Management of Religion Teachers’ Socioemotional Competencies in Information and Communication Technologies Integration: A Phenomenographic Study

Abstract

This investigation forms part of a doctoral study that examines the relation between socioemotional competencies (SECs) and teachers’ beliefs on the integration of information and communication technologies (ICTs). It addresses religion teachers’ knowledge of SECs during the curricular integration of ICTs, specifically their internal aspects in their pedagogical practice using ICTs (second-order barriers). This study also discusses the characteristics of religion teachers, who have received less attention than teachers of science, language, or mathematics disciplines, partly because religion is not considered a priority area in educational policies. To this end, this study adopted a qualitative approach in the phenomenographic tradition to describe how people experience the phenomena in their environment. The informants were 22 religion teachers from Metropolitan Lima, Peru, who participated in in-depth interviews to clarify their emotional experience with ICTs. The results confirmed the empirical findings of contemporary scientific literature and indicated that teaching with ICTs offers a permanent emotional experience manifested in the planning and development of learning sessions as well as in decision-making for pedagogical purposes. The findings allow for feedback and serve as a catalyst for perseverance and work engagement. However, the informants expressed their desire for better training to carry out quality teaching–learning processes with ICTs in religious education.