Abstract:
Educators today face the challenge of integrating information and communication
technologies into their teaching to enhance student learning. Modelling appropriate uses
of these resources by teacher-educators in the pre-service classroom can give future
teachers the necessary knowledge and skills to effectively integrate these tools in their
classrooms. Research indicates that there has been considerable progress in this area inmany teacher education institutions in developed countries. However, the status of the
. integration of ICTs by teacher educators in Kenyan primary teacher training colleges is
largely unknown. This study, thus, sought to determine the factors influencing the level
to which teacher educators in public primary teacher training colleges have integrated
ICT in teacher preparation. The study was guided the Diffusion of Innovations theory
which addresses change levels that educators progress through in technology
integration. The simple random sampling technique was used to select six teacher
training colleges in Kenya and 169 respondents who participated in the study. Data was
collected using a questionnaire, an interview schedule and an observation check list.
The data collected was analyzed descriptively with the help of SPSS program version
16.0 for frequencies, means, standard deviation and percentages. The inferential
statistics used to determine relationships among variables was the Pearson Moment
Correlation. A p-value of less than 0.05 was interpreted as significant. Results indicated
that there is a low level of ICT integration in teaching in all teacher training colleges. It
also showed that there were significant relationships between teacher educators' level of
ICT integration in teaching and their motivation, access to ICTs, attitude, support,
expertise, confidence, gender, age, level of education and teaching experience. Based on the findings, it is recommended that: ICTs' integration be made part of undergraduate
training in universities in order to equip future teacher educators with ICT skills. The
government should equip teacher training colleges with sufficient and modern
computers with internet connectivity to enhance access; colleges should provide inservice training on ICTs for teachers; colleges should hire technicians to maintain and
service available ICTs; the ministry of education should embrace ICT and demand
professional documents from teacher educators be typed and sent online; colleges
should not rely only on government funding but earn their own income by initiating lCT
training centres to train outsiders in their colleges, and, finally, all college principals
should be knowledgeable in ICTs so as to support ICT initiatives in teacher education
institutions.