Understanding Change: Perceived Impacts of Educational and Information Technology (E&IT) on Teaching and Learning Science

Change in education is hard and complex since crucial factors, mostly hindering ones, emerge during implementation. Current literature shows that this has been proved to be true throughout the implementation of Educational and information technology (E&IT) in education in every parts of the world. For the practitioners, undersdanding change is the first step and critical point to move forward. In this study, science teacher educators’ and prospective science teachers’ understanding of E&IT and its usefullness in taeching and learning science were explored by using multiple methods in the case selected. This study includes three secondary preservice science teacher education programmes – i.e. Physics, Chemistry and Biology. The student teachers (STs) from these three programmes are expected to teach their specialist subject in secondary schools – i.e. 15-17 age group- after their graduation. Results showed that there were some patterns in understanding the use of E&IT in science education among the participants. E&IT was perceived as information sources, presentation tools, facilitator and a medium to change current styles of teaching and learning science. The results were derieved from the participants’ actual practice and their perceptual understanding of the use of E&IT in science education.