ICT integration in developing competence for pre-service mathematics teachers: A case study from six universities in Vietnam

Abstract

Competence structure that pre-service teachers need to develop to become a future teacher has been defined since the 1930s. For pre-service mathematics teachers, their competence has its own characteristics. ICT integration in developing competence for pre-service mathematics teachers has been been proved to be effective in many previous studies. In Vietnam, the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) has recommended the use of ICT to enhance teaching-learning activities in schools and universities, therefore, there have been many studies on ICT intergration at different educational levels. However, there are only a few studies on the use ICT integration in developing competence for pre-service mathematics teachers. This paper presents results from a research on the feasibility of ICT integration in developing competence of Vietnamese pre-service mathematics teachers. The research was conducted by surveying on a randomly selected of 297 pre-service mathematics teachers and 40 mathematics lecturers in six universities which provide mathematics training programs. Results show that despite of the availability of technologies, ICT integration in training pre-service teachers is still limited. In addition, ICT integration in teaching activities of mathematics teachers is not really effective because the levels of their ICT skills are very different. Pre-service mathematics teachers have the ability to use ICT equipment, and good accessibility to learning systems, but their use of the learning management systems (LMS) is limited. This study can be a reference for future studies to test the effective of ICT integration in training pre-service teachers when designing activities to develop feasibly and effectively their competence.