TPACK, Journal Summary 9

Teacher's Computer Self -Efficacy and It's Relationship with Cognitive Style and TPACK

Omar Lopez-Vargas. Leydy Duarte-Suarez and Jaime Ibanez-Ibanez

The use of information technologies by teachers in  the classroom activity was becoming frequent, while studies on subject matter show that in some schools where the technology was available it was not use efficiently due to the low-levels of self-efficacy that teachers possess regard to the use of ICT in the classroom. What students get was based on teachers' performance. When the teachers felt insecure about using technology during teaching process, they will possibly determine their use during the development of the corresponding subject. In contrast, when the teacher felt confident they possibly used technology as a tool to help in favoring students' learning process. This such case named self-efficacy. Self-efficacy in ICT context could be defined as the perception that individual have of their own abilities regarding the knowledge and skills related to the use of computers (Salanova et al, 2004)

Along to the design and implementation of courses to rain the teachers on the used of ICT the TPACK framework can be used (Koehlr and Mishra, 2005; Koehler, Mishra & Yahya, 2007). Some experts argued that this framework can be used by teachers as the base due to this framework proposes that an adequate use of technology in classrooms occurs insofar as contents, pedagogy, and technology are integrated in a structure manner (Koehler & Mishra, 2005). In this research area can be added another variable, such as FDI (the Field Dependence-Independence) dimension. In ICT context, FDI dimension has evidenced, systematically, that subject denominated FI perform is better than their FD classmates, when they interact with computational environments. Studies about FDI proposed and development by Witkin & Goodenough (1981).

In order to gathering the data, the authors were implementing correlation type complete by ANOVA which conducted 208 teachers (162 women and 46 men) where taking from 10 public schools in the different municipalities in Valle de Tenza, Boyaca, Columbia. Some instruments used in this study were teachers' computer self-efficacy developed by Sang et al (2010) which exhibits a degree of reliability or Cronbach's x=90 with contains 9 items. It wa a self reporting questionnaire with a likert scale 1-5. TPACK questionnaire which contained 30 items with a likert scale 1-5. Cognitive style test used the instrument that proposed by Sawa (1966) consist of 5 subjects presented in separate pages.

The result showed the significant associations between cognitive style, self-efficacy, TK and TPACK. In addition, they evidenced the existence of significant differences in self-efficacy, TK and TPACK according to the performance area and cognitive style.