Singaporean and Taiwanese pre-service teachers’ beliefs and their attitude towards ICT: A comparative study

Teachers’ epistemological and pedagogical beliefs and their attitude about ICT are identified as the second-order barrier for the integration of ICT into classrooms. In this paper, we report the findings obtained from our recent survey and conducted among Singaporean and Taiwanese pre-service teachers (N=108). The results indicate that the teachers’ epistemological beliefs were generally relativistic. They were also inclined to believe rather strongly the constructivist notion of teaching. The profile we obtained in this study seems to suggest that pre-service teachers from Singapore and Taiwan are holding beliefs that are congruent to the education reform efforts. However, the teachers’ attitude about ICT use does not seem to relate to their epistemological and pedagogical beliefs. The findings suggest that further effort needs to be taken in order to foster more productive use of ICT to support constructivism-oriented teaching. These results need to be verified with further study.