers in general had a high perception of their understanding of TPACK and its related constructs. Science teachers had high mean scores on all the constructs on a five- point Likert scale except technological knowledge. There is thus an indication that science teachers in New Zealand perceived themselves as being able to teach with technology effectively. Correlation analysis revealed that all six constructs correlated significantly with TPACK (also referred to as TPCK). Multiple and stepwise regression analyses revealed that Technological Pedagogical Knowledge (TPK) and Technological Content Knowledge (TCK) made statistically significant unique contributions to Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK). Pre-registered teachers indicated that their levels of TCK and Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) were lower than more experienced teachers. This implied that recently graduated teachers found it difficult to appropriate the affordances of technology to affect the content they taught. Also, these recently graduated teachers lacked the experience to represent content in a format that made it comprehensible to their learners. The contextual factors that influenced teachers’ use of technology as well as teachers’ TPACK levels were investigated through multiple embedded case studies of six teachers who were regular users of technology in their teaching. The case studies revealed that science teachers used technology to support inquiry learning in a wide range of ways in lower levels of high school but mostly to clarify concepts and theories when it came to the senior level of high school. Teachers demonstrated different levels of expertise and engagement in the use of technology for transferring different types of knowledge from one teaching and learning context to another and for addressing differences amongst learners. This signalled that science teachers’ TPACK apparent developmental levels shifted depending on the context of the assessment requirements of the students. This is a major finding in this study because although previous researchers have assumed that context influences teachers’ TPACK characteristics and development, this study provides evidence of how specific aspects of context influences teachers’ TPACK. This evidence shows examples of how the development of an individual’s TPACK can be considered as dynamic where the interacting constructs and characteristics shift and change based on the context. The recommendations from this study propose that teacher education programmes should ensure that there is a focus on teaching preservice teachers how to appropriate the affordances of technology to teach specific content instead of teaching one technology skills based course. The evidence from this study indicates that teachers in New Zealand schools use collegial approaches in the use of technology. Therefore professional learning programmes should target groups of teachers in the same school or cluster of schools rather than targeting individual teachers. This will enable teachers to share ideas and provide leadership for their colleagues in terms of how to use technology. Again, technology related professional development programmes should move away from enriching teachers’ technological skills to emphasising how teachers can appropriate the affordances of technology in their classroom practices to meet their instructional goals as well as students’ learning outcomes. There is a consequent obligation for teacher educators, educationists and stakeholders to enable teachers to understand how best to harness the increased knowledge retrieval capacity that Information and Communication Technology affords, its information sharing abilities as well as the capacity to engage young people to act as experimenters, designers and creators of knowledge.

A prototype multimodal tablet application for learning the physics of motion has been developed tested and evaluated. By moving their finger across the screen the application enables the user to map its position and velocity in real-time in terms of graphs. The learning outcome of those test subjects using the application was compared to a group that had the same procedure shown to them, as well as getting an explanation of all the physics involved. There was a small but not significant difference in performance between these groups on a post-test. However, a larger (arguably significant) difference was seen between the male and female test subjects for the sub-set of questions of a more analytical nature.

The challenge for educators is to prepare students for life in a technological advanced society that will continue to change exponentially. Work requirements have changed and computer skills have become a basic requirement for a majority of jobs. As computers have become more prevalent in everyday life and in the work place, their use has gained in importance around the world. Kuwait, like other countries, has recognised the need to increase the technological background of its students to compete better in world markets. This research recognises the importance of ICT in Education and realises the difficulties involved in its effective adoption. For that reason, it presents an empirical study of the ICT adoption process by examining perceived innovation attributes, and the relationship of individual characteristics in this process. The theory that supports the research effort is Rogers' theory of Diffusion of Innovation, which was used as the theoretical framework to hypothesise a model of ICT adoption. This model is called the ICT ARABIA Model (ICT Adoption using Rogers' model, and Bringing In Addition), and was designed to elicit the relative importance of the perceived innovation attributes in influencing ICT adoption in Mathematics education. The empirical context of the research is 259 participants in mathematics departments, which are analysed using quantitative and qualitative research approaches. Results indicated that the ICT ARABIA Model was most useful in explaining ICT adoption by mathematics departments. The relative importance of each factor of the ICT ARABIA Model was determined by rank ordering the mean importance scores for each factor. However, an additional factor emerged, and this was leadership. Also, demographic characteristics were found non-significant predictors of ICT adoption. These findings highlighted many issues for further study. The main concern was regarding the importance of the perceptions of innovation attributes in influencing the ICT adoption in mathematics education; however, leadership was also an influential factor, which resulted from interviews. Those interested in programme innovation and change in educational departments may need to focus on finding a strong leader to help in the process.

A l’aube du 21e siècle, dans un environnement en mouvement constant, que le rapport au savoir à l’ile Maurice soit moins en termes d’enseignement, de «reproduction», d’«héritiers», ou de «transmission» pour faire place à l’apprentissage, aux relations à travers des remises en causes des « habitus ». Un modèle d’éducation qui se perpétue depuis des générations avec pour toile de fond, une pédagogie transmissive/le ’spoon-feeding’, la compétition académique et un recours massif à des leçons particulières pour l’obtention d’une place dans les meilleurs collèges et d’une bourse d’Etat, attestés par des nombreux écrits au cours de cette recherche nous interpellent sur notre mission en tant qu’enseignant et nous font comprendre à travers des études auprès des enseignants de l’Enseignement Supérieur que l’école peut répondre en partie aux faiblesses pédagogiques de notre système éducatif en permettant à nos apprenants de sortir de leur conditionnement mais se doit surtout d’être une organisation apprenante en les encourageant à travailler dans un esprit de complémentarité des savoirs afin de s’enrichir à travers le collectif, confirmé par leurs implications, motivations et façon d’apprendre qui n’ont été que positivement renforcées lors des expérimentations sur différentes plateformes utilisant les Tic au sein de l’UDM.Un pays qui de par sa position géostratégique, ses projets éducatifs mondialistes, aspire à devenir un « Knowledge Hub » ne peut agir efficacement sans envisager une approche systémique dans ses réformes en complémentant le contexte avec les Tic afin de faire évoluer le système éducatif. / Knowledge is no longer limited to a selective group of individuals but should relate to any person eager for learning. In the 21st century, in a constantly changing educational environment, in Mauritius, schooling is still based on the notion of a pyramid-typed organisation. In this research. it has been observed that this flaw is explained through a model of education that perpetuates for generations with a backdrop of scholastic pedagogy encouraging 'spoon-feeding', intense academic competition and heavy reliance on private tuitions for obtaining a place in the best colleges and eventually a state scholarship. Studies conducted through this research challenged us in our mission as educators and researchers and made us understand, through experimentations, that the school should be a learning organisation with teams working in a spirit of complementarity for knowledge sharing because ‘the human brain is programmed for social interaction’(Hinton and Fischer). The researcher considered the use of ICTs to respond to weaknesses in the Mauritian education system ― seen as a hygiene factor (Herzberg) ― allowing learners to escape this ‘lethargic’ condition, this bilateral relationship as one way communication and to think out of the box while enriching themselves through collective learning practice. Mauritius has the advantage of using English and French as a bilingual platform, and is geo-strategically well positioned to become a "Knowledge Hub", the stepping stone between Africa and Asia in Education, must consider a systemic approach of education complemented with ICT. This will enable the country emerge with a practical educationalreform focused on the global dimension.

ICT is a part of our everyday experience where ever we are, at home, at work and also at school. ICT-equipment for millions of kronor is handed out to our pupils every year. It has become a huge part of the Swedish education system and it is up to us teachers to incorporate it in the education. This is done in different kind of levels which the theoretical framework of the SAMR-model describes very well. My interest has been to see how the use of ICT-equipment is incorporated in the education at a school where a 1-to-1 project has been running for half a decade now. I am looking at which level of the SAMR-model the teachers are operating most of the time and if they are content with what they do with the ICT-equipment within their education. What I found was that most teachers are operating at the lower levels of the SAMRmodel but they are quite content with that. Many of the teachers believe that ICT in education is beneficial for learning and almost everyone wants more education within the field of ICT, especially female language teachers.

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