Article Preview
TopBackground
Teacher education curriculum needs to incorporate appropriate instructional contents that would place students on a sound pedagogical pedestal, to cope with the ever-increasing challenges of the modern schooling system. Thus, teacher training institutions are rising up to the challenge by integrating educational technology courses into the curriculum, with a view to equipping pre-service teachers with technology toolkits to engage learners in classroom activities. Educational technology courses are designed to ensure that pre-service teachers are not only taught with technology, but also acquire skills to package instructional content with the use of digital tools.
It is widely recognised that pre-service teachers across the world need to be equipped with relevant technology skills and competences, which are now regarded as strategic components of any teacher education programme. Prospective teachers are expected to be trained on how to use digital tools in instructional delivery process, with a view to ensuring that new generation of teachers are able to meet increasing educational challenges of the 21st Century (Batane & Ngwako, 2017). Not only must these pre-service teachers acquire competences in technology use, it is also important that they learn how to use different digital tools to develop interactive and engaging instructional contents to enhance classroom activities at different levels of education. To accomplish this, stakeholders in teacher education programme need to incorporate a robust educational technology content that would create interactive teaching-learning environments for future generation teachers and their students.
Over the years, many studies had focused on the need to train prospective teachers on how to use technology and factors that hinder teacher technology preparation programmes in colleges of education and universities across the world. Murley, Jukes, and Stobaugh, (2013) affirm that most studies on pre-service teachers’ use of technology have concentrated on examining the impact of educational technology courses on pre-service teachers’ use of technology in their future classroom practices.