The Future of Education

1. Purpose of the Study

This study was designed to investigate the effects of pre-service teachers’ internal beliefs of constructivist teaching beliefs on early childhood education, teacher self-efficacy, educational ICT (information and communication technology) attitudes, and computer self-efficacy on prospective ICT integration in South Korea. Student teachers in early childhood education are expected to be prepared for computer integrated education in their future teaching. Many teacher education programs in South Korea tend to offer diverse courses related to computer education, but few student teachers are reluctant to take advantage of computer integrated education (Yoo & Kim, 2011). Moreover, Yoo and Kim (2011) reported that student teachers in early childhood education felt anxiety and fear in integrating computers in their future teaching. This indicates that early childhood educator's internal beliefs in the teaching-learning process might be an important factor affecting their prospective ICT integrated education (Sime & Priestley, 2005). Thus, this study was to explore the effects of student teacher's internal beliefs of constructivist belief, teacher self-efficacy, educational ICT attitudes, and computer self-efficacy on prospective ICT integration altogether. To achieve this purpose, a specific research question was set as follows;

Research Question 1. What is the relationship among pre-service teachers' constructivist belief, and teacher efficacy, educational ICT attitudes, and computer self-efficacy on prospective ICT integration?

2. Methods

The subjects of this study were 267 pre-service early childhood educators studying at 2 three year colleges and 2 universities in Seoul and Gyeonggi province. Path analysis was used to explore the relationship among constructivist belief, teacher self-efficacy, educational ICT attitude, and educational ICT attitude.

3. Results

A path analysis results are as follows;

<Table 1> Path Analysis Model Fit