2015 International Conference of Educational Innovation through Technology

Conception of Teachers Beliefs about Teaching with ICT and the Status

in Nanjing
Shi Huimin Li Yi
School of Educational Science, School of Educational Science
Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing Normal University
Nanjing, China Nanjing, China
1109731480@ qq.com yilisd @ 163.com

AbstractWe seek to give a comprehensive in [1].

conception of teachers beliefs about teaching with
technology and measure the status in Nanjing. Belief
about teaching with technology is regarded as the
composition of pedagogical belief and ICT belief.
Teachers ICT belief is about how teachers perceive
ICTs function in classroom. Then the assessment
scale and the sub-scales are introduced. The
conclusions we can drawn include: (a) Most of
teachers hold personal beliefs aligned with a
constructivist pedagogy; (b) Teachers who hold
constructive pedagogical belief may dont agree ICT
is powerful in supporting constructive learning
activities; (c) ICTs function of supporting
constructive learning activities are more recognized
by teachers from primary school than teachers from
second-school; (d) The training experiences are
significantly interrelated with teachers pedagogical
belief, but not ICT belief ; (e) Gender, working age
and frequency of using ICT in classroom are not
significantly interrelated with ICT beliefs.
Different from earlier research, no obvious significant
differences in teachers belief about teaching with ICT
are observed between urban teachers and rural
teachers.
Keywords-Belief about Teaching with Technology;
ICT Belief; Pedagogical Belief
I. INTRODUCTION
Teachers belief is the most precious things
in the school (Vasyl Sukhomlynsky 1970). In
their daily work, teachers always make decisions
consciously or unconsciously. Their teaching
practice is guided by the views that they believe
Teachers educational belief, which is also
used as teachers belief or educational belief, is
defined as teachers understandings, premises or
propositions about education [2]. In short,
teachers belief is what they believe in about
education. Teachers belief is established by
multitudinous experience and affected by
practice [3]. Once a belief is established, it will
have profound effect on humans psychology
and behavior [4]. Teachers accept more easily
innovations that are in accordance with their
personal conceptions of teaching and learning
[5].
Many published papers have revealed that
teachers belief is correlate with teacher s ICT
application in classroom. There are so many
sub-beliefs in educational belief system. What
kind of sub-beliefs should be included when
Teachers Belief about Teaching with ICT is
(f) concerned. Theres been no consensus. Some
researchers focus on pedagogical beliefs.
Teachers with traditional pedagogical beliefs
will continue to use computers to support
traditional skill- and fact-oriented instructions
[6]. Teachers efforts to integrate computers into
the school curricula are often limited by barriers
that are fundamentally rooted in teachers beliefs
about teaching and learning [7].Some
researchers focus on beliefs about the potential
of ICT for supporting teaching and learning(ICT
belief)[8]. Some researchers take the two aspects
into accounts [9].

978-1-4673-8038-6/15 $31.00 2015 IEEE 204

DOI 10.1109/EITT.2015.50
 II. CONCEPTION
We use Teachers Belief about Teaching with
ICT as the label of the composition of the two
beliefs: pedagogical belief and ICT belief.
Pedagogic belief is how teachers perceive
learning and teaching and ICT belief is how
teachers perceive the function of ICT in
classroom.
Then, we should renew the conception of
educational belief. Why? Because in spite of the
expansion of ICT application in classroom, ICT
belief has not been recognized and highlighted
by many researchers. In many researchers eyes,
the sub-beliefs of educational belief are what
they were first put forward, in which ICT belief
is not included. Great changes have taken place
in educational field in recent years, and ICT has
brought great change to educational system. The
conception of educational belief should be
broadened. That is to say. ICT belief is one of
the sub-beliefs of educational belief.
Pedagogical belief can be divided into two
dimensions: traditional inclination and
constructivist inclination. Traditional inclination
mainly focuses on traditional approaches to the
curriculum and assessment, and constructivist
inclination embraces student-centered
approaches to teaching and learning [5].
Correspondingly, ICT belief can also be
divided into two inclinations: traditional
inclination and constructivist inclination.
Traditional inclination means ICT is mainly used
as instructive tools such as tutorial software,
drill-and-practice. Constructivist inclination
means ICT is mainly used as informative,
constructive, communicative tool [10].
III. MEASURING METHOD
Most of the methods that were used to
measure teachers beliefs are scale-based
self-report. We measure the two sub-beliefs
separately.
Seldom researches have been conducted to
investigate pedagogical belief, and most scales
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have been developed to measure teachers
educational belief. Our method is to select some
sub-scales form educational belief assessment
scale. Teachers Beliefs Survey (TBS) Scale
from Woolley et al (2004) has been often used to
measure teachers educational belief [11]. TBS
scale includes seven modules: classroom
learning environment, behavior management,
curriculums, assessment, teaching strategies,
student roles and working with parents. Lv
Guoguang claims the educational belief scale
includes four sub-scales: students learning,
management, curriculum and assessment [12].
This scale has been adopted by many
educational researchers in China and proved to
credible.
Teachers belief on management is not always
consistent with other sub-beliefs [11]. Thats to
say, those teachers who have a constructivist
inclination in teaching and learning may not
have the same inclination in management. In
our research, The management sub-scale is
abandoned. we choose the other three sub-scales
from Lv Guoguangs scale [12].There are 24
items, 12 for students learning, 6 for curriculum
and 6 for assessment. The items help to calculate
an overall value for pedagogical belief, Items in
the scale are rated by using a five-point Likert
scale ranging from totally disagreeto totally
agree. The higher the scale score, the more
constructivism tendency.
For ICT belief measurement, we choose
teachers perception on the role of ICT in
classroom as the reflection. Researchers have
studied teachers ICT belief from many
perspectives. Some researchers compared
teachers apperception on the new media (video,
hypertext etc.) with the traditional media to
reflect teachers belief on ICT[13]. Some
researchers investigated teachers attitude
toward ICT-like or dont like to reflect teachers
ICT belief [14]. In Nanjing, most of classrooms
are equipped with multimedia display
equipments and network access. Teachers are
used to use ICT in classroom. At present, KMO of the Pedagogical Belief Assessment
problem is not about whether teachers are Scale (PBAS) is 0.926, and ICT Belief
willing or not willing to use ICT , but how to use Assessment Scale(IBAS) is 0.929.
ICT. In other words, ICT belief should be The accumulated variance is 64.66% and
focused on teachers view on the role of ICT in 77.17%. The Cronbachs Alpha of PBAS is
classroom. 0.8861 , and Cronbachs Alphas of the two
Based on the classification of ICT application sub-scales of IBAS is 0.9403 and 0.8293.
in classroom of van Braaket [15]we develop
IV. RESULTS
seven items to cover different applications of
ICT in classroom. Using computer to train TABLE I. PEDAGOGICAL BELIEF
students computer skill is omitted, because IT
Min Max M SD
teachers are not the subjects of our research.
According to the taxonomy of Chen Ping Lim Learning 32.00 59.00 48.3612 5.1738

we divide the seven items into two inclinations Curriculum 6.00 30.00 19.4136 5.8918

[10]. Two of them illustrate traditional Assessment 15.00 30.00 32.00 3.3804

inclination, and the others illustrate Total 68.00 118.00 89.8019 12.019

constructivist inclination .Items in both scales

are rated by using a five-point Likert scale As TABLE I shows, the mean is 89.80, which
ranging from totally disagree (1 score)to is greater than 72(the median of the total score
totally agree(5 score). 144). All the means of sub-scales are greater
than the median (48.36>36, 19.41>18,32>18).
A. Participants
We can conclude that teachers belief on
A online questionnaire was delivered on a students learning, curriculum and assessment is
survey platform (http://www.sojump.com/) . 547 progressive. Teachers have constructivist
teachers have participated the online survey. pedagogical belief in general. This is consistent
Considering the aim of the study, answer sheets with earlier research about Chinese teachers
from ICT teachers were deleted. pedagogical belief [12][16].
Effective answer sheet was 515, and efficiency
was 94%. Of the valid respondents, 329 were TABLE II. ICT BELIEF
from primary school, and 186. 273 were from
min max M SD
urban districts and 242 were from rural towns.
Constructivist 5 25 20.6524 2.8973
The Statistics tool used was SPSS11.5
model (N=5)
B. Descriptive statistics and reliability of the Traditional 2 10 8.4330 1.0969
research instruments model(N=2)

Only 4(0.78%) teachers reported never to use For traditional model, the mean is 20.6524,
computers in class. Most of the teachers use ICT much greater than the median 15. For
between 3 and 10 class hours a week (66.8%) constructivist model, the mean is 8.4330, also
and 22.9% integrate ICT 10 hours or more in much greater than the median 6. This illustrates
their classrooms. This implies that ICT in teachers perceive that ICT support both
classroom is popular , and what we should focus teacher-centered and student-centered instruction.
on is how to use ICT. Most of the teachers In other words, teachers are fully conscious of
(93.8%) have followed at least one ICT training the functions of ICT in classroom.
lesson and 44.7% have attended15 or more
training lessons. TABLE III. CORRELATION ANALYSIS

206
 Pedagogical ICT ICT the more constructivist inclination teachers hold
Belief Belief(C) Belief(T) in pedagogical belief. In other words, training
Pedagogical 1 contributes significantly teachers constructivism.
Belief In order to study the further correlation between
ICT Belief(C) .086 1 pedagogical belief and gender, we conduct T test,
ICT Belief(T) .177** .829** 1 as shown in TABLE V.
**P<0.01

(ICT Belief(C)-Constructivist inclination in ICT Belief; ICT Belief(T)-

Traditional inclination in ICT Belief)

TABLE V. T-TEST ABOUT THE GENDER DIFFERENCE IN
PEDAGOGICAL BELIEF
From TABELE III, two correlative
relationships are found: ICT constructivist model Pedagogical belief MSD t p
and ICT traditional model, pedagogical belief maleN=175 3.64.49 -3.
Gender .001
and ICT traditional model. The former illustrates femaleN=340 3.79.49 33
that teachers who recognize the affordance of Many earlier researches have indicated that
ICT in support traditional instruction also realize women are less open than men. In somer
the contribution of ICT to support constructivist researches, female teachers are always correlated
instruction. The latter illustrates that teachers with lower levels of ICT application in
who are more open in pedagogy have a stronger classroom [15]. However, in our research,
perception of the function of ICT to support T- test indicates that female teachers are more
traditional instruction. open in pedagogical belief than male teachers,
No correlation is found between pedagogical though the difference is not obvious. At least, we
belief and ICT constructivist belief. That is to can conclude that female teachers are not less
say, teachers who hold a strong constructivist progressive than male teachers.
inclination in pedagogy may not have a full
recognition of the function of ICT to support TABLE VI. TABLE 6 T-TEST ABOUT THE GENDER

student-centered instruction. DIFFERENCE IN ICT BELIEF

1 2 3 4 5 6
TABLE IV. CORRELATION ANALYSIS BETWEEN
1 1
PEDAGOGICAL BELIEF AND OTHER FACTORS
2 -.362** 1
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 3 -.135** .026 1
1 1 4 -.197** .625** .082 1
2 -.362** 1 5 -.114** .344** .042 .386** 1
3 -.135** .026 1 6 -.335** .153** .029 .011 -.034 1
4 -.197** .625** .082 1 7 .072 -.075 -.087* -0.004 .012 .023
5 -.114** .344** .042 .386** 1 8 .055 -.027 -.046 .000 .039 .047
6 -.335** .153** .029 .011 -.034 1 *P<0.05 **P<0.01

7 .141** -.006 .006 -.014 .217** .023 1 (1- Gender; 2- Working age;3-Schoo;4- Frequency of using ICT;5- Training

**P<0.01 experience;6- area; 7- Constructivist inclination in ICT Belief; 8- Traditional

(1- Gender; 2- Working age;3-Schoo;4- Frequency of using ICT;5- Training inclination in ICT Belief)

experience;6- area;7- Pedagogical belief)

As shown in TABLE VI, the primary school
Among the six factors, gender and the training teachers have stronger ICT constructivist belief
experience are significant correlate with than teachers from second-schoolP<0.05; No
pedagogical beliefP<0.01, as shown in Table others factors are found correlate with ICT belief.
IV. The more training lessons teachers attend, Training experience is not correlated with ICT

207
belief.
V. Discussion and conclusion
From the survey, teachers hold
traditional and constructivist pedagogical beliefs
and ICT beliefs, providing support for criticizing
bipolar distinction between traditionalistic and
progressive belief. Teachers are well prepared
in beliefs about both pedagogical and ICT. We
can conclude that teachers belief is not an
obstacle for higher-level ICT integration in
classroom in Nanjing. In practice, traditional
model of ICT application still dominates the
classroom. Therefore, there are some other
factors which prevent teachers from applying
ICT in constructivist model. For example, the
current examination-oriented instruction
China may be a big obstacle.
Pedagogical belief and ICT belief are proved
to be independent. When we study teachers
belief related to ICT, both the pedagogical belief
and ICT belief should be examined. ICT belief
has been often neglected by researchers. Our
research reveals that teacher who have hold a
high inclination in constructivist pedagogy not
always fully recognize the potential of ICT to
support student-centered instruction. Teachers
who hold constructivist pedagogical beliefs may
fail to perceive the affordances of computer tools
[17]. The power of computers in organizing
activities is often not consciously recognized by
the teachers who use them [10].
The perception of an affordance by teachers
may not necessarily be taken up; but for an
affordance to be taken up, it has to be first
perceived by teachers [18]. These teachers either
may not see the affordances of computers
beyond those that are already afforded by
existing tools in the classrooms or may take up
only the affordances that are consistent with
their traditional beliefs [9].
Training experience is correlated
pedagogical belief, not ICT belief. Maybe it is
more difficult for teacher to get constructivist
ICT belief via current training programs.
Training cant solve the problem alone. Other
measures should be taken to help teachers set up
both constructivist ICT belief.
In our research, teachers from primary school
have higher perception of the function of ICT in
supporting constructivist-based teaching. Maybe
the primary school teachers have less pressure to
get the students ready for examination. They are
more willing to try some new technologies and
new ideas in classroom.
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